I guess topics are first ranked by "bumping" and then by latest post if I'm not mistaken.
Exactly. I mentioned above and theymos wrote in OP. Topics will be sorted by topic bump score first. Then if two topics have same bump score, they will be sorted by the second factor, which is latest post time.
It is what topics will be sorted by default options in those three boards, but if one want to use old sorting option, s/he can modify it by using non-default sorting.
Non-default sortingOn the targeted boards, sorting under this scheme is the default. You can go back to the older sorting by clicking the "last post" column header.
On the non-targeted boards, you can see the sorting under this scheme by using a link like
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=1.0;sort=bump;desc . I'm not sure if this is at all useful. (It's also
possible to super-bump topics on these boards, though there's no real incentive to do so.)
I don't think posting will result in reports if users make good posts. There are two ways to bump topics, through posts or through bump button. I just don't know that bump through posts will be counted with "Bump!" posts (that is likely what you asked) or with "Contentful posts (not Bump!)" or both of them will be considered as bump through posts.
Topic bump score depends on:
- Mini bump: through post
- Super bump: through bump button