Announcement or stickied
 

Announcement or stickied, that is the question.

Please look at Forum Review and the readcount of the announcement. I know the announcement is only a few days old, but 2 views? First view would have been when it was created, the second was me just looking at it now (it still had only 1 view 5 minutes ago).

Are (forum) announcements effective?

Maybe this is better then both announcement and stickied :)

In my board i never use announcements because of the same problem. I prefer to use stickies.

I use a mixture. If it needs to be in more than one forum I use an announcement, otherwise I use stickies. The only problem with announcements in 3.5 is that they do not show on the new posts page so unless you go to the actual forums you don't know about them.

And even on the forum page, they don't show bold or give an indecation that you haven' read them yet.

I guess the word "guidelines" translates to many people that they're basically unenforced rules, and so they don't bother reading them.. :p

But running a thread like this in the Lounge already increased the pageview to 5 in a few hours. ;)

PS In my book 'guidelines' are rules that are enforced but you want to bring them nice. ;)

... too busy to go to each forum but have time to check out new posts of interests, and this one interested me :)

Neither.
Big black 150 pt text across the screen as a psuedo-tcat: READ THIS.

On a site I used to be on we had like advertise your website, and we used to get tons of junk so I made an announcement. It was size 30 bolded font in green (on default vb scheme). Very few people read it and still the junk came in. So I stuck a line break in and it was now 2 lines saying something like "all submissions are moderated, read here before submitting your site". Still the junk kept flying in and the read hit hardly moved.

So I made a sticky to supplement it. Again, only a couple of people read it and the junk still came in. 70 points of bolded green font + a sticky and people just weren't reading them. I honestly don't know why - eagerness to hit new thread I guess.

So... neither.


On another site I used to be on they actually put the announcements on newthread between the message textarea input and the submit button so you more or less /had/ to read them (or at least scroll past them) before making a new thread. Some people still didn't but it was quite effective for most.

Good one. Does any mod like this exist to insert message posting guidelines above or below message textarea as per forum?

I wouldn't know, I never asked how it was done.

I would imagine it's just a case of querying out the announcements for forum f on newthread.php, stuffing it into a variable and sticking that variable into the template for output. Probably easy.

On DB I never even notice the announcements. They blend in too much with the background.
Why not make them bold so to appear "always unread"? That would make them stick out more.

Yes i agree, and because they are in a seperate area above all threads, people don't even see them because they immediate look down.

I think that if they where showing like unread (or maybe even a real read-marking) and where just between the threads on top of the stickies, people would better see them.

I highlight my announcements and stickies as to point them out the new users. However, most dedicated users see it right away because it sticks out of the crowd. For new users, it is best just to sticky a thread ( just as long as there isn't a ton of threads already stickied )

~Curt

it has nothing to do with the type (announcement/sticky) ... it's all about how it's displayed

Hmm - Announcements = More official but less noticed
Stickies = Less official more notice :p

Depends on what type of announcement it is really...

Before I we got our own forum I was a Forum manager of a very busy forum for a year. If I wanted to get an announcement noticed or a sticky or ordinary post noticed I would use a title to grab their attention ie:



Have you noticed its human nature to look at something if we are told not to. We just cant help it. LOL.

Its best to use this method on announcements or stickies that are to be there for a while so that the members dont get used to it, even then I bet even members who know the trick still cant help themselves at times.;)

regards
Karen

PS Forgot to mention if you do use this to also start the post with some light humour, a one liner etc before you start your post/announcement in ernest.

A suggestion/idea: When users hit newthread in a 'special' Forum, such as a Review forum, the announcement is loaded instead.

To post a Thread, they must click a link/button in the Announcement.

Something along the lines of

I too use stickies........the announcement's just don't work very well in my opinion......