Read a little further down and I gave a list of stuff. Basically anything that has to do with you personally (as long as it is appropriate for minors to read obviously) that includes education, hatches matches and dispatches (loved that by the way), and any other thing that has to do with the member personally. That way we don't have general chat about politics etc.
So what if a member is really proud of christening their child? This gives relgion a chance to pop up. Anything can lead off into more general conversations.
How about if someone announces they can now vote as they are 18, that leads politics straight into it.
Someone gets married, someone else starts up about whether amrriage is relevant in this day and age. Suppose a gay person announces their marriage, that will upset all the backward thinking idiots.
How will we treat a thread where someone posts an impressive test result and someone else posts that was nothing, they beat that score with ease?
It would take a lot of work to moderate and keep the forum on the straight and narrow which will obviously detract from the central core of the forum, that of keeping fish. The only way to keep it friendly would be to heavily restrict the topics covered and to ban any response which does not agree with the OP for fear of it turning into a flame fest. This is not worthwhile having.
If you really want to announce something, put it in your sig, it will then appear in every post you have made on the forum.
Consider this:
Why do we
need an announcement forum? It isn't needed to allow people to announce things (as covered, sigs do that and reach a wider audience), it would appear it is desired so that people can announce and have others comment back nice things.