Deleted

Sorry for the cross posting on different platforms, but I'd like to know how you think we can improve commenting across bbc.co.uk? This includes message boards, forums, blogs or anywhere else that the public can add some kind of comments.


We are always trying to improve the public value of our different offerings on the web. There is a fine balance between providing public value with broad appeal to the majority of licence fee payers on the one hand, while at the same time keeping up with new technology and experiences.

One of the areas we are spending a lot of time on is "comments". BBC web properties have several ways of accepting user contributions, newsgathering, user generated content, comments, discussions or what ever you want to call it.

In the next week a group of us - from telly, radio, news and online - are putting together a presentation on our future requirements. We already have a long, long lists of ideas, but we need to know what the community actually wants?

I recently Twittered about this (twitter.com/tomVS/st...) and got some interesting replies:
- @tomVS could I add 'switching off comments' to your list tinyurl.com/2f8h5k
- @tomVS I hope you are including threaded commenting.

These are interesting ideas, and we've already put together a lot. But I'd like to know what you think? We need the ideas before lunch on Monday, 1 December.

Let's use our (existing) commenting system to build a wish list about our (future) commenting system. We need to build a list of requests.

In short: add your voice, about your voice...

TomV

They haven't given us much 'consultation time' have they, less than 48 hours and at at weekend!!!

And an edit facility would be great!

The OP reads more like an internal BBC memo rather than a communication to us.

Burying bad news perhaps?

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 15:20 GMT, in reply to Nippie (brrrr it's cold) Sweetie in message 8

Oh thank goodness it wasnae only me. I thought I had lost it (well I have but that's a completely and utterly different story)

It hasn't given us much time, in fact I won't be around tomorrow much. What time on Monday? At the end of play or what?

A simple answer Nick.

Keep the message boards but police them better.

Forget blogs no one wants them.

Don't change things for the sake of it either please!

H

The problem with the BBC MBs is that they don't appear to be moderated properly & then they suddenly over react.

Nippie

Thanx for the link, but there is a difference between Nick's question and mine. I'm specifically interested in the "comment" function, and *not* whether you prefer blogs or boards (I know the answer )

So put another way, my questions are:

What do you like about the current way in which you post messages?
What more do you want (like search, I know)?
Would you comment more on blogs if the commenting worked more like the boards (with smileys, reply tos, etc)?

In short, I'm looking for ideas on how we improve ALL commenting across bbc.co.uk. This includes boards, but also blogas as well as Have Your Say and any other comments in the future.

TomV

So what you are saying is....

The blogs aren't working as they are. They're not been used as much as you want. So are you getting rid of the message boards?

Commenting on blogs is difficult and hard to follow. We don't like them and we want to keep the boards.

And I don't mean to sound rude but wouldn't it be a better idea to get rid of the blogs and improve the message boards?

and *not* whether you prefer blogs or boards (I know the answer smiley )

Quoted from this message

But will that be taken into account at the final reckoning.