Possible announcements

[Duke John]

I have discovered (ok, it was already known to Tosa, but not by me) that you can add announcements on the Calender.

The rules
* Only important announcements. Ongoing development is not important, the news that your mod can be downloaded is.
* Each announcement will remain for 1 week maximum. This is to avoid long lists of announcements.

An example is the N:TW 3x Update, I have made an announcement for this and you can view it at the bottom of the board index. I don't think it will messy with loads of announcements as we don't have that many releases in a single week.

For the coming time I will put these announcements also above the topic list and these may remain a bit longer as they do not bother the entire forum, just the Dungeon. I appreciate feedback on this feature. I think it will improve the community as it will keep members more informed of what is happening and regular members won't need to browse through 75-page long threads to look for a download location.

Just see it as an opportunity to get your mod in the spotlight to the entire Org-community for a short while.

It's still a bit under construction but I really think that it will be a great addition to our forum.

Cheers, Duke John

[Duke John]

Go to the Engineers Guild. I have written there some little news items. The entries there are just examples so that you can understand what I mean with Forum announcements...hmmm, might be a good name...

So we have:
Forum announcements
Put above the topic list. Small entry that keeps the modding community (and interested patrons) informed of news. Interesting developments, new mods, releases will get a place there. If the news section is too large I can also make it a link to the news (you can see that option here at the top of the Alchemist Lab).

Calendar announcements
Big news is announced on the calender, you will see a blue link at the bottom of the board index and the related topic also has the blue title added to it.

Feedback please http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-anxious.gif

[Mouzafphaerre]

-
Thanks. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/ht_bow.gif
_

[Eastside Character]

Nice little thing. I suppose it will be most useful for those reluctant to check each and every mod thread to get to know what's accomplished/started/released. I believe the majority (if not all) of members will gladly embrace this new feature.

Regards,
EC

[Kaatar]

A week seems a little short to me. How many new mods are released in a week? I think the annoucement should be there until it's pushed off the list. The list could have a maximum of 5 or 10 or something.

[Duke John]

Quote[/b] ]I suppose it will be most useful for those reluctant to check each and every mod thread to get to know what's accomplished/started/released.
That is indeed the general idea, to make the Dungeon more accessible for non-modders. It is also interesting for modders since it might cause interest in their mods.


Quote[/b] ]A week seems a little short to me. How many new mods are released in a week? I think the annoucement should be there until it's pushed off the list. The list could have a maximum of 5 or 10 or something.
Forum Announcements will indeed stay on the list unless pushed off, we only need to decide how much items we want before it gets irritating.
Calender Announcements will have 2 or 3 items at the max as these influence the entire board. We don't want that many items that it gets unclear/irritating; too much and people won't look at it anymore. Since these are only for MOD releases I don't think it will a problem.

We need your help
There are 2 possibilities to get all these little newsfacts there:

1. The moderators look in each and every thread for news items or,
2. the modders post their news in a seperate thread where the moderators fish out the approved news items.

I think the second option is the better one as the lessens our workload considerably and it will probably also provide more accurate items as the moderators do not know everything. I am thinking of the next categories of News items:
Mod release: most important item and speaks for itself
Mod news: mostly meant for the bigger mods when the development has made a great leap or when the mod aks for beta-testers, etc.
New mod: when a new mod is under development it will get an entry so that it gets some extra attention to generate ideas/help from other members.
General news: when there is something remarkable in the Dungeon.

Each item will get a link to the appropiate thread. Items that are pushed off will be put in a News Archive thread.

Cheers, Duke John

[Duke John]

Ok, I have been tweaking this new feature a bit. Look here (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=5;t=17772;st=0;&#entry285805) for more details.

What do you think of it? I guess that 5 items are enough to keep everybody informed. More items and I guess that you can't overview the list quickly, which might cause patrons to ignore the list. And more items will also mean too much space taken which means that it might get to be irritating.

Cheers, Duke John