Following on from my post a few days ago, I intend to move the entire project on to the next level. As you may know, I want a small team of tech/web experts who can get together, agree on a plan to redesign the site with all mod cons (!) I noted that there were a few other folks who clearly have good knowledge of this area (Hello Gosh, Hello Daniel 1979) and perhaps they could drop me a mail via the email the editor function on my own site A Tangled Web, so we can get this thing moving forward. Can you let me know when you mail me if it is OK for me to share your mail with the other members of the development team please? In essence, I want this group to talk together, put a plan in place and then propose back to me what your agreed vision for the site should look like. Then I’ll let you know mine! We can do all this quickly and efficiently. The thing I value is the knowledge YOU may have to help out on this! BTW – and crucially, I do not want anyone to think that this is all about the pursuit of style over substance. It is not! However presenting the case against the BBC in the best possible setting seems a sensible idea to me – so over to you…!!!!
MAKING BIASED BBC BETTER!
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Hi David –
I just posted this on the thread far below but I’ll bump it up here – I think the most important thing in the new design is to replace the awful Haloscan comment system with something better, like Disqus. I think the comments are a vital part of this blog and Haloscan just doesn’t do them justice. Also, whatever design you guys settle on, I hope it makes for a quick page load! Some blog/forum systems are so bogged down with fancy scripts and graphics that they’re sluggish to use. I love that this site is minimalist and hence snappy – and easy to read on a mobile device.
Jason has a good point. I often browse this site on my phone and on a gprs connection you don’t want to spend a lot of time waiting for a page to load,so hopefully in the redesign consideration might be given to that aspect.
It would be useful if the original post came up in the comments box.Exiting to check back on links etc wastes time.
Hi DV, just saw your post and e mailed you via the tangled web editor function. Incase you didn’t get it. I’m posting here. Let me know if you recieved it or not. Fingers crossed, and I’ll help in any way I can…
awful Haloscan comment system
Actually that must have been someones choice, because blogger will allow you to use haloscan, or bloggers own commenting facility. In the new blogger it works very well. ie like Iain Dales, or more recently a new lay out in a comment box. The halo scan will allow banning by ip, where as blogger doesn’t, perhaps that is the reason for chosing it? But the blogger facility is a much better lay out.
As to loading, this site has no advertising, which is good, and smaller posts with the click to read more function will allow for easier loading imho.
Thats providing they stay with blogger, and there is no reason they shouldn’t. Most good bloggers use blogger. It’s cheap, virtually free, and as reliable as anything else.
If memory serves, the Haloscan system dates from times when Blogger offered no commenting system of its own. Moving from one commenting system to the other is not without difficulties, not least because transferring archived comments is difficult even when you’re working with a single company and/or web server. Moving comments from one third party to another? Rather you than me…
Good to hear that a much need redesign won’t be a matter of style over substance: as I’ve been so critical of the (lack of the) latter in the past, it’s reassuring to know that that particular deficiency won’t go unaddressed 🙂
The new system needs a search function and any breakout windows need to be searchable with edit/find since some threads have literally hundreds of posts.
gl
So what? The awful state-funded bbc is still there spewing out rubbish and lies at our expense. It doesn’t matter a fig to me what you look like because so far you have not been successful in driving out the drivel.
David – one point is that Haloscan comments disappear in time, so losing a great deal of valuable info.
The other immediate improvement that could be made is to change the blogger settings to allow the posts to have titles. Makes RSS feeds etc much better for the recipient. Sites like Politics Home have a blog feed across the top with the post title – and BBBCs are all blank !
Lord knows why it’s not been done before …
Dear David,
May I suggest you look at the new order order site, its new system is very good.
Yours
Cassie K.
No sign on the BBC of Daniel Hannan’s wonderful savaging of Gordon the Moron in the European Parliament yesterday. I guess they’re still busy elevating the Jade Goody drama to primetime.
What might be good is to allow users some way of uplioading – or at least submitting to moderators – sound (and possibly vision) clips.
There is a cheap and very reliable piece of software called Polderbitz which allows even eejits like me to record anything played through the PC and edit it (there’s probably freeware somewhere that does the same thing, Polderbitz is only about £25 though I think).
Thus we could have entire broadcasts, news stories or just clips uploaded.
EG I’d quite like Paxman’s thing from Newsnight last night that the MCB guy he had on had ‘in the circumstances, entirely understandable concerns about Israel’.
Dan, yes I have one of those, although I upgraded to a US type one, and it will give you two channels at one time, and a capture and record facility, and recording from your pc is effortless. Theres no need to record from a camera anymore,all you need is an outside ariel. I had one, which was not in use, but found that if I plugged in to an old disused sky box I was able to get a lot of free view stations to record from if I wanted to. It’s effortless, totally totally effortless.
One suggestion would be for a biased bbc channel on you tube which i think is there, and any one who has any biased bbc stuff to show could link to it, with a link to the channel on the side???
Scott, I agree with you about the haloscan and loss of data if there is a move, that would be a decision for the admin to make. But as someone said above haloscan disappear in time anyway, where as bloggers would be archived along with posts in future.
p.s. I would also suggest a strap line for a new header????
EG I’d quite like Paxman’s thing from Newsnight last night that the MCB guy he had on had ‘in the circumstances, entirely understandable concerns about Israel’
There is to be a huge Israeli demo in London next week, so far the cost to the tax payer of these demos has run into millions, and I thought we were in a recession.
Gosh,
I did attempt to set up an unofficial archive of BBC bias on YouTube. The trouble is, the BBC has so much bias that it started to take too long. YouTube only allows ten minute clips, which would mean lots of editing just to upload an episode of Newsnight. When you also factor in Question Time, News at Ten, etc, it can take an hour a day to upload edit/upload the content.
I just want to put in a plea that – whatever system is adopted – some provision is made for keeping the archive of both posts and comments available from the new site.
The day may soon come when fast access to this enormous body of detailed evidence is needed by political researchers as the licence-fee and the BBC’s record come under closer scrutiny. It would be a mistake to consign all this to the some electronic graveyard and start afresh with a tabula rasa.
Do those of us barely out of the stoneage (me) have to be upgraded too?
There are so many great examples of bias that get posted in the user comments everyday, but searching through them to look for a particular example/type of bias can be difficult. What’s needed is a better way of storing, searching and organising the user submitted examples of bias – something like a database of bias. I think either having tagging system on the user comments (like what the main blog posts have) or having a wiki as mentioned on the other thread, that we can copy and paste our quotes and links of bias into would be a good way to solve this.
So if any political researchers were to ever come along in the future, looking for anti-Tory bias, for example, they could just click on a “anti-Tory” tag, or go to the anti-Tory wiki page on the BiasedBBC wiki and see a load of user submitted examples of bias all on one page.
At the moment, user submitted examples of bias aren’t sorted in any way and kind of disappear into an ocean of comments.
Now do try and keep within budget!
May 2008
The BBC’s management has been accused of “poor financial accountability” by the BBC Trust after it emerged today that the corporation went almost £36m over budget in its spending on bbc.co.uk in the past financial year.
Simple clarity, no gimmicks and a slightly larger typeface !
nrg 5:10
Nice one !!
Grimer, things are different now, with these new thingyma-gigs!
This tv on you computer (plutv is the one I have) not only gives you a stick to put in to get the tv and record it on your computer but a nice little editing facility, that cuts – trims – magically takes out noise. For one programme like newsnight, how long is that 30 minutes. Simply set to record newsnight, then take the file which is stored by the recorder on your computer in documents, or where ever you want it, then cut it into three, press produce for each section and now you tube allows up to ten videos to be uploaded at one time. It has a queue system. It’s effortless, and can be done when you are browsing, or working, or commenting.
It’s magic, and totally effortless….
Would it be possible to have a “sticky” general comment thread permanently at the head of the page?
Umbongo | 25.03.09 – 7:19 pm |
I second that, and strongly.
Speaking of which, could we have a new General Comments thread now, please?
Just dropped a suggestion of an article for David – this speech by Daniel Hannan at the European Parliament.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/daniel_hannan/blog/2009/03/25/my_speech_to_gordon_brown_goes_viral
and yet…..despite being the most viewed video from the UK on Youtube with 80,000 hits to its name…..no mention on the BBC? Daniel Hannan even mentions contacting the BBC
“I tipped off the BBC and some of the newspaper correspondents but, unsurprisingly, they ignored me”
Admittedly – as a Telegraph blogger, perhaps other news corps don’t want to redirect to the DT – but the video is on youtube, so surely just link there?
It’s certainly of more interest to me than
“…no black PM for at least a decade…”
how ‘on message’!
To be fair, ‘Yesterday in Parliament’ on R4 LW this morning had clips of both Hannan and Nigel Farage savaging the Great Leader.
Laban
Doesn’t that say it all? The 3 people still listening to long wave receive a simulacrum of impartial reporting. Now the BBC (and its apologists) can say “see – the BBC really is impartial – it was on radio 4 after all” although the item was not mentioned on flagship programmes like Today and Newsnight, let alone on news bulletins. Furthermore, Mark Mardell’s one-eyed view (supported by the two socialist MEPs he bothered to ask) is the only one most consumers of the BBC product will be aware of.
Umbongo:
Would it be possible to have a “sticky” general comment thread permanently at the head of the page?
Umbongo | 25.03.09 – 7:19 pm | #
The problem with that being the unwieldy size it would quickly grow to.
On the other hand, the current provision for general comments certainly isn’t adequate, with the general threads quickly buried down the page.
I think the only viable solution to this problem would be to make Biased-BBC a sort of hybrid site, with the daily blog as usual….but attached to that, a general forum on which people can start threads of their own choosing. Accessible from the blog front page of course.
I think this would bring the best of both worlds. There are elements of discussion functionality that only the forum format can provide, yet the blog format is obviously the meat and potatoes of the site.
I would also like to see comments restricted to registered users with a unique handle, to prevent anonymous users posting fake comments in the name of regular contributors (and also so that trolls who have nothing constructive to offer can be banned).