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Should topics be bumped when posts or comments are significantly edited?
I just edited a short comment into a significantly larger one, adding a lot more and different content than before. This did not bump the post the comment belonged to. Should it?
I think there's already an issue brewing with posts being bumped out real hard by commenting, I feel as though this might exacerbate that issue.
I agree. I already feel a bit embarrassed to see an older topic jump to the top of the page because I’ve commented quite late on. Still, I guess this will be less of an issue as the site grows.
I think you should only feel embarrassed if the content of your reply is something along the lines of "thanks". If it adds to the discussion, a bump will indicate to others that the discussion is ongoing, which increases the chance of people reading your comment and writing a reply. The age of a topic shouldn't be much of a factor, imo. But if you care about 'newness', your comment is what makes it fresh.
I think this would be another good feature of what we were calling "whisper" or "aside" replies in another recent thread. In addition to those comments auto-collapsing (or having some other special render behavior) they could also not cause the thread to be bumped. Also they probably shouldn't count as "new" or "unread" comments in the red count on the main page, and I guess they probably don't need to be labeled red within the thread either.
With these differentiators I'm starting to appreciate the whisper/aside idea more and more.
I don't think the comment (edit: I meant an edit to a comment under a topic) should bump the post, but a significant edit to a topic text should be as if a comment was posted. Maybe the OP of a topic should get say 3 "updates" where when they update the post using a special syntax (say a new paragraph like
/^[Ee]dit(\s+\d)?:\s/) it bumps it as if a comment was made.It probably wouldn't be too hard to have a dedicated update button that serves as an alias for "edit" but also gives the post a bump. Mods would have to check for abusive uses though, for example people doing non-edits just to keep the post stickied.
I think that an update button gives the decision to the user on whether an edit is substantial or not. Because it'd be hard or impossible to have a generic definition of what is a "substantial edit". Sometimes a typo of a single letter can change the entire meaning of the post, sometimes lots and lots of words add nothing in sum. But restricting the type of edit (e.g. adding a certain type of paragraph marked by a keyword, or just adding a paragraph itself) might remove the incentive for non-edits (I don't think a serious poster would just add a paragraph like "Edit:\n\n" to their post; and mere links would not benefit from this feature anyways.) and rate limiting (say 2-3 per post) can help with spammers.
So, pretty much like Wikipedia's "This is a minor edit" checkbox? Sounds good to me.
I however wouldn't implement a hard cap on edit bumps — someone could also just bump their post by empty comments, so we shouldn't bar up the windows if the walls are broken¹ ;)
Perhaps a 45-minute cooldown per comment would be possible instead?
[1] Also: Trust users, but punish abusers.
I can get behind this. There should definitely be a cooldown. I'm not sure if the bump should be opt in or opt out though, as we don't want new users who aren't familiar to be updating every post instead of editing it.
I agree about trusting the users though.
In my view, for what it's worth, yes that would be enough. I know the way Reddit did things was often to post new threads with new articles for updates, since threads would simply sink after a while due to age, but I never liked that.
To clarify: I'm much more partial to the old style of forum threads, where sometimes a single thread would span multiple weeks of posts on a developing story, as this keeps most of the relevant discussion in one place and prevents the same things from being repeated over and over again or others to miss out on insightful comments.
So I think your example would suffice as an update, or maybe as a fresh new comment, it adds relevant info to an ongoing discussion and it does not really need it's own thread per se.
I sorta think that should be a new comment and OP comments should be weighted heavier to be toward the top. I don't think editing the post (unless you can edit titles here too, I guess?) is the perfect solution to adding such a major update, unless the thread sorta originally mentioned that it is an ongoing story. Know what I mean?