Turning this post into a wiki for OGS Banner Announcement guidelines, when used for streams. These are not “official” guidelines and have not been approved by any mods or admins, and only reflect the views of those who have contributed to the discussion. Original post is hidden at the bottom of this post.
Only Go streams that use OGS should get an OGS banner announcement (with some exceptions). (Disagree? The poll is still open - vote here Announcement Center Guidelines - #10 by Gooplet)
Exceptions include (feel free to debate this in comments):
a. Official association/federation streams, such as AGA and EGF.
b. Streams by professionals (Redmond, Yoonyoung Kim, etc)
Stream banners should include some or all of the following elements, when appropriate:
a. That it is a live stream (e.g. “is live” or “streaming” or “Twitch/YouTube Live”)
b. Who is on the stream (e.g. “Garlock and Redmond”)
c. What is being streamed (e.g. “AlphaGo vs AlphaGo”)
d. The rank of streamer/guest (e.g. “Redmond (9p)”)
e. Where the stream is, if not implied by item “b” (e.g. “AGA Twitch”)
Some examples of well-written banners:
“AlphaGo vs AlphaGo with Garlock and Remond (9p) - AGA Twitch”
“SHOWDOWN!! BenKyo Students (SDK) Live-Commented Rivalry Match! (AYD)”
Streams should be reasonably family-friendly when advertised with an OGS banner. If not explicitly family friendly, Twitch streamers should mark their streams with the “mature” filter.
(open for debate; poll is open here: Announcement Center Guidelines - #23 by Gooplet)
No more than one banner should be made for each stream, with exceptions (multi-round tournament, multi-game pro commentary, etc).
Non-stream announcements for tournaments:
no idea yet lol
Original post
When I was initially given access to the OGS Announcement Center for AGA live streams, I was told that it’s specifically for live streams that use OGS, with big things like AGA/EGF/Redmond streams being occasional exceptions.
Is this the case anymore? I’ve tended not to use it for my own streams except on the occasions when I’m actually using OGS, but I realize that recently, other streamers have been using it regardless of the platform they stream.
I’m not trying to say this use of it is objectionable at all, but with the sheer volume of announcements being made recently, it might be nice if there were clearly outlined standard announcement formats. It would certainly make me more comfortable - as somebody who regularly makes announcements - to have clear guidelines.
Another thing I was explicitly told to do when making OGS announcements was to clearly indicate what was being streamed, and where. For example, to specify “Midwest Open R1” (what) and “AGA Twitch” (where). I often include a “who” as well.
I personally think it would be nice for streamers to give more info in their announcements, especially since they’re generally linking to an external website. On the other hand, longer announcements might add to undesirable clutter.
Setting standards for Announcement Center use wouldn’t require any major changes, I would think; just a text blurb at the top of the page with clearly-written guidelines.
Ive suggested some written guidelines into the announcement center, i also think it would be good to have proper instructions there.
Also segregation between ‘stream ads’ and ‘system notifications’ would/could streamline the current “banner clutter”. The current banner system is almost as old as twitch is, so it’s not really made for its current main use.
The thing i would personally like to see is some sideway-scrolling text box on top bar for stream ads on everywhere but the /game/ pages itself. (i think it would be too distracting and intrusive to see scrolling text when playing go)
I’m totally in favour of good guidelines being laid down.
I’m happy to find/do the way(s) to publish them when we have them.
We probably won’t be able to get too far in making them concrete without moderator signoff (obviously) and possible anoek’s own direction on the matter.
FWIW, personally I think that limiting banners to events on OGS makes sense, with the possible exception of “totally noteworthy world Go events”.
While I could “tolerate” it, I would not be a fan of OGS banners becoming a flow of general information about what’s happening in the stream-o-sphere of Go, outside OGS.
If we were to go in that direction with the policy, I’d like to see another category that could be turned off for non-OGS announcements.
I’d be totally on-board with revamping the announcement system, but that sounds like a whole thing. In addition to somebody having to implement the changes, imagine people here managing to come to an agreement on what the changes should actually look like… Hence why I think some written, clear guidelines are the way to go for now. (edited because I used “actually” three times in one sentence)
I generally agree with this - although for the time being, before any real changes are made for the announcements center, it would be nice if somebody would make a decision as to whether or not non-OGS streams fit into the context of Announcement Center guidelines.
Your linked post is another reason I’ve been more hesitant to make banners for my own streams. If somebody blocks my OGS announcements, they’re also blocking several banner announcements for Redmond streams and AGA event streams. Also, even if there is no “filtering by rank” system, just having it in the text of the banner would be really nice.
(edit: actually, upon reading that thread, I really disagree with having a “filter by rank” system at all. Plenty of times, kyus are making announcements for pros. Besides, self-reporting rank should really never be an issue; I don’t think anybody has ever intentionally lied in making an announcement, and if somebody does, it’s simple enough for a mod to remove announcement privileges for them)
If the outcome is a decision where anyone streaming on OGS can be announced, we could probably just automate it.
OGS makes a call to Twitch API asking for people playing Go, if title includes #OGS or #online-go.com then make announcement banner “GoGoGooplet is Live”
Yeah, but the idea is that we have guidelines that people can follow to make the announcements more bearable, without having to actually change anything in terms of code, and for the announcements to provide more data than just what channel is live (e.g. who is live on that channel, what rank that person/people is/are, what they are streaming [games/simuls/teaching/reviews/spectating/commentary etc])
I think an automated system could work nicely, but I don’t really see it as a practical immediate solution. Even if the system were eventually partially automated, I still feel that “proper use” guidelines should exist
I vote “no” for automatic announcements, i feel that its better to grant bannering rights only for those streamers who can keep their content family-friendly. There are minors clicking those banners too.
Perhaps the banner can just denote “family friendly” or “kid friendly”.
OGS is for everyone, not just kids.
Additionally, if OGS made the claim that it would only grant banners for streamers who don’t curse, then it would have to enforce that claim. Mods would need to watch streamers to make sure they don’t curse, and/or field reports from community members snitching on streamers who curse (but only after posting a banner). Seems less than idea.
I think an obvious exception would be Pros who are streaming, as well as streams that feature pros as a guest or commentator, etc. Another exception I’d expect would be EGF and AGA streams, as well as other association streams, and possibly non-association streams that are hosting events. (For a lot of these, they’re using OGS anyway).
Beyond that, I’m not really sure how to handle it. There could be a “strength” or “popularity” clause, but that could come off as an affront to newer up-and-coming streamers. It’s easy enough to say streamers like Clossius, Dwyrin, and BenKyo who produce popular educational content should be exceptions, but I’m not sure where the line would be. Hours streamed? A vote?
Worth noting is that if eventually we’re pushing for a revamped announcement system anyway, it might not really matter that we come up with the perfect temporary solution, so long as we come up with a temporary solution at all.
That’s one way of looking at it, and asking that the banner specifically denote “family friendly” when relevant is definitely one option.
Another option might be to ask that streamers use the “mature” filter if they’re streaming on Twitch (which prevents you from watching the stream until you click a button that says you understand this stream is for mature audiences) when appropriate.
A third option could just be to ask that streamers, when advertising with OGS banners, be family-friendly.
I’m not sure if anything would need to be “enforced”, really. I find it unlikely there would be so many people using the banners that we couldn’t just have a sort of honor system. Getting to advertise on OGS is an awesome privilege, and if the general consensus is that banner streams should be family friendly, I think that’s a completely reasonable stipulation. I started being family-friendly on my streams when I began putting up OGS banners for my own streams, and I imagine others can do the same. Clossius has always been family-friendly for this reason, to my knowledge. You can still create interesting content targeting a mature adult audience without being offensive or cursing; Redmond does it, the AGA twitch does it, etc.
I’ll defer to the actual streamers here who think a lot more about this stuff than myself. My main input is to simplify where possible and put the onus of responsibility on the viewer, not the streamer (so as to reduce conflicts and complaints)
i feel that the notifications are useful however i feel there should be a button that you can push or something like that that indicates there is such an announcement. though you can close the announcement they kind of get in the way sometimes.
I don’t think I completely understand what you’re suggesting. You can currently disable announcements in your Settings, as it is. Revamping the announcement system would be great, but I’m just proposing some written guidelines to help make better use of the existing system while we wait for the renovations to happen
I’m referring to the banner announcements that appear in the top-right of OGS and sometimes obscure in-game Player data, that notify people about events, livestreams, server maintenance-related forum posts, etc.
I think mine was supposed to be in response to @Kdar ’s comment, as in asking if they would like it to be similar to the other types of notifications at the moment. Some button that shows a number and you click to show the notifications etc
SHOWDOWN!! BenKyo Students (SDK) Live-Commented Rivalry Match! (AYD)”
Hence why I think some written, clear guidelines are the way to go for now. (edited because I used “actually” three times in one sentence)