BBC Blog Network

User Profile

Ed Lyons

Listed below are comments made by Ed Lyons between Saturday, 1st August 2009 and Saturday, 28th November 2009 (10 Hours Ago) .

«Newer
Older»

Sharing iPlayer data 1:45pm on 28 Nov 2009 Another request for CSV and/or excel files, and why not show us how many people have watched each program etc - YouTube manages to do that and you certainly know all sorts of details statistics about iPlayer programs - most popular sections etc. Share them with us!

The iPhone app does look interesting: Live TV and radio, streaming and downloads. Great! Would stop me having to use get_iplayer to download things to watch on the train.
BBC iPlayer on the Wii: technical details 01:17am on 25 Nov 2009 I believe automatic recommendations etc are coming in iPlayer 3.0
Facebook v Ceop 00:30am on 19 Nov 2009 I don't see how CEOP could do what they claim. If someone posts something on my wall and I report it to CEOP, they can't see my wall, so what can they do? Even if they could see my wall, they're still going to have to ask Facebook to do anything about it. I can't really see how introducing a middle-man helps, except possibly adding a third party who can audit Facebook's responsiveness to reports.
Erik Huggers at C21: "This is not the BBC entering into Social Networks." 11:59am on 13 Nov 2009 Losing the genre/category tab seems a mistake. I always watch by choosing a category - usually drama and comedy. However good your automated algorithms are, I still want to be able to check a list and see I haven't missed something!
BBC Online and social media 9:44pm on 07 Oct 2009 Boilerplated: But imagine how many comments there will be on a popular BBC news article? 1000? More? Look at the average quality of Have Your Say comments too... I'm not sure user-ratings works either (based on HYS anyway). I'd say some editorial control would be beneficial (but expensive)...
BBC Online and social media 00:12am on 07 Oct 2009 If you do allow comments, you really must provide a way to highlight good comments! The few articles you do currently allow comments on have some really interesting comments from people who know what they're talking about - e.g. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8292164.stm . I assume these comments are carefully chosen. If you allow all and sundry to stick their comments on the bottom of every page (like most sites do), these interesting comments will be lost.
Freeview HD Copy Protection Update 12:12pm on 24 Sep 2009 @pedgington

If your car is going to get stolen, whether you leave it unlocked or not, why bother locking it?
Baby Peter and anonymity 3:04pm on 15 Aug 2009 I spent a lot of time 'on the Internet' as well as reading papers and so on. I never found out their names, even though they might be 'on the Internet', just as I don't find a huge number of other websites dedicated to all sorts of things I don't express an interest in.

I'd say it has a use, the jury wouldn't have found out any information unless they actively went looking for it (which they were told not to).

I disagree with censorship, but I can see there is some value here. Perhaps it's a bit extreme to censor the entire media to protect 12(?) people in a jury...
Microsoft: There's a buzz about Bing 03:07am on 03 Aug 2009 Typing "4.75 pounds in euros" will provide a conversion in google, and has done for years. As will typing "£4.75 in ". Just typing "Pounds to euros" will give you a rate too. What were you typing that didn't find this?
Blogs and boards: getting the balance right 9:49pm on 01 Aug 2009 Nick, sure it would, but it'd get buried under the huge number of essentially meaningless comments. Look at Have Your Say for example, today's topic on the gap-years-for-graduates has almost 300 comments, the vast majority are reactive 'lazy kids/waste of money/better things to spend it on' comments, complaining about the idea (as of course, they have a right to do). Do you really think that the BBC site is the best place for people to complain about the general state of the world?

If news pages had comments sections at the bottom (as The Guardian does on some articles), you'd get even more comments, many times as many as a linked HyS and have an even harder time finding truly interesting comments.

If you see comments as a form of Citizen Journalism, I'd say it would be much more valuable if the BBC made it easier to send corrections and additions to existing articles. I've done this a few times but the method is obscure and feels a bit like sending a message into a black-hole. If each article had a form at the bottom (not the rather banal 'are you affected by this issue' form) that let people submit new information it would be better. Provide some feedback when they do that, even if it's automated, provide a way of tracking your feedback online so you can see that it's actually valuable. It should be about people engaging with The BBC, not people engaging with The BBC Website.

I would avoid thinking that sticking comments on news articles is a good thing as it will get your readership more 'engaged', and that the only downside is the moderation costs. I would look at why comments are necessary and try to innovate to solve those problems. Doing so might create something really original.

«Newer
Older»

^ Back to top

BBC MMVI

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites

BBC.co.uk

BBC Blog Network

Find and talk to the BBC's bloggers.

User Profile

Ed Lyons