The reason the current system is such a pain is ;
1) It just makes it harder for those of us who are looking for the important News information posted by staff to a thread, when we first have to wade through endless comments posted in that thread by other people.
2) It should be a simple process to see when important updates to a News thread are posted by means of a member setting a Subscription to that thread. We don't want to have to keep returning to that thread when we are notified of new posts, only to find it isn't news, but instead more junk like "thanks" or "my site's down again".
3) Some people seem to be actually encouraged to write pointless comments in News threads, when elsewhere they wouldn't normally have bothered, presumably because they like to feel a part of that news process.
4) Staff don't have time to keep re-writing the same News information in a thread, for those people who can't be bothered or don't have time themselves to wade through a thread to find the information. Thus it is a self-perpetuating problem; the thread gets so long that people don't go back through it to read it & instead request the info be posted at the end for them, thus making the thread even longer.....and so on!
I see 2 or 3 possible solutions ;
1) Each thread in the News section should have the first post edited by staff to be up-to-date with the relevant news. Further posts can then be made by anyone else to discuss similar problems, ask questions of clarification, give thanks etc. But keeping the first post up-to-date would need to be done
consistently. Otherwise, as in recent cases, we still end up having to wade through the entire thread to find the occasional
extra news update. The downside of this method is that Subscriptions to a thread won't notify us of important edits to the News in the first post, but only to new posts made by commentators, which we don't actually want to be informed of.
2) News threads are made such that only the staff can post, & us members are locked out. That will hopefully keep them short & sweet, & easy to keep updated from via Subscriptions. Members posts will then have to go elsewhere, either in a News discussion thread, specific to each news item, or in more general purpose places like Support, Off-Topic etc. People can then get the specific support they need, & others can choose not to have to keep reading all their requests for the info that they can't be bothered to find for themselves in the News threads.
Item (2) above highlights a problem with the current system ;
If we want mainly just 1 discussion thread to spin off from each News thread, rather than dozens all repeating similar points & questions, then the discussion thread needs to be linked in some way to it's counter-part in the News section. An obvious way would be to give it the same title as the thread in the News section has. But the News threads titles seem quite random. In fact it must be getting quite hard for staff to keep coming up with new names. "Update", Updates", "New Site Update", "Latest Updates" have all been used! Are these very helpful?!?
When a member looks through the News section for news, he usually wants to find either the latest news first, or some news specific to his current problem. The current thread titles don't provide any clues for either need. A News thread may appear to be recent, but when opened & read turns out to be an old thread, with a new post added recently by someone just saying something pointless like "thanks". And the useful News posts get lost in the sea of other News threads.
I propose that the News section gets revolutionised!
Perhaps it can be in either 1 continuous thread, with new posts added at 1 end only (top or bottom) by staff, with each post labelled by date, time & title. Then the news will be in chronological order, in an easy to read format. And only news by staff - no comments by members! Alternatively, each new News topic could be started in its own new thread, but then that thread would have to be clearly identified with date first, then title
specific to the news it contains. That will make it easier to identify, & easier to refer & link to when members start their related discussion thread.
Anyway, that's my two-penneth (two cents') worth. Some food for thought there.
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