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The little x’s on the left close them
I know it can be a little frustrating, especially on mobile, but this is actually a very good problem to have.
The use cases for how people use OGS are outgrowing our current environment. Namely, for the first time we have online tournaments being played here and offline tournaments being relayed here. This is exceptional for our server 
we will endeavour to implement a more streamlined approach to alert users to this excellent news in the future, but currently this is the best we have available.
Thank you for your patience as we grow into exciting new frontiers!
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I’m all for ogs love and that but (as I’ve previously posted) I find the overlapping duplication a bit odd. Couldn’t the right side list be made regular notifications? At least then there wouldn’t be an overlap unless you click to view the notifications but then that is normal function anyway.
I’ll have to look again at what was discussed on this previously but I’m still not sure I understand the need for this particular arrangement.
Note that it’s fine to say you can dismiss then with the X but with this list I ended clicking though to the the boards about the times due to fat finger/small screen. At least with the notification list you get a "dismiss all"option.
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The problem with that option is that many many people never look at either the home page or the games page, and so rather than a big noticeable announcement, all they would get is a little blue number in the corner… If that was mixed in with game notifications and whatnot, it could easily get overlooked.
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I didn’t understood exactly what would be this alternative form of announcement, but I would definitely prefer a more discreet one, accessible to any one interested (and don’t understand me wrongly, I do like the games relays and other events here) than the current form of announcement that spams in front of the board games and disturbs the very first user case of this site: play games!
And yes, of course I know that “the little x’s on the left close them”. I do this seven times every time I open the site! And as pointed by @teapoweredrobot, in the cell phone this very often leads to cliking in the board instead of the x.
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Ok, so is there a page for these games? I think there could be one announcement that links to that (or directly to the game ifof there’s only one). That would also have the benefit for people like me who will never follow a live game to be able to take a look at them more easily after the event.
Maybe there’s already a way to find these games that I don’t know about.
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Nope. Nothing like this currently exists. As I said, I admit what we’re doing now is not ideal, but it’s the best our platform can offer. We will look into improving this user experience and what will be best for everyone, and your suggestion of a historical page where you can see past announcements is a nice idea.
I guess this thread is as good a place as any to spit-ball community desires from a notification system. What kind of notifications you expect to receive and how you think would be the best way to receive them.
Edit: to be clear on our current limitations, here is all of our currently available site notificatons:
- blue number in the top right, opens the slide-out list, currently used for game and friend notifications
- pop-up notification in the top right corner, once it is closed it is gone for good on that device
2a. block notification at the top of games and home pages; paired with pop-up notifications but does not clear, implemented as a way to access announcements that you previously cleared but may now wish to look at
This is all we currently have to work with. Obviously, our server has (excitedly) very suddenly outgrown this system without anyone really expecting it. This all really started with the transatlantic tournament and the controversy on KGS. After that, all of this has really kicked off worldwide very suddenly which we are very thankful for.
We recognise the current system no longer meets our needs, and as such welcome suggestions on how it can grow to meet our new services. 
3 Likes
I don’t mean to be rude or ungrateful but these notifications are of no use or interest to me. The ability to switch off these notifications would be great.
And a history page would also be marvelous. I’d check that out from time to time and run through random games and chats/reviews from there I think. Better than trying to find a commented game currently.
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A more sophisticated notification system might include “types” of notification that can be turned off, for sure.
On the other hand, it’s not that hard to go “click click click” and they’re gone, for now…
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What we’ve had to do is force our “Site Announcements” system to handle events it wasn’t designed for. Typically site announcements shouldn’t be something you can opt-out of.
When we add in additional functionality for these new types of announcements, it is possible the new feature will come with a toggle for those who aren’t interested in following tournaments.
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The main complaint we seem to be receiving is that this is not so easy on mobile displays… maybe with the new system we could look into implementing a swipe to dismiss notification for mobile?
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One thing I want to make REALLY clear to everyone concerned about this. What we need to change is not minor, it will be a major overhaul, and as such we are talking a turnaround of either WEEKS or MONTHS.
So, we hear and honour your feedback, and are keen to hear your ideas and requests, and humbly ask for your patience as we decide what will be best for the whole server.
FYI, here is a recent GitHub Issue on the same topic. Just linking here for reference going forward.
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I imagine this could be a significant problem if you’re in the middle of the game on phone. Of course, we would want major changes here but maybe it’s easier to think of something minor to temporarily push the problem out of sight.
1 Like
There is not an official history page, however most of the relays are made in this account https://online-go.com/player/440644/ (which is run by @S_Alexander, I think) so you can see a list of them in the bottom of this page. Btw, I am a big fan of this!
In my opinion, the notifications that already appear above “Current Games” in the home page already works well. And if really there are many people who wants to see these news and don’t open the home page, then at most one pop-up window wouldn’t be that bad. At least if they didn’t appear in front of the board would already be an improvement (although I see that layout changes can be very troublesome across devices).
Within our current platform perhaps we could:
- Get a good forums post up about the event first, including links to boards etc.
- Then just have one notification on the main OGS site to that forums post. Having multiple notifications in relation to the same event is almost “Crying wolf” and may teach people to ignore notifications generally.
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If these events are important enough to warrant a site-wide notification, then they definitely deserve a forum post to consolidate and provide more information.
Having an event spread over multiple notifications for each individual board is just too much to deal with.
I think the site-wide notifications should be limited to just one per event and with the link pointing to somewhere to find more information, as @Kosh suggested.
Further, for high profile live events, maybe they should be advertised in advance in various ways (forum post and other social media, like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit)
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Not only is this a bit difficult to do in mobile, it just turns into a chore on every visit of the website.
Yes, an overhaul for the long-term improvement would be nice, but that is and should not be the only way to address the problem.
There are changes that could be made immediately as to how the feature is used, without requiring any code changes. @Kosh’s latest post makes a great suggestion about consolidating notifications for a single event and relying on a forum post to convey more information, which might also be appreciated by people that actually care about the event in question.
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I’d even like to turn those off. I just don’t care about tournaments, yet they appear twice on my home page. There’s no option to turn them off. (There is an option about a “tournament indicator”, but apparently that is for something else?)
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That’s for the yellow timer that indicates auto-site-wide live tournaments.
1 Like