Change in news functionality

6/10/16 @ 5:57 AM

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Hi erik,

I am Radu, admin of Team Romania. Back in time, I've sent many suggestions for site improval. Now I'm using the new version, V3, and I have seen some of them have been implemented so I wanted to say thanks and to congratulate you on the good work!

But there is one feature that has been modified a few months ago on the v2 and in v3 is the same: the functionality of group news. Before the change the news was sent to members as personal messages. Now the news is just a simple alert. Because of this change many groups have already fallen asleep and it is difficult for admins to communicate with their team. There is a topic opened on this issue and many admins support the return to the old functionality: https://www.chess.com/forum/view/suggestions/change-in-news-functionality

Please take the decision to return to old functionality!
Thank you!

erik

6/10/16 @ 10:21 AM

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Thanks! We are working on this. I am not sure that we will return to messages, but we will make the alerts better.

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Good news! I wish erik (or some other staff) would post in this thread instead of just replying to personal messages, but I am happy as long as they will fix it.

I can't message Erik 

We need the PM back!  I don't even get NEWS alerts on my homepage anymore!

What?

Good job Martin0. Thanks for updating us!

You should thank unu, I just quoted his post on the last page.

Oops, thanks unu! 

You're welcome..Let's hope things get back in order one way or another.

News seems more broken than ever.. On V3 News alerts don't seem to go to the club/group News section now.

You should report this to Support Staff and they will look in to it.

https://support.chess.com/customer/portal/emails/new

It appears chess.com is unwilling to restore old functionality, but would consider improvement to current functionality.

I would recommend:
- Separate alerts for group news (so they do not disappear when you click “ignore all” to get rid of your group notes alerts. Group notes will always give more alerts than news and is out of control of the admins. Admins use news for really important and much less frequent communications).
- No “ignore all” for news (you can manage your group settings if you wish)
- One click in to get to actually news (news typically have hyperlinks to a game or forum so that is already a two click solution. Drop-off  per click in 80+%, 3-4 click solutions, like now means that only 0.4% of members click all the way in)

Eric has indicated that they will change or improve current news functionality which is useless. I suggest some possible ways it could be improved, please help valiadate or suggest other ways an improved alert based news functionalty could work?

Currently, very difficult to set up team matches. Your members only get one PM and you cannot use news to recruit players. If your team have hard working admins they PM every single member individually, but you may not have time to do that...

Because of this some groups no longer accept open (no rating range) team matches until news functionality can get fixed)...

The old way was soo much better...why oh why did the switch? 

It is not the same for everyone! Some teams have admins who are willing to PM every member individually with a match reminder.... other teams have admins who simply do not have time or capacity for that...so the playing field is very uneven now.... That is why some teams are pulling out of open matches.... even though that is sad and hamper generally group loyalty and excitement.

News functionality has to be fixed one way or another, IMHO. The feature currently is completely broken, or should I say, 99.6% broken, as only 0.4% are seeing news now.

I e-mailed staff about this. 

Updated:

It appears chess.com is unwilling to restore old functionality, but would consider improvement to current functionality.

I would recommend:
- Separate alerts for group news (so they do not disappear when you click “ignore all” to get rid of your group notes alerts. Group notes will always give more alerts than news and is out of control of the admins. Admins use news for really important and much less frequent communications).
- No “ignore all” for news (you can manage your group settings if you wish)

- Provide a list view of all unread news which indicate group and news title (similar to friends request alert list.... where you can see all the members who requested to be friends with avatar and name and is only one click away from accept)
- One click in to get to actually news (news typically have hyperlinks to a game or forum so that is already a two click solution. Drop-off  per click in 80+%, 3-4 click solutions, like now means that only 0.4% of members click all the way in)

I totally agree with you too Joakim.

Have sent an e-mail to chess.com asking them WHY they will not re-instate the old newspost function.Will post their reply here.

Well, I can't say that I have always adhered to it but at least on paper PMing members to invite them for matches is against the site rules. But with less and less ability to both recruit members (no more world map where members are located) and now news that doesn't reach anyone it may well be the only route left. The trouble is that HelenHellas's avatar is already on everyone's profile who is able to move the rook in a straight line. If all the other admins do the same there won't be much room left for anything else.