I couldn't agree more! I often log into client websites only to find the content of the page is pushed down below the fold by annoying notices.

Another major issue of this abuse is it can be very confusing for WordPress newcomers. It's very overwhelming for a new WordPress user to log into their WordPress Admin Area and be bombarded with these messages, some of which are important and some of which are nearly useless.

A few months ago I played around with a redesign of the notices (which is somewhat similar to Kooij's design).

Mockup: Admin Notices Redesigned

A few problems this design solves:

- Doesn't take up much room.
- Doesn't overwhelm.
- You know who the notification author is.
- You know what component authored the notice (plugin, theme, WordPress)
- Easy to see what is urgent and actionable and what is not.

But I think the problem of admin notices must be solved at the WordPress core level. WordPress should allow messages to be passed to the notification center with specific data only, not unfiltered HTML. That data could be:

Severity: urgent, significant, normal, promo, etc...
Author: Plugin/theme name
Dismissible: true/false
Message: Content of notification (with length restrictions)

AJAX links should also be supported.

If this is not solved at the WordPress core level, there really is no way to prevent this abuse. Of course we could ask the plugin and theme moderators to monitor this but that's asking a bit much. And that doesn't even take into account non-wp.org plugins/themes.

Eric