First of all if request except for new entries was omitted from the general list. The community will be very quiet.
[Login to see the link] Can you clarify, I believe you're responding to one of my ideas, where the date of the original post is the only date used to order the post in the "new posts" list, along the sidebar, or ordered in the forum index?
If this indeed was your intention, I think you've misunderstood. You mention that there are 100 new requests in 5 days. That's a lot of requests. Each of those requests will gain more time in the spotlight, because they will not be overrun by posts that have been "bumped", yet other users can post ideas/suggestions without risk of trouble, or wasting the moderator's time.
I could be wrong, that's just my initial thought, if I understood your reply, correctly.
[Login to see the link] also offers a good idea:
One possible solution would be to automatically add all valid requests to a request list that's publicly available for all to see.
That has a number of positive benefits: the uploaders and any other user trying to help with requests could just check this list instead of having to scan all posts, users could check this list to see if the request they want is already on the list before submitting, and it would eliminate the need to bump. Indeed, the administrators could then consider outright banning request bumping.
I replied: If [Login to see the link] or [Login to see the link] like the idea, perhaps they will forward to the programmers to determine if this can be implemented.
Because I believe that may be the greatest hurdle: Finding a solution that is also practical for the developers to implement.
[Login to see the link] refined the idea:
You would have to have some way to mark a request as being fulfilled. Because of the volume of requests that come in, probably the most practical solution would be to remove fulfilled requests from the list, but then that would impact searching. You could probably work around these issues with some clever Javascript, but I suspect that index is already stretched thin with future projects.
There's also the issue of what to do about past unfulfilled requests. Should all of those be added to the list, or the most recent, or what? It's a decent idea, but as they say, the devil is in the details.
My reply/idea in response: If we maintained a list that is powered by a DB/dynamic backend (assuming something like a help-desk/FAQ feature is built into the forums being used here) -- then the issues you raise can be managed easily. Requests can be either open/solved or they can auto-expire after X days (30 or 60 days possibly?) at which point it becomes legal to re-post.
However, I think the key point is how flexible this forum software. Depending on the capabilities, we work the ideas/structure around that (not vice-versa).
As a software developer myself, typically in a project where people donate their time it's more about what can be done easily, than obtaining the "perfect" result. Now if someone is paying us our $200+/hour billable, we'll build whatever they like, lol. But when it's time-donated, we're limited to working within the confines of what is already built and can be easily customized, typically.
Again, I don't know if this makes sense, but I hope it can help inspire ideas from others, if nothing else.