It's not 'bad' to make counter intuitive changes to the existing framework... but it's nearsighted. The community at large is like a garden. If you know anything about farming, you will understand that growing many small plants in rapid succession only gets you so far, while letting plants go through a longer life cycle and eventually to seed will get you more benefit over time.

Confusing analogy?
If you get a bunch of players to sign up and don't give them something to come back for in the long term, interest in the game will die off over time. If you provide an engaging play experience with breadth and depth and allow for a multitude of heuristics to be applied, players will come back again and again. In fact, players will tell non-players to pick the game up. That's word of mouth advertising. It will happen if you have a good product (hey this game is so cool check it out) or if you have a bad one (I can't believe you still play that crappy skinner box).

There is a news tab in iclassic. In fact, it has two points of access, but the menu system is so disjointed you might not be able to find it.