# Please read: cutting down on Story Hour "announcements"



## Piratecat (Jul 10, 2002)

Hi, all! Until recently, it hasn't been a problem placing story hour plugs in the General Discussion forum. Lately, though, the wonderful growth in story hours means that the number of "I've updated" announcements are starting to get out of hand. As I write this, there are four on the first page alone.

So what to do?

One solution is to have a single "I've updated" thread that people would post to. I doubt this would work very effectively, though; the story hour plugs work due to their titles, not their content.

I think a better solution is to ask you to please self-manage. That means waiting to post if the front page has more than one or two announcements on it, and not placing an "I've updated" post every single time you do an update. If we can keep the volume on these down, we'll have no need to go to a single announcement thread.

In addition, consider plugging your story hour by posting in someone else's thread promoting theirs. This has the added benefit of boosting their announcement and not further cluttering the boards.

Thoughts, comments, ideas, complaints?


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## Femerus the Gnecro (Jul 10, 2002)

::grins sheepishly::

What about announcements of totally new threads?

-femerus


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## Kaemris Tencoin (Jul 10, 2002)

Try putting a link in your sig!


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## Dinkeldog (Jul 10, 2002)

Links in sigs work except for those of us that don't see people's signatures.

Still I'm here more often and get to see everything that's been updated, so it's not an issue.

More importantly, not putting update announcements on the general discussion page means that we can have more threads on how terrible all the books that haven't come out yet are going to be.


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## Wulf Ratbane (Jul 10, 2002)

(It IS going to suck though, you know.)


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## Piratecat (Jul 11, 2002)

Silence, infidel!


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## Wulf Ratbane (Jul 11, 2002)

Sheesh, somebody's a little wroth today, huh?


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## dpdx (Jul 11, 2002)

*Trying not to be part of the problem, as they say.*

Perhaps this would kill two birds with one stone:

Bird 1: Posts to say "I've updated" are cluttering up the General Announcement Board, as stated in P.Cat's announcement.

Bird 2: Emails to say "someone [besides the author] has posted to [one of my subscribed threads]" are cluttering up my Inbox.

Whether this is easily codeable, universally adorable, or should be made optional, I don't know. But how about (and I think you might know where I'm heading with this):

Making subscribed threads only send an email (or otherwise notify) if the Thread Starter has posted to them?

This isn't to say that I don't dig the hell out of dinkledog's, KidCthulhu's, Sialia's, etc., auxiliary posts, but I don't need to know that they've posted to know that I'm going to check my threads most every day anyway. 

Making received subscription emails mean "I've updated" would both mean something to me when they appear in my Inbox and possibly obviate the need for our Excellent Story Hour authors to broadcast to other threads. It would also mean I would subscribe to a great many more Story Hour threads.

Anyway, that's what I came up with. If it solves the problem, I'm happy to help.


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## Piratecat (Jul 11, 2002)

dpdx, I don't think that can be changed. I will, however, suggest that you creat a hotmail account (or a Yahoo account) and point your subscribed threads towards that. That way, you just go in and periodically clean out the emails, and you can easily subscribe to as many as you like.

The one disadvantage in this is that you need to check it for normal emails as well.


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## Trevalon Moonleirion (Jul 12, 2002)

I think a bit of restrait would be a good thing for us all.  I don't even know how many story hour threads there were last night when i posted mine...quite honestly I was too tired to care, LOL.

But I'll certainly follow the "no more than 2 per front page" posting restriction from this day forth.

P-Kitty, what are you talking about... i always said i'd follow the *two* per front page limit....uh... yeah...


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## Piratecat (Jul 12, 2002)

That's "no more than 2" on the front page, not 4, please.  Thanks!


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## Pyske (Jul 12, 2002)

I'm sure the folks around here will have enough discipline to excercise the requested restraint... but just in case, I'm posting my idea anyway.

If you do make it only a single thread, you might consider naming it "$tory Hour Updates" and requesting that only story hour authors post to it.  This has 3 advantages:

+ People won't have to read the thread when no actual update has happened.

+ The username on the browse column will tell you at a glance who has updated latest.

+ You can always find the thread on the first page by sorting on thread name.

 . . . . . . . -- Eric


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## Enkhidu (Jul 12, 2002)

As an alternative, would it be a good idea to keep a permananent sticky thread in the Story hour forum that people could post in to advertise their atest installments?

It wouldn't get quite as much traffic as one on the main boards, but it would most likely hit it's target audience...


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## Lars Frehse (Jul 13, 2002)

Ooops. Now I wish I had seen this thread BEFORE I pimped my story hour in the general forum...

Well, I will be good now.


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## arwink (Jul 23, 2002)

Kaemris Tencoin said:
			
		

> *Try putting a link in your sig!  *




Um? How do you do that?  I wanted to do that, but being both an internet weenie and storyhour neophyte...


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## Darkness (Jul 26, 2002)

Piratecat said:
			
		

> *dpdx, I don't think that can be changed. I will, however, suggest that you creat a hotmail account (or a Yahoo account) and point your subscribed threads towards that. That way, you just go in and periodically clean out the emails, and you can easily subscribe to as many as you like.
> 
> The one disadvantage in this is that you need to check it for normal emails as well.   *



Another idea: People could ask Story Hour authors to put them on a mailing list for update notifications.


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