What’s going on with the weird MNHQ bumbling?

[MrsTerryPratchett]

A couple of threads have been bumped by MNHQ specifically @FlissMumsnetor whatever the naming convention is. It’s early on, contentious and therefore clickbaity stuff.

Is this a new thing? It’s weird and frankly seems manipulative. Are MNHQ at least checking if these bumped threads are legit posters, because one seemed very suss.

We’re trialling something at the moment by moving threads that have been posted in the wrong topic, or giving them a bump if they haven’t received any replies after a few hours.

In the olden days you had a poster who would do that for you. What was she called? Began with a P. Bring her back!

The poster confirmed as much this morning saying they run some sort of debate page (linking to it in the post) and encouraged people to click to see how others voted on their site.

I would have thought this fell in line with the no spamming the boards in the talk guidelines but apparently not.

Just checked as I hadn't seen that one.

They started 14 threads without any engagement.

I know this is not the same but I wondered if anyone could advise on this - there is a poster (DS) that is writing rage bait responses on every single thread I read at the moment.
It is not in isolation a cause for reporting but cumulatively it is just infuriating and adds to my loss of faith in the authenticity of the site in general, as well as being incredibly frustrating watching people bite and derail every thread. I could believe she/ they are a bit designed to increase engagement.
Is this something you would expect MNHQ to take a position on ?

*just FYI I have been on here about 6 years but change my name every few months.

adds to my loss of faith in the authenticity of the site in general

Purely for this, if I was a mod I would delete it. But it brings in clicks so it’ll probably stay. And I don’t see that mods are particularly concerned about authenticity etc.

Yes @EchoParkBrewery I would definitely report that if you've seen a pattern emerging. MNHQ don't read threads/posts unless they're reported, so very unlikely that they would be in a position to spot such posting behaviour.

@BeckyAMumsnet

Could MN please clarify the criteria for which posts moderators have been asked to bump up?
I have concerns that this could be used to manipulate conversation about specific topics/products/themes.

I think my other issue with this:

We’ve been trying to give a bit more help to threads which have sat without a reply for a while. Sometimes people have posted in the wrong topic, or at a quiet time, and a small nudge can mean their question is actually seen by someone who can help. That’s the intention, anyway.

... is that we're frequently told that the mods are too busy with reports to answer quickly. Surely this is just something to take up more of their time, which would be better spent responding to reports (or posts on Site Stuff which, let's be honest, are sometimes left without a reply from MHNQ for a very long time.)

Thanks will report 👍🏻

I can understand that mods don’t notice patterns that users do but what I can’t understand is their complete dismissal of suggestions that it’s happening. The only reason can be that any traffic is better than low traffic which is ironic given that it is driving posters away.