It is really great to see the return of the daily-updated news links on MP, but is there any way that you can separate it out from Mousepad?

I used to regularly read through the headlines on the news page as part of my quick morning routine. When I saw it highlighted on the main MP homepage yesterday and clicked over to it, I was surprised to find that it was a new section on MousePad and that my "new message" flags on the discussion boards were all reset by my quick trip to view the news headlines.

Since you are linking directly off the homepage, I would recommend at least including an interstitial page explaining that proceeding to the news headlines will take you into Mousepad and, if you are logged in, reset all your message flags.

-Jeff

Hi Jeff,

I agree with your comments. The News page was set up on MousePad for a number of temporary reasons. We are working on an alternative to return the page to the original location and format. This process is going to take a few weeks, and we felt it better to create this temporary solution, rather than continue to direct people to a News page that was infrequently updated.

In the interim, you may want to log out of MousePad when you complete a session, so that you won't reset your flags if you pop in for a minute to read the news. We hope to have the final solution for the news page ready shortly.

AVP

Glad to hear you are working on a solution! As I said, I'm really happy to see the news page back. I'll just try to get into the habit of logging off of MousePad...

-Jeff

second option....open a new window and link out from there....it worked for me :)

Originally posted by JeffG
I'll just try to get into the habit of logging off of MousePad...

-Jeff

Hey Jeff,

Did you know that you can set MousePad to automatically log you out when you leave? Tony and I have done this for the computer that we share at home, so we don't accidently post for one another, or clear each other's flags. I just thought about it, and that might work for you until we come up with a different news page. (If we do, because all the sudden we're really liking this set up...)

AVP

I think I'd like the new setup a lot more if we were allowed to comment on the news items in the same thread. It's a little annoying to read the news item on the discussion board and then not even be able to discuss it without starting a new thread. I still miss the "old" news page. :(

I agree. Is it possible to set it up so that we can actually respond to a news item? Having to create a new topic is a bit of a hassle and it seems redundant to have to start another topic when there's already one available. I suppose the only other issue is that all the announcements and news items are grouped on their own, so the topics would have to either be created or moved to their appropriate sections.

Anyway, being able to respond to news items directly would definitely help facilitate discussions on those topics.

I think I'd like the new setup a lot more if we were allowed to comment on the news items in the same thread. It's a little annoying to read the news item on the discussion board and then not even be able to discuss it without starting a new thread. I still miss the "old" news page.

Since the “old” news page did not enable discussion, we really didn't see the ability (or lack thereof) to discuss the posts directly in the same thread as an urgent issue.

There are several ways to make the news and announcement topics open for discussion by readers. They all have a specific drawback, and we have not determined the best route to take without causing another whole set of complaints. Here are the methods we have open to us, and the drawbacks we face:

One option is to post the item like we currently do, in either the News or Announcements forum, and then set up an automatic redirect to the appropriate forum. However, this has some potentially undesirable effects on site navigation, as you would be moved out of the original forum whenever you clicked on one of the links.

We could create a discussion thread each time we post news or an announcement, and link to that discussion thread from the post. However, that is a lot of work, and we don't know if anyone will care to comment on what we've posted. I've seen other sites and boards that do this, and it usually seems to lead to a "discussion" thread where no one is actually disusing anything. If you don’t like having to create a new thread for a topic you DO want to discuss, imagine asking the mods to create a lot of empty threads just in case you MIGHT want to comment on a post.

We could post as usual to the News or Announcement forums and then copy the post to the appropriate forum, which would allow discussion only in the second forum. This seems to be the most elegant solution, which of course means that there are some administrative reasons why this is actually not an ideal answer. We're still discussing it behind the scenes.

We could also just open the threads up for discussion in the News or Announcement forums, but there are two reasons why we're not thrilled with this option either. One is that we would be splitting the topics into multiple forums. Topics that would normally be discussed in the Disneyland area might now appear in News, Announcements or Disneyland, simply based on who started the thread and where the info came from. (A moderator could post a press release about Disneyland to the News forum, where a reader might bring up the same topic in the Disneyland forum) We have tried very hard to make sure that we aren't sending people to multiple forums to discuss the same subject.

The other problem with this last option is that old news would be recycled to the top of the list every time someone replied to the thread, and newer announcements could be buried on a second page under a pile of older, but more active, threads.

So, those are the four options we're looking at, and the attendant problems. We are now aware of the interest in this feature, but there really isn't one good answer right now. In the interim, you can always start a thread in the appropriate forum, and provide a link to the news / announcement post so people can see what you're talking about. At least the discussion thread will be in the correct forum, and there will only be threads about topics you actually want to discuss.