Slitherine

Is there any chance of cutting down the number of those announcements being shown. If you got more global announcement topics then actually the ones being directly related to the game I personally think it's getting slightly out of hand.

Agreed. This is annoying. I want to see the Panzer corps forum when I click on it. not 3 pages of anouncements first.

+1

+1. Stickies too.

+2

I've asked Philkian to take a look at this.
But I'm not sure if he can do anything before Iain come back.

Isn't there any way to an expiration timer for the global announcements? The problem aren't the few new ones appearing but more the fact that the old ones seems to stay there until someone manually removes them and so they accumulate to quite a long list.

The global announcements are essentially ads, the use of which has become so gratuitous and frustrating that it tends to make people dislike the products being advertised, without even seeing them.

Please, Slitherine, consider adopting the viewpoint that the forums are a resource which should be optimized for the usability of the community rather than being compromised by the vague, opportunistic desires of the marketing team.

Many of us read the forums on a daily basis, and to be bombarded with unattractive ads on a daily basis is ANNOYING, and does nothing to engender good feelings (let alone generosity) towards the game or the company.

agreed. To me they feel like annoying ad banners that are in the way of my viewing experience. If I could adblock them I would.

Tarrak wrote:Isn't there any way to an expiration timer for the global announcements? The problem aren't the few new ones appearing but more the fact that the old ones seems to stay there until someone manually removes them and so they accumulate to quite a long list.

why to you care if information linger on... you're not paying for the electron.

this thread is ridiculous, i dare those who disagree to ask tarrak to go with a survey (like,the dice roll)...

Slitherine is a business. that , they do in house marketing is expected, are they intrusive no more than expected.

are we such dumb customer...that we cannot bybass what we don't like...

It is a matter of usability. I often read these forums on a smaller screen like my laptop. SOme might even use their iPad. It is ridiculous to have to scroll down pages after pages just to check whether any new posts have been made. If I want news about slitherine games I'll subscribe to the newsletter or check the webpage. I don't even mind that stuff on the main forum page. But as soon as I enter a subforum, I expect information about my game, not 2 pages of adds.

There are only 4 global announcements guys? There is more of a problem with stickies than globals in my opinion. We need a way to let you know stuff like server issues, etc. The number of times these get read is 1-2 orders of magnitude higher than items in the news section so people are making use of them. I understand some of you don't want them but its a balance and we need to be able to let you know things. The press event meant a lot of big news for a week or two which made it get bigger but that was unusual.

IainMcNeil wrote:There are only 4 global announcements guys? There is more of a problem with stickies than globals in my opinion. We need a way to let you know stuff like server issues, etc. The number of times these get read is 1-2 orders of magnitude higher than items in the news section so people are making use of them. I understand some of you don't want them but its a balance and we need to be able to let you know things. The press event meant a lot of big news for a week or two which made it get bigger but that was unusual.

Yes Ian now there are only 4 announcements but when this thread started there was around 10 or maybe even more of them pinned. Seemed no one cleared them for a while and quite old announcements was still up. This is why i asked before if there is a way to set up a "time to live" for the announcements which automatically removes them when it's expired. I don't think anyone got a problem with the announcements where there are a few up like now but when the list of them fills over half your screen some people start to find them annoying.

Tarrak wrote:This is why i asked before if there is a way to set up a "time to live" for the announcements which automatically removes them when it's expired.

I'm afraid not. Everything is manually.

VPaulus wrote:

Tarrak wrote:This is why i asked before if there is a way to set up a "time to live" for the announcements which automatically removes them when it's expired.

I'm afraid not. Everything is manually.

Hmm strange because if i try to edit one of the global announcements, even with my limited mod powers, i see this: Have a look at the "Stick the topic for x Days" box. If it's working as i expect it should be exactly what i mean.

I never saw that.... will give it a try!

I know I'm in the minority, but I like the global announcements. Especially if it is an announcement of a new release that is off topic. I don't really watch the other boards so it's a good way to find out about something new.

It would be nice if the Global Announcements, Announcements, and Stickies all had an expand/collapse button (and were collapsed by default) so that folks who want to keep an eye on those sections can quickly expand them to see what's new, but the rest of us don't have to scroll unnecessarily.

tripecac wrote:It would be nice if the Global Announcements, Announcements, and Stickies all had an expand/collapse button (and were collapsed by default) so that folks who want to keep an eye on those sections can quickly expand them to see what's new, but the rest of us don't have to scroll unnecessarily.

Thumbs up for this.