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Comment by kvermeer | Hacker News Reader

The system messages don't have a close button, they're usually used for important site status updates such as "There will be a short network wide outage starting on date at time for system maintenance".

The use of the tool for memorials to Steve Jobs or for political messages like this is extremely rare.

It's a good thing that you read the status messages. Normally, they're important.

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All of the top notification banners are the most annoying part of SO, IMO. Every time I go there I end up clicking close 3-4 times.

The problem is that if they keep using them for politics or for other things that aren't system messages, people will start ignoring them. "Ugh, that's that bar that just shows dumb political messages."

Yes, system messages shouldn't be abused like this. They are supposed to be the exception not norm. Even though the message gets to the front of your attention on every single page, it would have been better if this was to be placed as a community ad or a blog post.

Seeing that this is directed to the US users of Stack Overflow, I am not sure what the rest of the world should be doing other than spreading the message.

To play devil's advocate, since SO has dumps of their data under CC, anyone from another country can still get the content.

The community and the system of asking and answering questions are threatened, the previous data will still be around.

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