https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/4ny8y6/renaming_sticky_posts_to_announcements/
created by KeyserSosa on 13/06/2016 at 22:32 UTC*
81 upvotes, 160 top-level comments (showing 25)
Now that some time has been passed since we opened up sticky posts to more types of content[1], we've noticed that for the most part stickies are used for community-centric announcements and event-specific mega-threads. As such, we've decided to refine the feature and explicitly start referring to them as "announcements."
The mechanics around announcements will be quite similar to stickies with the constraint that the sticky post must be either:
~~Additionally, the author of the post must be a moderator at the time of the announcement.~~ [Redacted. See Edit 2!]
Then changes can be found here[2].
2: https://github.com/reddit/reddit/commit/ba9dc13eb579c3e8f90b41cecd460961cebeb91b
**Edit**: fixed an unstickying bug
Comment by D0cR3d at 13/06/2016 at 22:37 UTC*
107 upvotes, 4 direct replies
Edit: See admins edit but they removed[1] the requirement that for sticking a self that it had to be made by a mod.
1: https://github.com/allthefoxes/reddit/commit/7e5f4a415dd0d7d98328dbde71c14c32479aa979
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So what happens to regular sticky posts. A few of my subreddits use sticky posts as a gathering of information. Can only mods make sticky aka announcement posts? What if a news info like E3 for the gaming subs, a user makes a post first, and we want to honor that by making a collective discussion thread? Are we not able to do that and we as mods would have to create our own announcement post just to sticky it?
Examples when we would sticky a users post:
1. They create a really detailed helpful post with information, and we want to direct users to it
2. Mods are asleep and a user gets the drop on a game update, or E3 coverage, or some other bit of information. We like to reduce redundant threads, so direct discussion to a single thread and make this a stickied megathread.
3. An important new story breaks out (current event) and the mods want to sticky that for visibility.
Users kinda get angry if mods remove threads to make their own, especially when users get a big drop on the mods in terms of time. Not exactly the best PR for us to remove a post and make our own just so we can sticky it to get users attention.
So what are we supposed to do? Make a announcement thread with a link to the users thread and lock our thread just as a redirect?
Comment by geo1088 at 14/06/2016 at 00:25 UTC*
74 upvotes, 5 direct replies
In after the moderator requirement was lifted:
we've noticed that for the most part stickies are used for community-centric announcements and event-specific mega-threads.
So why remove the ability to sticky links? This was useful for moderators in so many situations, especially on subs that revolve around content that isn't owned by the mods, e.g. game subs linking patches, or a project page linking to a separately-hosted FAQ.
It seems like you're just restricting things to what people *normally* do, but that doesn't mean people don't use things in other ways. There's no point in removing features already in use; "most people don't do it anyway" isn't a good enough reason - especially since you guys say you want to let sub mods do what they want in their own subs (granted no site rules are being broken).
Additionally, I'm really surprised a breaking change like this wasn't given more warning. I get that it may have been partially in response to the whole /r/news fiasco, but it seems like way too sudden a change, especially when it will end up breaking a lot of mods' workflows.
I'm open to working around it, but I really don't think this change needed to be made. Aside from the renaming, which is purely aesthetic, I don't like how this was handled.
I disagree with this entire change.
Comment by SpyTec13 at 14/06/2016 at 02:44 UTC*
54 upvotes, 5 direct replies
The name sticky was perfect. It told you exactly what it was, a stickied post at the top of the subreddit. The name announcement is not obvious to be a stickied posts, nor do they cover the whole ground like "sticky" did.
Gaming subreddits in particular will have many stickied posts about discussion, and some of them might not be related to specific events and will not in any way be an announcement but rather just a stickied thread to funnel repetitive or simple submissions to. I'm with /u/sidipi 100% on this one regarding his comment[1]. - If there is an announcement for a gaming subreddit, it will most likely be a flair representing that rather than having the sticky tell it.
1: /r/changelog/comments/4ny8y6/renaming_sticky_posts_to_announcements/d47zt9i
Most people will refer to it as a sticky, such as "See the stickied post", rather than referring to an announcement, as it is not really explanatory.
I would imagine that a lot of subreddits, especially related to gaming, will probably do a css trick to change the `announcement` text to `stickied`. Well, I might as well create the simplest one now using something like this (font-size may have to be changed if subreddit CSS is different):
.stickied-tagline{
font-size: 0;
}
.stickied-tagline::after{
content:"stickied post";
font-size: x-small;
}
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And when it comes to link posts, if we had a FAQ page from the developers themselves or a forum post on their official forum that a dev made, being able to sticky that was great. But now we would have to circumvent that by having the link in the body to be able to sticky it, what's the point? Being able to sticky links when it was introduced was an amazing feature. Disabling it again is just restricting something that worked well for what it was. If it's about karma, don't count it for the stickied post, easy.
What really is the reason for removing a feature that worked well? I will cite what was said in the introductory post about stickying links
This has some potentially interesting uses for things like [...], important news articles, and so on.
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This seems like a rushed decision that has not taken into account the whole community but rather the set few ones that are similar to /r/news. What's the reason for the change with sticky posts? From what I can see, there is none mentioned in the OP
Comment by TryUsingScience at 13/06/2016 at 23:54 UTC
52 upvotes, 4 direct replies
I'm baffled as to how any part of this is helpful for moderators.
Why change it from "sticky," a well-known feature description for forum threads, to "announcement," which is a word that describes some but not all of the many legitimate uses for sticky threads? On CMV we've stickied potential new rules that we want users to discuss, interesting CMVs that we want to bring attention to, and a whole host of other things that are not announcements. This adds some potential confusion and doesn't improve anything.
Why not let people sticky links? Is it because it's possible to abuse that feature to get lots of karma and/or brigade? Brigading is already supposed to be against the rules and if you really care you can make sticky posts not generate karma (I believe sticky comments already don't generate karma). There are many completely valid use-cases for stickying link posts.
I get that as reddit admins you have to balance a lot of conflicting needs and it's a difficult job. But if there is a specific subreddit that is abusing the sticky feature, deal with them and deal with the fallout. Don't nerf features for the rest of us.
Comment by [deleted] at 13/06/2016 at 22:42 UTC*
129 upvotes, 2 direct replies
[deleted]
Comment by [deleted] at 14/06/2016 at 01:26 UTC*
32 upvotes, 1 direct replies
[deleted]
Comment by [deleted] at 13/06/2016 at 23:04 UTC
25 upvotes, 1 direct replies
im not a fan of this at all
in particular for on of my growing subreddits, i try to sticky a post or two a day to get it exposure (that sub being /r/rarepuppers) and this would severely limit the amount of exposure said "gems" would get
i feel as though subreddits should be able to "opt" into this as a practice because, announcement lacking subreddits would be severely effected by these changes
Comment by sidipi at 13/06/2016 at 23:15 UTC*
25 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Apologies but this arrangement doesn't work well at all for /r/GlobalOffensive and I'm sure many other subs.
Our sticky posts are ones scheduled by bots, and they are not necessarily announcements at all. I'd say in a month we make 1 or 2 announcement threads. The rest of the posts are scheduled stickies for discussions, channeling posts and comments for big events, and pro scene match/LAN schedule/discussion threads. Also if a post is an announcement, many subs have an "Announcement" flair to tag it.
Additionally, the author of the post must be a moderator at the time of the announcement.
80% of the times these threads are made by the users who do not have moderation permissions. This cripples the structure of how we manage our Esports scene currently. And adding another arrangement to fit your changes would take some amount of effort and time in addition to giving some users/common accounts moderator permissions which we would like to avoid at all costs.
I hope you understand our problems and revert back these changes as they hurt us way more than help us in any case.
Edit: Thanks a lot for the second edit, reverting back non-mod posts change was prompt and quick and is appreciated!
Comment by IdRatherBeLurking at 13/06/2016 at 22:55 UTC*
22 upvotes, 1 direct replies
So if the mod team isn't around and a user makes a post that deserves to be stickied (like this post, for example[1]), we can no longer sticky them? We have to make a new thread if we want to sticky it, which ignores all of the previous discussion going on at the time?
I don't see how this benefits the vast majority of subreddits in the slightest.
/u/keysersosa and /u/spez, if I'm completely off base here on how this works, please let me know. From my perspective, this seems like a wholly negative change.
EDIT: Seems that they've gone back on this change, and are allowing stickies to be made by users. I'm glad they recognized the problem so fast, but that's why we have multiple subreddits for getting moderator feedback on changes like this...
Comment by [deleted] at 13/06/2016 at 23:48 UTC
22 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Hey! Person in close contact with the mods of /r/homestuck here. This change utterly ruins many, many webcomic subreddits. I often browse things like, as I said before, /r/homestuck, but also /r/cucumberquest and /r/neokosmos. New updates are often stickied, and this change can make many people miss out on an update. (i'm also lazy and just want to click once, okay?) Not to mention that, for example, with homestuck, Volume 10 dropped on 6/12 and, of course, the mods stickied it. This would now be impossible/harder if you implemented this two-ish days ago.
This change is very obviously made just to try and stop a few subreddits from vote manipulation, and we all know that's a ban. This change will just hurt subreddits such as the webcomic ones I listed above. Be careful with your changes guys, don't go the way of Digg. Learn from mistakes. This is a clearly unpopular decision, so you should definitely be thinking of reversing it.
Comment by noshelter at 14/06/2016 at 00:57 UTC
23 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I strongly dislike this change as a mod of /r/billburr. We have a bot that posts weekly links to his podcast (NOT a self post). I started sticky'ing them recently because lots of subreddit visitors are coming specifically to discuss the podcasts.
Now we can't sticky the most recent discussion thread. They'll fall down the ranks unless people keep upvoting during the week, making them harder to find. Awful.
I can't believe this major change was implemented in one day before taking zero input from mods or the community at large. Maybe we'll modify the bot to do a self-post with a damn link in it? Ugh, stupid.
Comment by WTCMolybdenum4753 at 14/06/2016 at 01:41 UTC
20 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Eleven months ago.
Deimorz: **Previously it was only possible to sticky text posts, but we've now made it so that any submission can be stickied. This has some potentially interesting uses for things like reddit live threads, wiki pages, important news articles, and so on.**
How can "important new articles..." become unimportant?
It's your site but don't forget why it's here.
Comment by chrisychris- at 13/06/2016 at 22:50 UTC
40 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Why are you taking several steps back? Sticky links are extremely useful when there's no time to create text posts with more information. Also not allowing other user's posts to be stickied only brings more workload onto the moderators having to create each post they want sticky. Over at /r/rocketleague, I sticky tournament posts not made by the mod team as well as useful threads made by the community.
Comment by rasherdk at 13/06/2016 at 23:09 UTC*
38 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Well this is an awful, awful change from my point of view. We use stickies extensively in /r/nfl to highlight quality user-submitted content.
We wish to continue having this option in order to promote good content.
This is a terribly poorly thought out change. Please reconsider.
Edit: Well, the moderator-only restriction has been lifted so this doesn't directly affect /r/nfl anymore, but the changes are still an extremely poorly thought out solution to something that should be solved with other means entirely.
Comment by Umdlye at 13/06/2016 at 22:38 UTC
37 upvotes, 4 direct replies
Surely I can't be the only person who frequently stickied relevant important posts by non-moderators? First thing that comes to mind is developer Q&A's in gaming subreddits. Link submission stickies were really useful too.
I've been out of the loop for the last week or so because of holidays, so I'm not sure what led up to this change but it's really inconvenient. What if stickied posts just didn't show up in /r/all?
Comment by jaxspider at 13/06/2016 at 23:11 UTC
17 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Additionally, the author of the post must be a moderator at the time of the announcement.
I mod tons of subreddits where users make very good posts that deserve to be "announcements". I'm not about to make them mods simply to make it possible to sticky things.
Why fuck up something that was working perfectly?
Comment by 13steinj at 13/06/2016 at 23:58 UTC
16 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I really don't like the new link requirements. It's very valid to link to external sources on stickies. For example, for gaming based subreddits, to a game announcement. To a streaming service, a link to a streaming event. Etc etc.
While "[you have] noticed that for the most part stickies are used for community-centric announcements and event-specific mega-threads", I don't see why you have to explicitly break previous workflows on a working system.
Comment by [deleted] at 13/06/2016 at 22:45 UTC
30 upvotes, 1 direct replies
[removed]
Comment by AnIntoxicatedRodent at 14/06/2016 at 00:16 UTC
16 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Quick question. Why? This decision has nothing to do with the /r/news fiasco and it seems that this is rather inspired by an uncomfortable feeling with how /r/the_donald (ab)uses stickies. Stickying a link can be something you'd want to do and I don't see anything wrong with it. It also seems inappropriate that the only real measures you take after what happened with r/news are not repercussions against r/news or their mods but rather against r/the_donald.
Wouldn't a better solution be to just limit the rate with which u can change stickies? Like only 4 different stickied posts a day or something like that. The measure you are taking now seems inconsiderate and inappropriate.
However, thank you for updating the community clearly. I appreciate it.
Thanks for your time.
Comment by GoldenSights at 13/06/2016 at 22:38 UTC*
47 upvotes, 8 direct replies
Is this change inspired by /r/The_Donald's unorthodox use of stickies? If I wasn't already aware of that subreddit, I would think this change is simply regressive, but it looks like you're targeting them in particular.
edit: Thank you for reverting the moderator-only requirement
Comment by RossTheColonel at 13/06/2016 at 23:20 UTC
14 upvotes, 1 direct replies
We still want link stickies.
Comment by kianworld at 14/06/2016 at 00:29 UTC
15 upvotes, 0 direct replies
As a mod, this is actually a very disappointing change. I'd like to sticky link posts outside of reddit again.
Comment by [deleted] at 13/06/2016 at 23:05 UTC
11 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Our sub (/r/torontobluejays) regularly stickies user posts of important information (i.e. an injury to a star player, a trade, or any other big news that reflects the team), it is very useful to us to be able to sticky these posts both to ensure everyone sees it and to limit the number of duplicates.
If anything I think the use of "announcements" should be kept to default subreddits, because in the case of smaller subreddits its exceedingly useful.
Comment by OcelotWolf at 13/06/2016 at 23:08 UTC*
23 upvotes, 2 direct replies
I really don't like this decision.
For example, in /r/GrandTheftAutoV, Rockstar Games will make an announcement on their website. Someone will post a link to that announcement to the subreddit; sometimes a few people do. We remove the duplicates and sticky the first post. Now we have a direct link to Rockstar's announcement at the top of our page, and it even includes a thumbnail image. In the comments, our users can discuss the content of the announcement until another announcement is made, for weeks, if needed.
Or say an update comes out. When the patch notes are released, it's great to be able to pin them to the top of the page for anyone who wants to read them.
Now this ease will be taken away from us. This seems like a step backwards, taking away functionality. I'd really like to be able to sticky any post by any user.
Just take a look at the front page of /r/GrandTheftAutoV and you'll see what I mean, how it works, and why it's convenient.
Comment by 1point618 at 13/06/2016 at 23:33 UTC
11 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Stickies are now way less useful to use as announcements, because we can't sticky links to announcements on other sites or other relevant subreddits.
This really feels like a kneejerk reaction to a bad situation.