Allow us an exit hatch to dismiss the system message notification bar [closed]

Question

Please add the functionality to dismiss or kill the site-wide announcement bars. Not the standard notification bars that come with phrases such as:

You've earned "Iconoclast" and 1 other badges. See your profile.

But the banner that runs on occasion like during an election for moderators or anniversary notices (as in the case of Super User) and things with chat or site downtime.

After X number of days, hours or minutes they just become visual noise.

Server Fault meta has further discussions on this in the adventures of Is the dark blue system notification bar annoying?

Suggestions have been made on how to make the system message bar friendlier while still achieving the desired results.

Answer 1

In support of being able to dismiss notifications, and in response to Diago's comment above, :

Are you ready to handle all the questions on Meta once they dismissed it? Wait there was this banner on the site I dismissed about x, how can I read it again*/*I never saw that, what is this new feature.

A "Notifications" page where these announcements permanently reside would nicely tie this up. I think that it would fit in well near the "about" or "faq" links. This way the notifications could be dismissed, but could be referenced by anyone who would care to look them back up.

I had also answered similarly on MSF

Answer 2

In response to Diago's comment:

Are you ready to handle all the questions on Meta once they dismissed it? Wait there was this banner on the site I dismissed about x, how can I read it again*/*I never saw that, what is this new feature.

Solution(s):

• Allow unimportant notifications to be dismissed completely when they have been read - (I've visited chat, stop bugging me!) - not allowing this is insulting and very annoying!

• Show the relevance/expiry date for important notifications.

• Allow all notifications to be shrunk to a single exclamation icon, clicking it will expand the message again, and/or link to...

• Create a /notifications page that shows all notifications, with start and end dates, highlighting any active/significant ones.

If you do all of those things and still get people asking questions, you're welcome to direct them my way.

Answer 3

When it comes to a System Alert style, the one on Server Fault is more effective. As compared to the SuperUser one, it more visually present and draws attention more effectively. On the other hand, the SU one blends into the overall style a bit better but the text on the SU style is not quite as readable as the SF banner. Take a look:

SuperUser:

ServerFault:

A persistent complaint has been that the WALL banner seems to render fairly late on the page. When someone has hit refresh and clicks on a link before the page is fully rendered, sometimes the click-target has moved down between the time the ole brain says "Click that" and the finger actually does it. It gets annoying.

Then we come to the method of usage. SU has a contest with prizes going, and both have a new chat platform. These are important messages to get out, absolutely. Unfortunately the method of display and the desire to hit as many users as possible is beginning to run up against the annoyance wall for a number of users (SF users more than SU users it seems, perhaps due to the effectiveness of the styling). Perhaps a better way to handle it would be to have it as a dismissible display that re-ups once every 24 hours requiring a new dismissal. Yes, that will still get annoying but at least it isn't as persistently annoying.

Answer 4

This is probably not a good idea because that type of alert already exists; system messages are different and adding that feature would make them identical -- you might as well just remove the feature entirely. System messages are intended to be used very sparingly, it's just a coincidence that SU and SF happen to both have one right now

After X number of days / hours / minutes they just become visual noise.

It's probably worth pointing out that you can't create a system message without an expiration date, to avoid this exact problem

Answer 5

No

The purpose of the bar is to announce important system information, and by allowing users to just dismiss it once they have read it makes the whole purpose of the bar moot. It is not used often, mainly to announce important system changes or new features.

It was mentioned in chat by someone recently that teaching users to dismiss important system notification are a really bad idea because it becomes the case of the boy that cried Wolf. (I am paraphrasing but if I remember correctly it was said by Jeff). I agree with the statement however.

Answer 6

Below is a greasemonkey script I created that is used to add a hide button to the system message. It first checks for a cookie (more on that later) and if the cookie is present, it hides the system message. If there is no cookie, it adds a hide button to the system message bar. When you click the system message bar, it hides the message bar, and sets a cookie, that expires in one day. So clicking the hide icon will dismiss the system message for a day, or until the cookie is deleted manually.

// ==UserScript==
// @name           StackOverflow Hide System Message
// @namespace      www.kibbee.ca
// @description    Hides the system message in stackoverflow
// @include        http://stackoverflow.com/*
// ==/UserScript==

function getCookie(c_name)
{
var i,x,y,ARRcookies=document.cookie.split(";");
for (i=0;i<ARRcookies.length;i++)
{
  x=ARRcookies[i].substr(0,ARRcookies[i].indexOf("="));
  y=ARRcookies[i].substr(ARRcookies[i].indexOf("=")+1);
  x=x.replace(/^\s+|\s+$/g,"");
  if (x==c_name)
    {
    return unescape(y);
    }
  }
}

var sysMessageElem = document.getElementById('system-message');

if(sysMessageElem != null && sysMessageElem.innerHTML != '');
{
    if(getCookie('HideSOSystemMessage') === '1')
    {   
        sysMessageElem.style.display = 'none';
    }
    else
    {

        HideElem = document.createElement('div');
        HideElem.innerHTML = 'Hide';
        HideElem.style.border = '1px solid black';
        HideElem.style.width = '100px';
        HideElem.style.height = '100%';
        HideElem.style.cursor = 'pointer';
        HideElem.style.cssFloat = 'right';

        ExpFunc = function(){
            var exdate=new Date();
            var expDays = 1;
            exdate.setDate(exdate.getDate() + expDays);
            var c_value=escape('1') + "; expires="+exdate.toUTCString();
            document.cookie='HideSOSystemMessage' + "=" + c_value;
            sysMessageElem.style.display = 'none';
        };

        HideElem.addEventListener("click", ExpFunc, false);

        sysMessageElem.appendChild(HideElem);

    }
}

Answer 7

Caution: this is very quick and very dirty solution, which supposed to remove any system messages from now on.

With the help of DragonFly i figured out CSS expression which points to the offensive page element:

html body.question-page div.container div#system-message

and used per site preferences (see there) to inject user stylesheet to the any pages served from the stackoverflow domain:

html body.question-page div.container div#system-message { 
    display: none !important; 
}

This should work on the any browser which is capable to inject user CSS. Of course, Adblock Plus can make things even more simple, the following rule does the same:

stackoverflow.com##DIV#system-message