The Announcement Board, why I think it should replaced with a Widget
The entire point of the announcement Board is, from what I understand, a strategy to separate the relatively frequent red content from community content so as to not crowd out the community. I feel that is a good move and appreciate the logic behind it. However it also does the Boards a disservice by disjointing all the discussion had there in the comments from their relevant Boards of E-Sports, Gameplay & Balance, and others.
Take, for example, patch notes. I don't see many posts on the recent Patches in G&B, but I do see plenty of discussion happening on the Red post itself. On top of that, many people garnering for Red attention default to replying to Red posts, so they naturally flock to these posts in droves. Many times not even looking to see who they're talking to, as I've had personal experience with when people reply to my pinned post in G&B thinking I'm a Red.
So, I feel there's a middle ground that can be achieved. We need to do three things:
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Keep red posts separate to prevent crowding
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Move the regular Red updates and stories into their relevant Board
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Encourage Post creation on the topic and not comment discussion, but at the same time not fill the respective Boards with five-word posts that provide little to nothing.
As such we can do this:
Add a Announcement Widget to each Board and limit comments to these posts to ~150 characters
What I mean by a 'widget' is something similar to our profile widget t the top right. A separate floating asset that constantly cycles through relevant red announcements in the respective Board. All announcements if on the Main Page. This allows higher than normal visibility for the content but keeps them close to their relevant content.
The character limit is there so short comments can still be made, but anything beyond X amount of characters (I think 150 is a good ball-park) would probably be served better as a post in the respective Board.
