I do like the sense of community activity that I get from seeing these popups, even though I’m almost never actually interested in the topics. But this Tsumego book announcement keeps coming up over and over, in multiple windows and devices:
I’ve probably closed it 30 times already, but it always comes back after a reload or two. Looks like there’s also no category to block on the front page:
LIVE UPDATE: as I was typing this I tried the “hide this announcement” button instead of the X, and it seems to finally be gone for good. This is really unintuitive.
This was my fault. I accidentally had the cache of hidden announcements from the bar overwriting the hidden pop-up announcements. That’s probably why clicking Hide this announcement closed the pop-up. PR for a one-line fix submitted.
Sorry for the confusion- this was not intended behavior!
Sadly no. We’ve had a few people attempt overhauls of the system, but so far nobody has pushed through with a solid solution, just a few minor improvements like the persistent home page lines and the announcement center to see old/expired/cleared notifications…
Instead multiple notifications for boards in an event there should be just one notification pointing to a forum post.
There is no need of coding or any sort of update in the system. Just people with the privilege of creating these announcements should follow a policy to not making spam.
One possible solution would be breaking down the announcements into system notifications and user-made ads.
User-made ads for streams and events could be all placed into some discreet scrolling textbox that wont ever cover anything important (like white’s clock for example), while the current banners could be left for their original purpose of informing stuff like server maintenance.
Of course this would require anoek to develop an entirely new system for those ads, but for me it would make sense to have those separate from screen-covering banners.
I’d like to second this. I make most of the announcements for the AGA streams, as well as for my own, but am sometimes unclear on proper formatting, etc.
I think written guidelines would be great, not just for preventing spam, but for helping the creators of the announcements to feel a heck of a lot less awkward.
I don’t know about a forum post since that would add the possibly irritating buffer of redirecting people to what is effectively an external site. But maybe linking to an OGS group? Assuming all the players for the event are in the group, all the games would be visible on the group page, and there could be a group announcement linking to the individual games and giving details on the matches, which would (in many cases) be a welcome addition of information.
The big inconvenience I foresee with my suggestion is that requiring players to be in a group can create additional hassle for organizers, and occasionally be annoying for players who don’t want to join new groups because they’re already in too many, or are perhaps technologically challenged and have trouble figuring out how to join groups. This sounds like something easily sorted out, for sure, but normally these things don’t end up getting worked out until the very last minute.
Nevertheless, games can be linked from the group page even if the games themselves aren’t in the group, the same way they could be linked in the forum. (lmao i know nothing thanks @Vsotvep )
Baduk.club also has some excellent tournament features - both available and in the works - that could make for a useful page to link to.
The entire announcement system is quite ad-hoc and I think a better set of policies should be deployed regarding how they should be used. I think the current practice that announcers are taking is quite ineffective toward promoting their events. Overloading the announcements with many simultaneous links just comes across as spam, which encourages people to block that announcer or turn off announcements altogether. It’s also a shame that these links are not properly archived in some organized fashion.
Earlier in this thread, I and others have advocated for enforcing the simple guideline of aggregating the announcements for each event (i.e., at the tournament level), rather than using a different announcement for each individual board, stream link, commentary channel, etc.
There are many ways to accomplish this, whether in a forums thread, OGS group news post, or even an external website. Each of these would also have the added benefit of archiving and better presenting such a resource. Organizers could even try to promote their events in advance with such pages, rather than relying on live announcements to try to drive traffic.
How about adopting the following policy?
Do not have two or more simultaneous announcements for the same event (i.e., tournament). If you need to publicize multiple links (like several games/relays, commentary streams, review boards) at the same time, you must consolidate them on some other page (like a forums thread, group news post, or external website), and announce that instead.
thanks for pointing that out. This is very good to know