[META] Are users allowed to bump their own questions or other users' questions?

Sorry if this question seems silly, but I don’t think this has been asked before. (At least it doesn’t come up in a google search.) I think many people silently assume it’s not allowed, but are users allowed to post a comment on their question with the word “bump” in order to bump a question to the top of the question list? Or is this frowned upon and possibly a reason to downvote a user?

All the FAQ has to say about bumping is:

“What if I don’t get a good answer?
In order to get good answers, you have to put some effort into the question. Edit your question to provide status and progress updates. Document your own continued efforts to answer your question. This will naturally bump your question and get more people interested in it.”

The problem I have with this guideline is a user might not have any more information to update his/her question with despite any further effort he/she puts into researching it.

My other problem with this is what if a user posts a question in the middle of the night and/or the question drowns due to a moderator going through the moderation queue of 30+ questions. In both scenarios, it’s likely a question will hardly get any views, and therefore, it’s less likely to be seen by the right person.

When people don’t get their question answered, sometimes they make a pointless edit to their question to bump it. Or they end up reposting the same question entirely. Both of these things could be removed if bumping was allowed.

I don’t think bumping would be a bad thing if it was limited to every few hours. It also lets people answering the questions know that the asker is still paying attention to their question.

That said, I’m not expecting a Unity employee to see this or anything, but by the off chance that one does, I think it would be nice to have a bump “button” implemented. All it would need is a limit to how frequently it can be used.

It may well be that bumping is not the problem.

Another solution is to have effective filtering out of the questions we have answered a thousand times before. The site only gets about 2-3 genuine new questions every day.

Bumping adds no value to a thread, or to this site in general. It is rude, non-constructive, and should be discouraged if not banned. I tend to give a warning to users who attempt to bump their posts. I have in the past deleted entire threads which the poster refused to stop bumping.

That’s my opinion, anyway :slight_smile:

I assume that by ‘bump a question’ you mean to ‘bump it up’ to a higher position on the list of questions.

If a question has ‘activity’, it will be bumped to the top.

There are several ways to do this.

  1. Get a comment posted
  2. Edit your question or comment
  3. I think that likes and perhaps dislikes count as activity
  4. I think that an answer counts as activity, but will not work if you are trying to bump an unanswered question, naturally.

Please bear in mind that the last two I am not sure of.

In my experience, those with so little karma that a question or answer must be approved by a moderator must simply be patient, unfortunately.

I hope that this helps you.