Basically I'll keep this as short as possible. This also is only applying to the market threads, so where something is either being bought/sold, as bumping generally doesn't occur elsewhere.
At the moment the rule stands that you can only bump once every 8 hours, this is in order to make it so that every thread has its fair chance to be seen at the top of the first page. This is all good and fair, however this doesn't happen when we get constant "posts" which come in between these 8 hour bumps.
I personally don't see any reason why someone should have to post in between the 8 hours. However, it's happening and what I consider spam is apparently acceptable; which then defeats the whole point of the 8 hour bump rule.
I'll just give a couple of examples of cases where it's happening regularly in the RS markets (don't really know the other markets but I'm sure the same applies).
- Aside from the obvious PM'ed, add me (which happens a lot funnily enough) etc....
- On the user services plenty of threads request order forms which then they use as an excuse to post a price/timeframe or even to say they've PM'ed or added that person. Any talks with a user that's interested can be done via PM's.
- Likewise any questions can be carried on via PM's, no need to have the conversation in the thread.
- In the gold exchange, no need for people to request confirmation posts on your thread. Can be done via a PM. Also, same applies in regards to the order forms which is used as an excuse to increase ones post count.
That's just a couple, in general though it's simply no one should have to post on their thread anything but "Bump" or whatever form of "bump" they do. As anything which is posted in between these bumps can be done via PM's and is simply a way of spamming and making their artificial post counts increase.
So a simple solution is to change the 8 hour bump rule to your only allowed to post on your thread once every 8 hours. I don't expect this to gain much support, but I just felt the fact you have this 8 hour rule and leave the spam to the mods discretion is kind of ridiculous. Either enforce the 8 hour rule completely and remove the spam in between (I consider everything in between to be spam), or don't have it in the first place.
