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WombatDeath

Listed below are comments made by WombatDeath between Sunday, 16th November 2008 and Wednesday, 7th January 2009.

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Points of View Message Board 4: Niclaramartin's questions 11:21pm on 07 Jan 2009 I agree with Nippie: the blog homepage is a bit shambolic and there's no obvious way to get to it from the BBC home page (which is itself horrendous, but that's outside the scope of this discussion).

Off the top of my head: I would get rid of the "latest post" section on the blog homepage since I don't see much value to it, restructure the blog categories to impose a more navigable hierarchy and find a way to direct people to it. I'd suggest adding a link to the BBC home page but I think it would probably collapse under the strain of any more clutter.

On a broader note: is anyone in charge of message board / blogging strategy as a whole? I get the impression that there are a load of little fiefdoms which use the same basic technology in various different ways. I can see the benefit of letting people take the ball and run with it (and can see how the present situation would emerge) but it's all a bit inconsistent and lacking unity.
Points Of View Message Board 3: Football or Rugby? 10:14pm on 07 Jan 2009 Happy new year to you all, hope you enjoyed your holidays.

@niclaramartin:

"Ah, but that is exactly the point. BBC have always under-used, and under-appreciated the amount of research they could do, simply tapping into the messageboards."

I disagree. I've stated before on the boards themselves that if I were involved in programme making I wouldn't touch them with someone else's barge pole. They're entertaining enough but the signal to noise ratio is pretty horrendous - my hope is that the producers have got better things to do with their time.

Ultimately, I think that the programme makers themselves are best positioned to judge what feedback would be useful and how best it can be gathered. You may feel that they're ignoring a goldmine of valuable information but, respectfully, I think that they're the best judge of that.
Points Of View Message Board 3: Football or Rugby? 5:57pm on 30 Dec 2008 "If BBC decide that they are going to restrict posters to THEIR board, by NOT allowing an "OFF topic" area, then they are not following the general trend."

The difference being that your examples are all private companies which can spend their money however they like. I think we all agree that the BBC needs to be far more careful about how it spends our licence fee and ensure that it provides value for money in the areas specified in its charter.

The question then becomes: are the POV boards worth the money? It's pretty clear (to me, at least) that they're not really useful to the BBC as research and feedback channels. So why are we collectively spending money on them?

The common answer seems to be "because we enjoy them and find them useful". I argue that this may well be true but is not sufficient; I would love it if the BBC provided me with lots of free, high-quality computer games but must acknowledge that doing so would not represent a valid use of licence payers' cash.

Imagine that the POV boards are removed. We would then have a situation where:

* BBC staff gain feedback from whatever channels they deem appropriate.

* Viewers can provide unsolicited feedback and complaints through the official channels.

What of value has been lost that the BBC has a duty to provide? (And please imagine that the last eight words of that sentence are in italics, because they are important - I am not disputing anyone's enjoyment of the message boards).
Introducing BBC iPlayer Desktop for Mac, Linux and PC 7:11pm on 29 Dec 2008 Hi Anthony

Sorry to hijack the topic, but like pippip99 I'm rather alarmed by your proposal that ISPs should be charging an iplayer fee on top of their standard broadband tariffs.

Everyone involved is already paying for the bandwidth consumed by iplayer traffic - I pay for mine, my iplayer peers pay for theirs and you (the BBC) presumably pay for yours. ISPs are holding an untenable position: that they should somehow be compensated for the mysterious practice of their customers using the bandwidth that they've purchased.

This is nonsensical - if I'm paying for 50GB per month my ISP has no grounds for complaining when I use it, whether the majority comes from iplayer, youtube, online gaming or whatever else takes my fancy. If I'm paying for an 'unlimited' connection the ISP had better damn well make sure that the price they charge me reflects the burden I will impose on their infrastructure.

Bottom line: ISPs in general have created their pricing structures in the expectation that customers will consume far less bandwidth than they're entitled to. Services like iplayer are invalidating these expectations. The solution is not for the BBC or the consumer to pay an additional iplayer tax; the solution is for the ISPs to get their house in order, adjust their business model to fit reality and stop making promises that they can't fulfil.

(A final thought: in any sane industry, an jump in demand for a service would be cause for celebration and bonuses all round. In the ISP industry it's apparently cause for dismay and demands for recompense. Something here is clearly broken, but it's got nothing to do with iplayer.)
Points of View Message Board 2: Off Topic and Off Site 2:07pm on 03 Dec 2008 I see a lot of posts endorsing the community aspect of the POV boards but nothing to explain why it should be the BBC's job to provide a platform for that community. While I enjoy nattering about random claptrap as much as the next man (or woman) it's not obvious to me why my neighbours' TV licence fee should be spent on moderators, developers and infrastructure to support my habit.

So: why should the BBC be spending the licence fee on message boards? (I acknowledge that same question could and should be asked of the other online services, but they are presumably not within the scope of this conversation).
Points Of View Message Board 5:50pm on 16 Nov 2008 I contribute to the POV messageboard on occasion, and enjoy reading the posts. Nevertheless, I'm hard-pressed to find a justification for their existence. The obvious candidates are:

1) They provide an opportunity for BBC staff to get feedback.

Perhaps, but there are much better tools (blogs, market research, etc) which can - and presumably are - employed to gather feedback in a more focused and less chaotic manner.

2) They enable viewers to discuss programmes amongst themselves.

Why is it the BBC's job to provide such a platform? There are alternatives out there, and creating an online discussion group is trivial if any niches are unfulfilled.

3) They provide a channel for viewer complaints.

Most of us know that they don't, and that there are official channels which should be followed.

4) They enable a sense of community.

Again, not Auntie's job. That community spirit can, and does, florish elsewhere on the internet.

So it seems to me that money is being spent on hardware, software, maintenance, bandwidth and moderators to provide a service which generates a flood of anti-moderation protests and is, in any case, a service which the BBC has no real reason to provide in the first place. I realise that this will probably not be a popular opinion - sorry about that - but I'd be interested to hear any counter-arguments in support of the provision of these messageboards.

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