Even though technically it's against the rules, it might not be that bad to respond to another user in a separate post after a large generic announcement. Without that, the response might be overlooked by scrolling past the announcement.
I don't even know why that's technically against the rules (though I can obviously see how it would be abused), since if a person creates a thread they might want to reply to other members' posts, even if that means making multiple posts within a 24-hour period--and I do realize you said as much in the part of your post that I snipped out.
I've started threads where I'm looking for feedback, and I've been guilty of inadvertently bumping my thread more times than the rule allows for, but it was never my intent to bump the thread in order to keep it on top of the section. I also think the rule was made to prevent "spam bumpers" who do this primarily, but not exclusively, in the ANN sections. Hopefully that was its intent; otherwise, it'd be hard to carry on genuine discussions.
In
Service Announcements, I've seen obvious scams almost reach the top of the list after a few people post in it (as a warning).
Yep, when I used to visit the ANN section during the ICO insanity I'd see much the same thing. Project owners were clearly hiring bumping services (or employing alt accounts) to keep their threads at the top of the page. It was maddening to look at, because the posts that would bump the threads were all of the "great project!" variety, and it was obvious what was happening.