The Announcements Section: Open for Discussion?

Do you allow your members to post within the announcements section of your community? If so, is there any particular reason as to why you do this rather than creating an additional "announcements discussion" section?

 

I let them post in there; that's usually where the birthday greetings go. I'm not worried about my announcements getting overlooked as it's a pretty popular section.

 

Yep I do.

 

Great topic!

On Bird is the Word, I have two separate forums. The forum for the actual announcement and the forum with the thread regarding the announcement where users can discuss 'em.

I do this so the Announcements Forum isn't cluttered and has unnecessary posts. With the Announcements Discussion Forum, users can post questions, comments and concerns regarding the announcement.

At Setsou, I don't have this.

 

Good approach.

I really do not understand how a forum can be titled 'announcements' and allow discussion, does not make sense.

I take the simple approach and have a "Forum Office" with 'site specific' in the description. Announcements are stickied for a while and there are follow up posts, later they are unstuck and drift down. Other people can start threads to ask questions and make suggestions in there as well. Announcements that have nothing to do with the site go into a 'news' forum.

 

I don't see the need, I actually think this creates more clutter etc. I guess I am different.

I actually like the users to discuss the announcements and such, so I can receive feedback from such idea, users could express their likes and dislikes. I don't think we need a separate forum/close thread. Members have a voice, no?

 

I agree - I used to prefer creating an individual discussion forum (simply due to the fact that it appeared to be more organized), but I don't believe in doing so anymore.

 

It may appear to be organized, but it really isn't in my opinion. xD I think it actually can create a pretty big mess, specially for new members who do not know the routine.

 

Valid point.

 

Yep, this is true.

 

I don't let them post threads, but I let them reply. It works out pretty well, and people are already complaining about the convoluted subforums, so the discussion subforum method is probably not a great idea.

 

I never let anyone else post threads in the announcement section (I wouldn't overlap this with something like feedback), but they can always reply to the threads. I really never liked the idea of having an entire second section for that. The way vBulletin.com did it was flawed in my opinion, and now it's even worse. You'd think they would know a thing or two about that.

 

I don't let people post threads either, I do let them reply. We, in Pisoga , have a section for Announcements and User Announcements. User Announcements are announcements made BY the users. [Leaving threads, gettin' married, etc.]

 

I don't like the idea of separating the announcements and the discussion of the announcements. At least not on a regular forum community.

On support sites like vBulletin.com I can see why it's useful - because when they need to update the announcement (with an addendum) they can just reply to the announcement thread. If there were hundreds of discussion posts in-between, nobody would see the updates. It would require a whole new announcement thread to be made, which is silly in my opinion.