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From time to time, Judaism.SE community events, such as the Ingathering Contest, the weekly topic challenge, and Parashat Hashavu'a Chat are discussed or announced here on Meta. In the past, we've used a banner at the top of the main site to advertise these events, but we have learned that SE policy is that such banners are only to be used for very rare situations, so we will no longer we using them.

If you would like to know when such events are announced, please try one or more of the following:

  • Come visit Meta from time to time. You'll see announcements as well as all kinds of interesting discussions about site policy and other community matters.

  • If you see a "Visit Meta" section in the sidebar of a question, take a look. The most relevant announcements are usually linked there.

  • If you just want to see current announcements, bookmark at Meta's tag.

  • If you use a blog-reader or other RSS tool, subscribe to the featured RSS feed, and you'll always be notified of new announcements.

  • Check out our scheduled chat events, and register for those you're interested in. (Right now, there's only one, really.) You'll get automatic notification when it's coming. You can also export a calendar item for your Outlook/Google/whatever calendar.

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Please conssider linking to this post from the FAQ. Otherwise you have to be a meta user to see the announcement to read meta (among things). Experienced SE users know to look at meta but new ones might not. – Monica Cellio Dec 15 '11 at 19:33
@MonicaCellio, That's a very valid concern and a good idea, but I don't know how to fit it into the FAQ format. We need an appropriate way to advertise to all users, and apparently SE staff is working on one, but we just don't have one right now. – Isaac Moses♦ Dec 15 '11 at 19:51
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I don't know if people will know about the announcements that way. Maybe you can put a box on the side? – Ariel K Dec 15 '11 at 20:07
@ArielK I wish we could. Right now, the only tools we have for advertising within the site are those listed in this post. If you think this should change, please go to MSO and support my request as well as this related one. – Isaac Moses♦ Dec 15 '11 at 20:11
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It seems like a mention of the weekly topic challenges would fit reasonably under the "what questions can I ask?" section. If you link it there, spun that way, then we probably don't need to mention the weekly chat explicitly. If you did want to mention these special features in general, I see that we've added the "notes" and "mi yodea" sections to the standard FAQ template so presumably we could add more ("regular site activities"?). I'd just go with the question -> weekly challenge link for now, I think. – Monica Cellio Dec 15 '11 at 20:27
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@MonicaCellio, thanks for the sharp suggestion. I've added the following to the "What kind of questions" section, above "NOTES": "If you're looking for inspiration for a topic to ask about, take a look at this week's topic challenge, one of our ongoing featured community activities." – Isaac Moses♦ Dec 15 '11 at 20:39
maybe just use it at the beginning of each new topic-week, so as to get the questions going. if that's also forbidden maybe you can get an exemption? – Ariel K Dec 15 '11 at 22:03
@ArielK, There simply isn't a mechanism right now for putting stuff on the sidebar. That's not just a matter of policy; there's no tool for it. Regarding the system messages, the policy was made very clear to us that we're not to use them for routine promotional stuff like this. – Isaac Moses♦ Dec 15 '11 at 22:14
@IsaacMoses, nicely done! – Monica Cellio Dec 16 '11 at 2:28
@ArielK, I've put in a request for access to the sidebar ads channel. – Isaac Moses♦ Dec 16 '11 at 15:19
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