I'm not a fan of site wide pings for user-created content. Yes, the Times is great and I'm glad a set of users have found a nice way to contribute to the community, but unless it's official sylestia news posted by an admin, I'd prefer to not be pinged to it every month.

It seems like it'd be better for the Times creators to follow the example of other large threads and create a ping list for people who are actually consistently interested in its release. A Subscription List, if you'd like, as most papers and magazines do XD

I'm sure I'm not the only one who would prefer those of the userbase who were actually invested in the Times be the only ones pinged for it.

TL;DR - No Sitewide Pings for User Created Content, Please. That's not what they're supposed to be for.

I pretty much agree with everything Tori stated above. It's a great project, and the amount of time and effort that goes into it is great, but why should we all be pinged about it? Like Tori said, it's user run content, and has recently been deviating from Sylestia related stuff. I think it's a wonderful organization, but they should have a pinglist for those who want to get pinged.

Support, also for the reasons stated above.

More support here.

I tend to enjoy reading the Times. Usually I've already read it by the time the ping goes out, honestly. But I agree, more and more the Times is less about Sylestia and is more about... other things *shrugs* But that's neither here nor there for this suggestion.

I agree that while the Times is nice, and can have some good community stuff going on, it is a player-run project, and like all other player-run projects, should not have a global ping. Pinning it to the top of general every month, and having a 'subscription' should be enough (though, I do feel for those with ping lists when people change their usernames all the time and don't inform all the lists they're on... then the people keeping those lists have to go through every name to find the one that's stopping the ping from going through >>).

Anyway, Tori said it all better than I can, but just chiming in to say I agree XP

It gets a little hinky when there are advertisements in the times too. 2 out of 5 being advertisements for L (does she charge people to have advertisements btw? Im really not ok with that at ALL) and she talks about her designs, projects, themes and other stuff L related often. I know its because she says she ran out of time but i also know i was mailed about my piece in this month like 6 hours before i was pinged. There is also the issue of sometimes wrong information being in the times. Back in the april times there was a mistake made in an article about the mistwarden, frostkeeper and dawnbreaker aeris. "Now the third Aeri themed, the Mistwardens, are actually found in a very special way: breeding a tagged Mistwarden and Dawnbreak!"

If we are getting pinged to read something i feel like someone that works for the site should read it to ensure the information in it is correct. If i hadnt pointed out the mistake we could have had newer players breeding dishwater aeris cause they only had a mistwarden male and a dawnbreaker female. That is not how to make more mistwarden and the fact that it went live with that information was a bother. Even though i pinged them about the mistake it wasnt fixed till long after everyone was pinged about it.

Lets talk about the non sylestia content, suggesting books for people to read for a sitewide thing is hard. If you suggested something like harry potter are you suggesting a book series to someone deeply religious that would get in severe trouble for reading it? Are the suggestions appropriate for a younger user? With Anime are they appropriate for all ages? I havent checked all the anime and book suggestions but a few of them were adult books and likely had adult themes in them

In short i really dont feel that getting a ping every single month from user content that isnt read by admins (i mean who has time to do all the needed stuff in site AND read through the times before it is pinged right?) is a very bad idea especially when it feels like the site itself is endorsing the stuff in it. Some issues feel like a "lets talk about L and her friends" and i have often said it needs to be alot less biased. This is just my take on the whole thing.

Support. I like having the option to opt out of community related pings. While I support the Sylestia Times team, I'm often not active here too heavily in the rest of the community, so I honestly just get lost reading through it and find the pings distracting.
Simple gripe, but eh.

I support.

This month I remembered that the ping was coming, but previously I would always forget, then get excited thinking that it was for an update or something like that, then get disappointed when it was the Times ping.

As others have said, I think the Times is a well put together and don't mind it being pinned, but I am not usually that interested in things like that (I rarely read real news papers, or 'news papers' for other games unless it has a specific article in it that interests me). I don't really want to be pinged back to it every month, and if I am interested in it, I can find it on my own, since it is a monthly thing and usually pinned.

Like others I would really prefer site wide pings be used only for site updates, and not player run content, especially if that content doesn't necessarily have to do with Sylestia itself.

As a memeber I wouldn't be personally interested in this but if you really don't want to see it I guess it would make sense to have an option to not view it.

Heavy support, the times, as great as they are, aren't something i read and at this point the times get annoying. Also all statements above are true.