I don't know their project, but personally I don't have anything against people "bumping" a thread that has gone cold without an actual solution. I am busy and I don't take my open source project very seriously so things do fall through the cracks from time to time.
EDIT: This is a small scale project and the user waited 19 days before bumping. To me that's perfectly reasonable.
Bumping can also defeat the stalebot plague. I wholeheartedly encourage bumping until stalebot is improved to either a) stop existing or b) consider emoji reactions when deciding if an issue is "stale".
That doesn't make the issue any less legitimate. If someone pings me for problem X and I don't solve their issue, if someone finds the thread on Google and bumps it that's still one of my users having an issue.
Above all, I much prefer this to people that find my email/LinkedIn and pings me there. That's where I draw the line.
They only created the account to bump a request they had no involvement in. I could understand the original requestor asking for an update, but this is just some rando with no contributions to any project at all.
How do you know they weren't keeping an eye on the issue before creating an account?
Or maybe they just ran into a case where they need the issue resolved, but aren't sure if they should wait or if it's likely to take long enough that they should find an alternative or a workaround.
If they went to the trouble of creating an account just to bump this issue... they probably care about it. Asking for update is just as often a way to subtly say "Can I pick this up?" or "Is there a way I can help move this ticket?" or "There was a pr, is this not getting merged because you won't accept this changeset?"
You seem to be making a value judgement I just don't get - who fucking cares if it's just some rando - they were all random people when they started the thread...
A direct comment is a lot more useful - both because I know it's not a bot, but also because it gives me a touch point for another interested party, who might be able/interested in helping.
ex: "Any update on this" can easily be followed with "Not at the moment, we have a work in progress [here], but could use additional hands" or "We're still trying to understand all the use-cases for this, what are you trying to accomplish" or any number of other relevant and useful things.
Personally - I enjoy having some human interaction as motivation every now and then, and it's easy enough to just ignore if the answer is "I'm busy".
My main reason is to signal "there are still people out there in need of this". My addition always is "What can I do to help move this forward?" (unless that is made clear in the thread already, ofc). To signal that my need is urgent enough for me to put time, effort or funding into it.
EDIT: This is a small scale project and the user waited 19 days before bumping. To me that's perfectly reasonable.