Separate News & Updates from News Discussion

[#1]

When a Google team member posts to the News & Updates section, users are allowed to comment directly to the post. I have set up e-mail notifications for that area, which allows me to see those announcements, but many times the response from other local guides is just a word of thanks or other "noise" not specifically useful to many. For example an announcement of a new perk that is not available in my region. I don't want to see the 100's of responses to that post - yet there is currently no way to unsubscribe from that thread only.

My proposal is to create a News discussion sub-forum, where each news article could link to a dedicated topic (thus it would not be open to new topics for most users, only the Google team members could start new topics, much like how the current News & Announcements section works), and the news article would directly be closed to comments. By doing this, it allows much easier following of news and updates, but gives the option of subscribing to the thread specific to what their interest is. Likewise, many of those discussion threads should be closed to comments after a specific period of time, so that the irrelevant comments will not continue in the thread indefinitely (using my earlier comment on a new perk announcement, that thread should close soon after the announced perk is no longer available).

[Csaba]

Hi @MWJones, in your notification settings, you can set that only new topics in a certain board will trigger a notification (i.e. only when a new news article is posted and not all replies). By default, all replies is set. Please, have a look: 

What I would actually like to do is to set this per board, not globally only.

[vvbellur]

Hi @MWJones, there is a check-box that says "Email me when someone replies". Won't unchecking that resolve your issue? 

[MWJones]

@Csaba the News and Updates section is configured as a blog, and thus that option is not available for blogs, only the regular forums. Thus a subscription is for everything.

@vvbellur If I've subscribed to the blog to see all new posts by Google team members, there's no way to uncheck that unless I reply, and even then the higher level subscription takes presidence.

I've seen the split "announcement" and "discussion" methods used in many other places, so this is not an unusual request when in this type of forum.

[Csaba]

I'm not sure, @MWJones. I am subscribed to the News and Updates section and do get notifications for new articles but never for comments.

[IrrPavlova]

Hi @MWJones,

Thanks for your suggestion. If we have an update on this feedback, please be sure to check back this thread. We hope that you will find the current features available useful.

[TraciC]

Hi @MWJones. We look to revisit this idea later as we make further improvements on Connect. 

[Ivi_Ge]

Hi @MWJones,

We would like to thank you for your idea, but we did not manage to implement it in time. According to our Idea Exchange policies we are going to close your idea.