Journal of Other Forum Analysis

[nobody of note]

Since the various voting threads aren't getting the traction they wanted, or something, there've been a few site-wide notifications going out to remind people to vote. And then remind them again.

Another one went out this morning, so a complaint in constructive:

It is one thing to one-time inject a notification for GotY threads, but can we refrain from doing it multiple times?

Various posters run to the mods' defense:

It's been like three notifs across the space of several weeks. Is it really that big a deal?

If you don't particularly feel strongly (or have already voted!), yeah it's annoying. It's not a world ending deal sure, but neither is getting people to vote in the poll in the first place, so it's not really a case where I would agree it's "Doing good" to begin with.

Notification whining for 3 in a few weeks. It's like asking to have an ignore feature for mods and admin. I'm sorry but if that's a deal breaker for you shouldn't you be on a forum?

No, the ask is to use more jurisdiction and consideration when using the feature, if there is no way to disable it. Think of it like a fire alarm, if it goes off every day for minor issues never detecting a real one, people are going to get annoyed. They'll start to actively ignore it and tune it out, then when you really need to get attention you're fighting an uphill battle.

Also it's not 3, I've received 5 at least about various polls

I already voted and didn't feel particularly strongly about it, and I didn't find it annoying. It literally took two clicks and all of about a second to make the notification go away.

Shame on the mods for wanting people to engage with a fun community initiative, I guess.

Then the original complainer has a moment of clarity and settles on what's always been the dumbest thing about the way staff deploys notifications:

The larger problem, and admittedly one I didn't really think through/articulate until now is that the sitewide notifications are seemingly only used for these types of pings. There are numerous cases of actual rules and post restrictions that have been enacted that COULD have used a ping to make people aware (for example: banning discussion of WB's largest selling game last year, AI threads in general, NFTs etc). Why do actual policy changes not warrant broader community awareness, but "plz vote in our poll" does?

Those are changes that actually matter and users should be aware of, so they can continue to abide by the rules (and to be clear, I'm not disagreeing with those being rules). But if we're not using the sitewide notification for that and instead just using it to farm votes, I would like to opt out and I don't think that's unreasonable. I get that it's fun for you, and I'm genuinely glad for that. I'm not asking to not have the poll. But the constant pings are not fun for me, and I don't find it unreasonable to want to disable them.

Bootlickers gonna lick boot:

"keep this place tidy and functional but don't make it so I have to see you." I've modded and admined before and this is what it sounds like when in the position.