Startup page - Announcements

pwmeek

The usefulness of the opening page (site and individual topics) is degraded if it is necessary to scroll down through two pages of Announcements (many of which have not had new activity for several months) before finding new posts.
If "aging out" older announcements is a job nobody wants, perhaps it could be automated - announcement status could expire after some period that would assure that most regular site users would get a chance to see it; maybe two weeks or so - even a month would help.

Robin_from_Fing

Hi @pwmeek
Thanks for the suggestion. It is a really great idea and I will take this suggestion to our platform provider if it can be achieved. Thanks again.

pwmeek

Basically, if I arrive at the Recent Discussions page, click on my Page Down key, and still see nothing but stale announcements (that I have seen every day for months), I tend to leave the site.

Ciaran

Hi @pwmeek , thanks again for the suggestion and really valid point. To ensure I understand correctly, are you referring to the posts at the top of the page or in the general post section. See a screen shot of the posts at the top of the page below (for clarity on what I am talking about ):

pwmeek

When I come to the fing site [ https://community.fing.com ] each day, I see a list of Recent Discussions*  and this list is where I see (today) sixteen Discussions tagged as Announcement and evidently pinned to the top of the list. These date back to the Announcement of pixelpopper being awarded November 2019 Member of the Month. (I don't wish to detract from pixelpopper's achievement, but this is hardly current news. The most recent comment was three months ago.) There should be some way (and some attention given) to remove these stale Discussions from their privileged position at the top of the Recent Discussions list, and allow the display of actual Recent Discussions.

It might also be worthwhile to make some decisions about what qualifies as an Announcement in the first place. We all have opinions about which things are the most important, which items all site visitors should have their attention called to, and how it should be done. It may or may not be via tagging them as Announcements.
======= EDIT ======= 
* I do see the three Top Discussions, but that is not where the Announcements are stacking up.

Robin_from_Fing

pwmeek said:

When I come to the fing site [ https://community.fing.com ] each day, I see a list of Recent Discussions*  and this list is where I see (today) sixteen Discussions tagged as Announcement and evidently pinned to the top of the list. These date back to the Announcement of pixelpopper being awarded November 2019 Member of the Month. (I don't wish to detract from pixelpopper's achievement, but this is hardly current news. The most recent comment was three months ago.) There should be some way (and some attention given) to remove these stale Discussions from their privileged position at the top of the Recent Discussions list, and allow the display of actual Recent Discussions.

It might also be worthwhile to make some decisions about what qualifies as an Announcement in the first place. We all have opinions about which things are the most important, which items all site visitors should have their attention called to, and how it should be done. It may or may not be via tagging them as Announcements.
======= EDIT ======= 
* I do see the three Top Discussions, but that is not where the Announcements are stacking up.

Thanks @pwmeek
I understand the query correctly now and I will take this to our platform provider to rectify this. Thanks again for the query.

pwmeek

It might not be an issue for the platform provider (unless you really want to automate it). It might be as easy as having a moderator, once a week, look at the topics tagged Announcement and untag any that are not relevant or current.

Robin_from_Fing

pwmeek said:

It might not be an issue for the platform provider (unless you really want to automate it). It might be as easy as having a moderator, once a week, look at the topics tagged Announcement and untag any that are not relevant or current.

Thanks @pwmeek I will have a look at the settings and check if it can be done from our side. Thanks again

pwmeek

For instance: surely the Announcement of a new version is no longer an Announcement when a newer version comes out. (10.2.0 is out; 10.0.0 and 10.1.0 should NOT still be tagged.) I'm still clicking PageDown a couple of times and if I'm still looking at stale announcements, I go to the next site on my list of daily website checks.

pwmeek

Yee-haw! Stale announcements have been cleared. Thank you whoever fixed it.