Questions and announcements
Answering one person, publishing the answer to everyone, and announcing.
The area lists questions and announcements across every activity you manage. Filter by activity, by series inside it, by kind, or by a search on the topic, the body or the author — and there is a waiting for an answer switch for the one list that matters during a contest. The filters are in the address, so the list you are working from is a link.
Answering and publishing are two acts
An answer stays private until you publish it. Most answers concern one team's submission and would tell everybody else nothing; the few that are worth publishing become the FAQ a contest needs.
The answer dialog carries one switch — publish to every participant — so answering and publishing can be done in a single step where you already know the answer is general. Leave it off when the answer concerns only this person.
An answer can be edited afterwards, and a published question can be unpublished.
An unanswered question cannot be published: showing everyone the doubt without the answer helps nobody, and the control is refused rather than failing after the click.
Answering is question:answer; publishing is question:publish. Both are in the
shipped manager template, and an installation may hand out one without the
other.
Announcements
New announcement needs an activity chosen in the filter above it — an announcement belongs to one. It takes a topic, a body, and optionally a series; empty means the whole activity.
An announcement is published the moment it is created. There is no draft state for one, and the dialog says so before you save. It can be deleted afterwards; a question cannot.
A published item carries a read count, which is how you find out whether the thing you announced was seen.
Turning the whole thing off
Questions and announcements are a module on the activity's settings tab. Disabled, it leaves the participant's sidebar entirely rather than showing an empty screen.