I - personally - am pretty happy with it as its not flashy. The news tends to stay for a long time, so there is no real need to have a constant eye catcher IMHO.
Well it's barely visible. I hardly even notice it that it's there ,and i use the forum daily.
So even if its there for long it might not be visible.
If not for that and for RSS feeds, people would barely even know that new version comes out.
So i think it should be more visible.