I notice that many are doing this. The problem I have (in theory) with this is that the new announcements will be at the bottom of the thread, so users coming fresh will be greeted with (we hope) announcements that are several years out of date.
I guess that’s not so bad - but would it be bad to start a new thread for each announcement? Presumably the old ones would fall off the bottom?
I’m good with either, so let me know.
edit2
I have been editing the top post each update, a bonus to doing so is you can scroll through the edits so each time you update its a log of changes also. Not too sure if the edit privilege goes away though?
Probably best to keep them all in the one place though otherwise it will be tonnes of threads.
I’m not sure what you mean by “I have been editing the top post each update”. You mean you find the oldest post and just change it?
First post at the top of the page where new visits to the thread will see it.
I know this is a dumb question, but how you post at the top of a page? What is the action I take with the UI of this forum that causes my post to be at the top?
Creating the thread.
I suppose you can edit the first post , but is better is you reply your thread to achieve the forum show the thread at the top
try in this thread, if you edit the first post it will come back to top of the stack
Great point Bruce, I was also thinking about this. In one case we want to avoid creating a new post for each update, but then appending at the end of a long thread is not really good visibility either. Perhaps like in many issues, the best would be a hybrid approach, when the thread gets too long or a major announcement comes along, then we start a new one. I was actually thinking of deleting the prior one, but that’s probably not good practice (nor even possible, didn’t check).
Perhaps I will try the hybrid approach. In my case, I would always call the current announcement thread
“Impromptu Modular Update Thread”,
and in the prior ones I could append the update numbers to the title, for easy referencing. So when I create a new announcement, the previous announcement could be renamed
“Impromptu Modular Update Thread: 0.6.14 to 0.6.16”
I’ll think this through more, but that my initial thought about this. Thanks for mentioning this!
I have to say, I tried this approach with my music and videos, but it didn’t work out so well. The post name is always the same, and after a while the thread is too long to start scrolling down all the time. And also, when posting something new, no one knows if it’s actually a new announcement or just someone commenting. As a user, I would prefer to see a new thread for each announcement rather than one thread for all.
In the case of updates if users can keep track of version numbers, with the aid of the version in rack, I can reasonably assume, if a thread is titled so the post will look new for previous visitors. If a user posts in the thread it is automatically watching or tracking the thread, it should jump to the most recent post in the thread, if they don’t visit the thread in a long time they should still see the top/first post has been edited. Perhaps incremental versioning for videos/music might be worth a look also.
There is also filtering which can be applied to users posts in a thread (click on username filter posts, Y shape) if there is many threads you’ll loose this functionality, perhaps announcement threads could have an option to filter by original post when a user opens or edit’s the thread to stop the clutter of comments in the thread or as previously requested for music have special tags for versions in a thread which could be toggled by the OP. If announcements was in the one spot perhaps also it might be good to have the edit arrows at the top post, instead of partially hidden in the pencil icon for posts.
You can filter from search also @name #uncategorized in the search box.
Possibly this info could be documented in the forum FAQ’s for newer users to the forum. Which I can safely say there will be many once v1 is released!
I requested on GitHub to have a changelog included in racks context menu for a plugin/module perhaps this could link to announcement threads on here instead of the original request to be on GitHub, it promotes the forum and gives easier access to documentation for a given vendor. It just opens a link when clicked from racks context menu so there is a few reasons to keep announcements in the one spot. The clutter of threads on forums is much worse than a clutter of posts in a thread in my opinion, at least if you want to you can ignore the one thread or filter the users posts in a thread, if it is many threads its a little bit harder to find your favourite poster or easier if they have many threads which ever way you look at it.
This rather old post from the Discourse self-discussion dashboard can add points to this thread: https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-discourse-display-topic-replies-in-reverse-order/13563
A reverse order for comments/replies in established topics/threads could be useful, but it looks like global topics sorting in the Discourse platform has to follow its own rules, with facilities aided towards the navigation of the single threads.
Maybe the best solution stays in the middle, with “minor” announcements being added to an existing thread, while it would be better if “major” ads were published and organized into a new topic.
As always, I hope that my English can make sense to everyone.
I edit the topmost post for SkJACK to be in line with the current status, after posting a status update to the end of the thread.
Although hyperlinks from the sidebar take you to the latest message; I’m not sure (we don’t exactly have thread analytics) how many people visit the announcement posts from the thread listing.
someting like this could work
new updates in the first post!! a link to the first post
ah, I see know. thanks.
Go on edit the top post here you know you want to 
actually when re-visiting a post/thread you visited before, automatically you will start at it’s first new reply.
alternatively one can remind/point out to readers that they can subscribe to the thread, which will result in same + they get notified.
I am finding that for sure with the announcement threads of us “old timers” getting so long that people are missing things. Given that few readers subscribe or keep 100% up to date, users of my plugins will often come into the middle of a very long thread and not bother so scroll all the way down.
I first realized this when someone who is a heavy user of my software missed an announcement and didn’t know a feature had been added.
In order to be heard, I would like to try something different: a) Perhaps just use Facebook for announcements? Messages have much better reach there, and don’t require that you keep updating an old post with new info. b) Delete my current announcement thread so I will be able to open a new, relevant one. c) Other?
c) edit the top post
When a top post is updated new and old users to the thread see this post regardless of reading the whole thread or not. When the title is updated it looks like a new thread for all intensive purposes.
To me, the definition of an “announcement” is clear. An announcement might be something you see in an ad or news article. It might be the title of an event or talk. It’s something you “announce” on an intercom system.
A reply is not any of those things. A reply should be posted as a reply to the announcement thread. Conversely, an announcement should not be posted as a reply to an announcement thread.
Which post did you see when you clicked into the topic? Presuming you clicked / visited this topic before.