I apologize for that, I'm still testing things out, trying to see what works and doesn't work.
Hm, we're still in the process of figuring out how we should utilize the announcement tools and tracking what the engagement of these announcements are like. Whether it's linking to site-wide update notes on the forums, to soundcloud for the podcast, medium articles to boost our SEO, or giveaways - we're still in the early phases of tracking what the open + click through rates are.
We ask that everyone be patient with us while we figure out what works and what doesn't.
The wall post system and notifications kind of evolved away from it's intended use, which is great. We wanted to design a mechanism to better engage with readers whether it was hiatus announcements or posting additional artwork. But as the site grew and reader retention increased, it made a lot of sense that creators began to use it like a social media tool to drive readership back to their wall and/or series page.
But I agree, that there have been lots of instances where people have been utilizing this feature very aggressively. Hm, I don't think unsubbing is a great form of self moderation, I do believe that there should be layers to how much you want to interact with certain series (i.e. sometimes you like the creator and not the series they create, or sometimes you like the series they create but don't necessarily want to engage with the creator). Adding layers of granularity would definitely help like what @joannekwan outlined.
This was an idea that has been tossed around here for a while. Basically breaking it down into a creator feed and reader feed. We had some mock-ups that never got past the design stage that was kind of like a hub where creators could sort of filter through their notifications and respond to comments without having to exit the hub. It was a pretty cool idea, but we just couldn't execute on it.
The problem we face right now is that the current system actively punishes good behavior, which is the last thing we intended to do. If you're a creator that actively participates in your own comment section and routinely post on people's walls, then there's a high likelihood that many of your readers are going to like your episodes, which tends to clutter your notifications, possibly even burying more important notifications.
We need to eventually do a complete overhaul on these aspects, whether it's creating separate feeds, creating a hub, or finding out better ways to collapse and expand certain notification families.
Please give us your feedback on some things that you'd like to see changed and we'll be happy to take the general consensus and try to apply that to future iterations. Thanks.