Would it be possible to add that text or a link to that text on the Announcement Center page? Or maybe link to a new forum thread with official guidelines or something?
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We already have the history (in the settings)
So instead of cumulative announcements, we could have a “last news” frame in the home page, and a permanent link “other news” to this history.
We should add a requirement for avoiding simultaneous announcements:
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.
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I am not sure about that.
As it is, i like to be warned directly when a new game starts in some tournaments.
It would be much better to have a well working announcement system as to lose the instant notifications it provides.
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Thats a good suggestion. I tried writing up some instuctions for announcement center, maybe something like that should be added to it? Instructions on announcement center · Issue #1667 · online-go/online-go.com · GitHub
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Thanks, good suggestions, @yebellz!
However,
… recently there were two simultaneous EGF Championship games (for 1st/2nd place, and for 3rd/4th place), and I’d have found it quite bothersome to have to visit a forum post first in order to find both games.
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Well, I think there’s always a tradeoff.
On the one hand, some (like as @Groin mentioned above) would prefer have all of the individual games of an event as separate notifications, in order to maximize convenience for an event that one is following enthusiastically.
On the other hand, some others might be annoyed by all of the extra notifications for an event that they are not interested in.
The convenience for one group comes at the inconvenience of the other. Ideally, the notification system could be redesigned to better promote such games, without the bothersome volume of notifications that interrupt live games by covering the clocks and even the board interface. However, while living with the current behavior of the website code, I think that how we use the tool could be improved to better balance things while minimizing the disturbance to others. Currently, I’m simply blocking all event and stream notifications, but that’s also not really an ideal solution for many, who do want to stay in the loop, but just not have their live games be disrupted.
I think it’s much less bothersome to make some people click twice (first from the general notification to the forums post, and then to the game), rather than to have others have to click multiple times to clear the notifications blocking the board in their live game.
Also, imagine that you missed the events live, and then you wanted to find those two games. With the current status quo, a lot of announced events end up buried within the announcement history (yes, it is there, but it’s a horribly inconvenient and disorganized way to archive things).
I feel that organizers are doing their followers and themselves a terrible disservice by letting their work in organizing, relaying, commenting, and reviewing be simply buried without proper archival.
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This is a specific aspect that could be solved in itself, keeping announcements in other tabs.
I m ok with not to have the games disturbed at all or to have the option in setting (announcements disabled when playing by default)
There are other ways by improving the announcement system. We are not entitled to stay in this dichotomy.
You can have on the home page
- 3 last announcements that noone will have to dissmiss (may come with an option to hide it for people who are never interested in that )
- A link to the announcement log (the one somewhere in the settings)
OGS website announcement vs others
The announcement system we have can be kept for administrators only, putting announcement everywhere at their will (system reboot, major topics in forum…). Differentiate them would be appropriate as they don’t fill the same needs.
To me it’s more a problem about the organization of the forum itself. The notification log contains the relevant information put logically in chronological order. It miss a search, yes, but with a good organization of the forum, the log should be the last resort to access a topic in the forum.
Let me clarify that I don’t think that we are confined to this dichotomy as well. There are so many better ways to better solve this problem by completely overhauling the notifications and announcements system altogether. Here are just some examples of ideas (see earlier discussions in this thread):
- Game and event promotion could be better integrated into the observe games page.
- Pop-ups could be reserved for only the most urgent server system announcements.
- Notifications could be redesigned to never cover the clocks and board of an active game.
- Maybe a dedicated page to aggregate information about and to promote streamers.
Many ideas, including things similar to what you have suggested, have been discussed quite extensively above. I would love to see major changes to these tools. This would require serious design considerations and highly non-trivial implementation efforts, and of course, I hope for more detailed discussion about how exactly this revamp would work. Unfortunately, we’ve still been just discussing this since 2019, and I doubt that anyone can provide a realistic time frame on when we might see such renovations (I would love to be proved wrong on that, by the way).
However, my more recent posts about policy is not about how we might change the tools, but rather how we might use the current tools better (until things can be revamped).
Yes, ideally, we should eventually change the announcement system altogether to alleviate a lot of these problems. However, in the meantime, while the code has not yet changed, I think that we should adopt new policy that uses the tools more effectively.
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If you put some of the currently dispersed features onto the homepage (i.e Automatch buttons, top game(s), site tournaments… the list goes on) then that would solve the problem, as people would actually visit it and see the banners. Then you could do without the pop ups.
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In the option of a very minimalist change, then I would rather just stop displaying announcement in a running game, as losing announcements.
Then organize the forum better which doesn’t require software changes, just some brainstorming.
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Maybe if one had an events page, which could be similar to the games page, where it would show highlighted games or demos/reviews.
One might just need a single event notification, and then maybe such a page could be subdivided by event anyway.
Or equivalently and extra filter for the games page, but the display of the filters might need to be reworked or made more intuitive for it.
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I’ve been saying OGS is missing a News section.
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Wow, that would be awesome!
<edit>
I was also thinking whether it would be possible to distinguish between the banners on the “Home” page and the little notifications that can appear everywhere on the game server.
Like, big championships like the recent EGF one could have just one notification, while the single games could have a banner for every currently running game …
</edit>
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That would be nice. For me, banners on Home are a lot less bothersome than the pop-ups in the top right.
For the games to watch (from EGF, national tournaments, events… ) something maybe not too difficult would be to have them always on the first page of the list of games.
Extended would be to have the demos too, when the games are not played here but reported by a scribe.
Pros: everything easely accessible at the same place. Aggregation of threads less painful for the user.
Cons: If Aggregation then we lose alerts for games starting.
A game finished disappear instantly so still need some archives for memory. (Forum thread)
No more text like real names of players and levels, etc… which was in the annoucement
So it’s something with QOL for sure, but not really the solution either.
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