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I recently posted a question on sci-fi SE, which failed to garner enough views/answers/comments.

I decided to edit the title to draw more audiences, which I did, but my edit was rolled back and I was threatened that users who bumped their posts by editing them were suspended on other sites.

I read up on a few posts on meta.SE, including the mother post on what is to be done in case the question doesn't receive enough attention.

I'm just curious:

  1. Is this activity an invitation to be suspended?
  2. Have there been suspensions in the past for similar reasons?

I don't have the knowledge or the privileges to answer either of them, hence this post.

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  • 10
    You shouldn't make bad edits to a post just to bump it. Either make an actual worthwhile edit or put a bounty on it.
    – TheLethalCarrot
    Commented May 6, 2020 at 9:31
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    The fixation on suspension is probably not useful. It's generally problematic to do this excessively, but the boundaries between useless bumping and refining edits can be fluid. Anyway, the more fruitful question to ask would be if this is reasonable and encouraged behaviour and under which circumstances, rather than straight up asking what punishment you could possibly get for it.
    – Christian Rau
    Commented May 6, 2020 at 9:33
  • @ChristianRau I see your point, and I concur. But I approached it this way: unreasonable behavior would be certainly punished.
    – William R. Ebenezer
    Commented May 6, 2020 at 9:35
  • @TheLethalCoder Bounties are probably the best thing to consider, but I'm a low-rep user there. :(
    – William R. Ebenezer
    Commented May 6, 2020 at 9:37
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    @WilliamR.Ebenezer It's fine to "edit bump" if the edit is worthwhile and in my opinion that one wasn't, it made the title worse and you added the edit reason into the post body where it doesn't belong. For example, on that post you could edit the image description to be useful rather than the default useless one. You can also drop into chat for SFF should you want people to look at it. Failing that it's just a case of waiting for someone to see the post. It's quite a low traffic tag on SFF so it's not surprising it hasn't had an answer straight away.
    – TheLethalCarrot
    Commented May 6, 2020 at 9:42
  • I think the suspension comment is a little harsh. However, the edited title isn't an improvement, it's probably worse than the original title. And when you make edits you should try to fix as much as you can in order to avoid excessive bumping, especially when editing your own posts.
    – PM 2Ring
    Commented May 7, 2020 at 0:16
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    @TheLethalCoder bounties are supposed to be a last resort. The help center even tells you to bump your question via editing before you put a bounty on it.
    – LemmyX
    Commented May 7, 2020 at 5:13
  • @LemmyX That doesn't contradict what I said. I said edit bumping is fine as long as the edit is fine.
    – TheLethalCarrot
    Commented May 18, 2020 at 16:26

3 Answers 3

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Well, not if you do it only once; bumping is pretty common in other sites on the Internet so it's understandable that people do it here as well. However, editing a post just to bump it is considered bad behaviour, so repeatedly doing this may result in a stern message from a moderator and eventually a suspension.

The reason is that there is no a priori reason that your question is more worthy of attention than a random other question on the site. There are other options available for you: there's even an FAQ about it: How do I get attention for one of my own questions without a good answer? You have enough reputation to post a bounty which will give it a lot more views for a week (even for two weeks, as you can start with a 50 point bounty and follow up with a 100 point one).

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    Thanks for the answer! I will keep this in mind. I probably acted a little rashly and stupidly because of my desperation to get an answer. I received an ok-ish response to a (separate) question I posted yesterday, so I assumed the title had the problem.
    – William R. Ebenezer
    Commented May 6, 2020 at 9:54
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    Well, a well written title can be important to draw the right folks (tagging helps as well). I don't know too much about Scifi.SE to judge whether that is the case for your question. Perhaps their own Meta contains some guidelines?
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Commented May 6, 2020 at 9:57
  • @Glorfindel We don't really have any guidelines on titles in general outside of the normal tips over the entire network. However, I have a couple of posts on it from a while back (those posts aren't guideline posts, just relevant; one with some good links).
    – TheLethalCarrot
    Commented May 6, 2020 at 11:27
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People can and have been suspended if they are continuously disruptive. Having said that there's an assumption to begin with that you're not acting with ill intent.

So if you edit your question with a genuine attempt to add more information or clarify it in some way you'll be fine. If you every day add and remove a space from it and don't listen to the user or moderator warnings not to do that, then that's a problem and you'll be stopped from doing it.

Adding meta commentry to posts is also frowned upon i.e.

EDIT: title modified, too little attention given to post.

We know you edited it. Changing the title just to bump it is not enough. Do you believe the old title made it harder to find and the new one easier? If so then that's a good reason to change it (and you don't need to edit the post to explain why).

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  • Thanks for answering! Yes, I understand. Editing the body to include the edit synopsis isn't a good practice at all. I guess the user who rolled the edit back was doing the right thing after all.
    – William R. Ebenezer
    Commented May 6, 2020 at 9:57
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Is this activity an invitation to be suspended?

Yes, if you do pointless edits just for the sake of drawing attention to the post.

It is however perfectly fine to edit a low attention post, to add details, clarify the question further, add more info of your own trouble-shooting progress, remove superfluous or misleading information etc etc. This is encouraged behavior - improving your question is always fine.

Have there been suspensions in the past for similar reasons?

Probably, though I don't think any automatic suspensions will be handed out by the site for this. So you'd probably get a nudge by a moderator before you'd get suspended.

If you have a bad record of making superfluous edits, you may however get suspended from editing or reviewing edits, but not necessarily from the whole site. Though I suppose such suspensions are focused on those who are making superfluous edits to other people's posts.

Also, you may certainly face suspension in case you keep posting the same question multiple times, simply because the first one didn't get answered. This is frowned upon by the communities.

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