Changes to the BBC Messageboards

Hi David Williams,

There is a lot of dissent/confusion/disappointment on the "new" foodboard forum.

http://unitedkingdom.bahce.site/dna/mbfood/F2670471?thread=7709580
and
http://unitedkingdom.bahce.site/dna/mbfood/F2670471?thread=7727701

I used to be able to post a link that could be clicked on but it no longer seems possible or if it is I do nit know how. It might be interesting to you for you to actually see what bosrd members actually think of the new board.

Thanks.

Hi David

I am a little (well; actually, a lottle) confused over which of the changes to the Food boards (or rather board, as 4 of the original 5 have been closed and left in limbo) are due to your revamp, and which options exercised by the Hosts of the Food board as part of the food web prescence review.

For example the narrow column of text, bright white background and small print - are all boards getting them by force?

And the "Your discussions" layout - more space and less functionality than the old one, as still avaialble by snaging an Archers thread and going that way!

And the farcical minus millions numbers

There are MANY other points made on the Food site. Have a look. It's not busy!

I'm afraid the food board is a bit of a mess. Seems it was hurried out and still lots of gremlins. Just wondered why, as I had not enountered these problems on any other BBC boards. The 'Your discussions' layout is truly awful and basic things like colour/glare and type size are unpleasant to deal with for long.

Also why did 5 boards become one? It is most unwieldy and a lot of people have left. The disruption has been quite sad to witness. There has never been an explanation.

Also wondered why such a short notice period was given when the planning must have been going on for ages ... months maybe? Again no reason given.

The core CSS could be improved considerably by:

- putting the message text in a larger font;
- making the x in 'New Posts: x' bold and in a different colour if x does not equal zero.

The 'newer'/'older' notation in the listing of an individual posts is dumb, and should be replaced by the 'First/Previous/1/2/3/4/5/Next/Last' structure used for the messageboard thread listings. (We had and won this argument a year or so ago on the iPlayer messageboard - why are you now reneging on that implementation?)

The list of user posts should include a toggle (as at present) between messageboard comments and blog comments.

Russ

In the case of the Food Message Board the sprints seem to be more of a marathon or perhaps a three legged event.
I don't like the look, feel or attitude of the 'revamped' board, but obviously this is only in part due to the technical input, however, if it worked properly, that would be a bit of a help.

As usual approximately 13 paragraphs used to explain what mere mortals could sum up in 13 lines.

Are these changes happening to all BBC messageboards?

Specifically, is this going to happen to the Archers board?

Thank you very much for your prompt reply.

So, could you maybe post a link to this blog or a separate message on the boards to let users know?

Many thanks.

Very sorry, I don't understand what has been written at all.
Can anyone clarify in words of one syllable or slightly more?

Organistswife - what this means is that the Archers Board is going to change and become as "user-friendly" as the new Food board. The Archers Board ain't broke, it don't need fixing, but someone at the BBC feels that their budget & salaries need to be justified by hook or by crook.

I would like a) a translation and b) clarification too, please.

1. The ability for a host to pin a topic to the top of a topic list page so hosts can highlight items of interest to the audience.
2. A panel showing the most recent discussions across the messageboard so the audience can see where the active conversations are taking place.

These sound OK - though the second one is a bit redundant.

But nobody seems happy with the Food Board changes. Are those the changes all messageboards are going to go through?

Sorry - don't understand a word of it.

So the Food Board changes are what's going to be rolled out across all messageboards?

Will you post warnings of when this is to happen on the boards concerned?

Nick Reynolds Message 17.

It seems to me that the couple of people who've said they like the new Food message board are not actually people who use it very much. Generally speaking the people who used it a lot, have either left or use it much less. It's nowhere near as busy as it was before the changes.

Very sad The Archers board is changing.

Ta, very muchly Mustafa, now where did I leave Pooh Bear?

Absolutely devastated to read this. I have only just mastered the last change to The Archers. Despite the lessons learned from The Young Ones I fear I am too old to cope with yet another upheaval. If it ain't broke, why fix it, unless it is for the administrator's benefit.

If it has anything to do with Amber them I am ashamed of you! SFAnneâ„¢

As I said the changes will be implemented on all messageboards hopefully by the end of October.

Will you let the messageboards know, Nick? Or will we just sign on one day and everything will look different?

Could someone techie but capable of speaking normalese tell us what the changes will entail?

Thanks

Ooo will users get a stick to poke the Mods with when they're on the naughty step?

Thanks for this, David. Please could you expand a little and explain a little more about the brief that was given to the (re)designers. Why, for example, was a narrow screen presentation preferred? Who is your target user group?

General question: Why is uniformity perceived by the BBC to be desirable on its website when the programming for which it is a support service aims at diversity?

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

The second comment is about the farcical minus millions numbers

I have noted what I assume will be a very similar problem on the iPlayer Messageboard "mb BUG "My Discussions" numbering"since May not that the BBC seems to have taken a blind bit of notice* about that or many other messageboard bugs.

*The BBC may finally have commented on gobledegook bug, but the comment could have referred to the contact form fiasco.

David,

I note you are squashing major bugs, and the gobledegook bug can hardly be described as such, but it does make some posts unreadable so is not a trivial bug either.

A recently afflicted post being:
unreadable:http://unitedkingdom.bahce.site/dna/mbiplayer/NF7331803?thread=7740732&skip=100#p100834339
READABLE:http://unitedkingdom.bahce.site/dna/mbiplayer/F7331803?thread=7740732&skip=100#p100834339

It would be interesting to know what the cause is of that, and why the BBC has never as far as I am aware commented on it (other than an ambiguous the possible comment today counts).

Whilst I christened the above mentioned bug after noting in on the iPlayer mb, I wonder if it is also appearing on other boards, but largley unnoticed by the BBC.
The "farcical minus numbers" appear to be common to more than one MB but somehow escape the BBCs notice.

Hi David,

Thanks for the reply.

I mainly use POV, and I think the most recent discussions will be fairly redundant there too because the boards are so slow nowadays :-(

Are you going to post messages on the affected boards to let users know what is going to happen?

Thanks.

As already commented upon this must have taken quite a fair bit of planning by the BBC so two questions that may be of interest and should be easily answered.

1) Next Guinea Pig ?
Which board or group of boards will be next.
There must already be some roughed out schedule.
It does sound rather rapid if all boards are to be improved by the end of October.

2) Do users get any improvements ?
such as
- search facilities (has been promised)
- And what about lists of threads started by a particular user, rather than merely list discussions participated in.

And while on the subject
Comments listings are broken at least on the iPlayer Mesageboard (iP mb)
(the rather wordy post I link to above is a specific example of a failure of iP mb to list some comments)


Post Script re iP mb
Note 1
the iP mb does not have "comments" but rather "messages", however it still attempts to display comments made on all other BBC blogs but falls over after the 2nd page.
One advantage or disadvantage depending on viewpoint is how each individual messageboard displays comment & posts may differ from that chosen by other BBC messsageboards.

Note 2
This fault and some others I have previously noticed may only affect longer posts or longer lists, so the BBC may not immediatly notice problems until any improvements hit certain limits
- more than 2 pages for the comments listing above,
-more than 100 messages in a single thread for a previously noticed bug
I have pointed out other inconsistencies and bugs affecting the iP mb, no doubt they or something similar will re-occur after it is improved.

:-) #1 @ Denadar
You worried that ordinary users would not be able to post clickable links in the new messageboards, this does NOT seem to be a problem.
2nd Clickable link above is to a message in the new Food mb where I posted clickable links myself.

#31 - John, the database page-reference bugs underlying the new messageboard format have been in existence for well over a year now, as you are aware. There is no evidence that the BBC recognises these bugs exist, or understands them, or has any intention of acknowledging or addressing them. These bugs are not present in the older messageboard presentation. Since both new and old messageboard systems interrogate the same DNA data, it continues to be a mystery why the new implementation is so awful.

I'll take my 'off topic' yellow card in advance, Nick...

Russ

Thanks for the comprehensive reply, David :-)

But do the creators of these changes actually have any interest in what we, the users, actually find useful and helpful when using the Board.

I only use The Archers' messageboard and there are a couple of things that would make it more user friendly. But you don't ask us about these or, if you do, you ignore them!


P.S. I don't understand the jargon: could you use the same language as us mere mortals please.

@David,
Thanks for both of your replies to my comments.
.

Regarding the search facility.
Clearly you are aware users would find it useful but it may be problematic for the BBC in implementing.
If we are not able to have a proper search facility it would help if we could have at least a list of thread titles.

We can, and message board hosts even advise we should resort to using external search engines on mb to find articles of interest.
Message board sections can have hundreds or thousands of threads which currently are only ordered chronologically. Admittedly recent posts are probably most relavant to and chronological order is sensible at least as a default.
If we also could view just by thread title, at least there would be more chance of users posting in a suitable thread rather than starting an unnecessary duplicate, and more chance in finding any particular subject. Also if the title listing were to include a date & have a separate page location that opens up the possibility of users searching for a thread by title using an external search engine. A suitable date entry may then enable a search engine to order them by date.
Some words on any particular mb will be more common than others, anyone searching for "sky blue pink widgets" would probably get a single or a few relevant hits. But search for a word used frequently on any particular messageboard and large hit lists result, ability to search thread title alone or just list by title would be a step in the right direction for users. Obviously searching for the word cook or cooking on a food mb is pointless & would hit maybe 50-100% of posts and 99-100% of threads. But search for "cooking widgets" by title would be much more selective. (Not sure real world examples for food mb but say "cooking chicken", "cooking time" "cooking wok")

I know the width of the message board has already been mentioned.
This current blog for instance is only part of a screen width even on my lo res pc crt display, in FireFox browser I can zoom to fill screen width. BUT
On this blog and on the new Food Q&A the aspect ratio remains fixed and text gets bigger. This blog is not bad, only one side is taken up with other columns The new Food mb has other columns on both sides. That looks ok as you start looking at the top part of the MB but has a lot of wasted space as you scroll down.
Whereas on an older BBC mb eg the iPlayer mb the line length will adjust and text will flow into longer lines.
(Not sure whether browser adjusting settings may partially overcome this, or whether like say a pdf it is designed not to be displayed other than as intended)

Another thought on message width would be possibly considering allowing later pages to use the full width. So say the first page of maybe 25 messages using 1/2 page width, allowing the other columns in the top of the page. On second and subsequent pages the additional columns are removed and the message utilises a full width display now enabling say 50 messages to be displayed on each page.
Or is it mainly a problem of the Beeb reserving space to allow adverts on overseas use.

( I hope my use of emphasis is not considered bad netiquette, I am just highlighting salient points hopefully for the benefit of anyone quickly scan reading a longish post, covering two subjects search and width, that I considered strongly related.)

But do the creators of these changes actually have any interest in what we, the users, actually find useful and helpful when using the Board.

Short answer, no. ;-)

Longer answer, see the reams of comments left on blogs and messageboards during the "open dialogue" ...

#26 General problem with use of BBC Blogs comments

'Your Comment' not clearing

I seem recently to be seeing whatever I last posted appearing again in the 'Your Comment' box. That makes it easy to inadvertantly post a duplicate post. Once the [post comment] button has been hit surely the message should clear and [Your Comment] box should be empty.

#39 - sorry -
It did work ok and clear this time. Not sure why prior to posting #39 that I could still see a preveous message I posted sat in 'Your Comment'

On the Food Message board I already gave my opinion it was very difficult to read - colours and size of typeface.

It will be a good thing for me if Mustardland and WOM become like that as I will stop wasting time in them.

Why do the BBC invest so much time and effort in something that they do without ANY consultation with users? Haven't they noticed that on teh Food messageboard participtation has really dropped off? I though ratings were all for the BBC.

Bizarre. If I was already logged in (which of coure I was as a longstanding member of whatever that BBC thing is) why am I then a "new member"?

Because you're blogging Peggy, it won't last long.

On topic.
The three minute timer doesn't count down. The Strictly board used this system last year and it didn't count down then either.

It's a very annoying glitch - if you refresh you lose your message so you quickly learn to click 'post message' every now and then.

I just went to the Food Board to see what The Archers Board is likely to look like.

Couldn't find any threads started by the users of the Board: only bloggy type things started by the Chefs etc.

May be it was me being dim.

Here you go.

http://unitedkingdom.bahce.site/dna/mbfood/NF2670471

I quite like the new layout, and sticky threads

Vut fifty posts per page! Crikey!

And there's a snork smiley!

But not Vut, obviously.

Can I request an edit facility, please :-)

Thanks dogwhistle. Didn't recognise the word (which I have now forgotten) that you have to click on to get that page.

I use this to wander round Sussex.

http://unitedkingdom.bahce.site/messageboards/index.shtml



cricket-Angel, there is a vocal anti smiley contingent in ML, don't bank on there being any smileys if it's possible to turn them off.

cricket-Angel, there is a vocal anti smiley contingent in ML, don't bank on there being any smileys if it's possible to turn them off.

I'm well aware, dog whistle ;-)

Here's hoping POV make use of the full range.

Quote: We had two main objectives when we began work on the messageboard refresh project:

1. Bringing the visual design in line with the visual refresh happening across the rest of bbc.co.uk and that the messageboards have a consistent format that is familiar to audiences from around the site.
2. Providing the hosts of the messageboards a simple to use, yet powerful set of administration tools enabling them to be kept more up to date and relevant to the audience.
---------------------------------


Mr Williams.

Well you seem to be achieving your first objective, which would be a plus point if it weren't for the fact that the BBC sites' visuals now look and feel like exchanging my treasured premium brands for the very cheapest and nastiest supermarket bogofs. One would actually hope that was not the objective at all actually.

A second point is that the powerful administrative tools of which you speak are actually available to all on any free messageboard and have been for donkeys' years, even I've operated those without putting up the bunting! Find the hoo-hah about this 'improvement' sad really and quite silly.

As a third point, despite the time, effort and money spent on the so-called refreshes, the message boards that undergo the process seem to take many backward steps whereby functions which were actually useful have now disappeared or malfunction and despite all your sprinting, weeks later, no remedials seem to be operative.

I vote that instead of refreshing any more areas of the BBC content (note, you call it refreshing, personally I call it dumbing-down (the main news site and the iplayer being good examples) you all take 6 months in Faliraki at the licence fee payers' expense and just pretend you were working.
Oh.

I notice a bug that I reported on the iPlayer messageboard months ago now occurs on the new food board, so no doubt will be hitting the Archers board next.
See Another Bug on the Board (PermaLink to last message goes to first message instead) (6th May)
Commented upon in the Food thread here (msg#502 & #513)where you can try its affect

29. At 4:34pm on 17 Sep 2010, David Williams wrote:
petal jam - we needed to move from the previous page template which is in the process of being deprecated across the web site,

Does anyone know what this means? If so, please tell me.

Dave - if you see this, what did you want to say.

The new Food boards are a good example of the correct use of the word "deprecate". They are "almost universally deprecated".

"Deprecate" - To plead earnestly against

Oh dear, it's a grid system. Well, all that unused space will make the content seem even more important.

Will the current different sections of The Archer's MB (eg Discuss the Archers, The Bull, Fantasy Archers) be merged as happened on the Food Board? I note that there was something called Chatterbox there that has been closed.... Does that mean that everything except Discuss the Archers will disappear?

Thanks

Oops - sorry! Have just found Tayler's reassurance that they will all remain.
Thank

The BBC News site changed and was buggy, as well as unloved.
The iPlayer site changed and was buggy, unfinished and almost universally detested.
The iPlayer desktop was changed became even more buggy than the previous change and has gained a panic Beta when promised fix failed to arrive in twice the suggested timescale and is still under a steady flow of complaints.

Now the messageboards are changing with the most called for improvement Search being ignored

And a constructive comment on which to close: Read note and act on the posts by John99 above.

Indeed, you should listen to what Guv and John 99 have said.

So Nick can you answer why the most pressing improvements needed on the Message Boards (search etc. ) are not being addressed, whilst inconsequential changes which have not been requested are implemented?

Just who is the message board run for? Clearly it is not for our benefit.

Maybe David can list the findings of his Scrum exercise? I am curious as to his "major sources of feedback" from "those using it every day" and via bug reports. That implies staff not the users. Staff are not best placed to offer feedback as they are relatively casual users... and bug reports are not indicative of user generated needs. (especially as we can't raise a bug report.)

Surely the huge amount of user generated feedback submitted by users in November 2008 would be the first port of call for any changes to the MB's. So far we have not seen a single improvement from those submissions 20 months ago.

Surely the huge amount of user generated feedback submitted by users in November 2008 would be the first port of call for any changes to the MB's. So far we have not seen a single improvement from those submissions 20 months ago.

I completely agree with this.

Check out Nick's first blog on POV - lots and lots of helpful suggestions there.

David Williams,
link"I've had some updates about bugs ... the next release (date still to be confirmed).

The Host: Ramona of the Food mb on which you piloted these messageboard changes has now commented on some of the many Bugs and problems that the changes caused. Some being added to a 'backlog' (so presumably we will need to wait many months for any fix) and others being addressed by "the next release"

Presumably we now have to wait for the next sprint, in just over one weeks time, & will then get a similar blog to this one from you announcing what is about to happen.

It will be interesting to see whether the bugs are being fixed whilst the changes only affect the Food mb, or whether the next sprint goes ahead and changes the Archers board before addressing the bugs. Although I note you mention that is, apparently,not (msg#34) directly under your control.

I have already noted above (msg #28) your comment in the main body of this blog that only bugs "where the service is completely unavailable." are being addressed in this sprint.

I watch with interest, hoping that the changes process enable message board bugs to be investigated and fixed.

So with all the processes, systems approach, scrum, sprint and 360 feedback we still get a poorly designed, poorly implemented and unpopular tweak to an inflexible platform that is not meeting the needs of the users.

I think it would have been better to buy a fit for purpose platform than try and re-invent the wheel repeatedly over 6 years.

#63 Bugs UPDATE
It would appear from this BBC post we may be able to expect bug fixes within a few days. Which would be a pleasant surprise.

"I’ve been told that the plan is to publish the latest fixes in the next few days."
{Message 10. Posted by Ramona Andrews (U14570541) on Tuesday, 21st September 2010 - food q&a ]

What a load of old twaddle!

Can you stop tweeking things and instead fix things that are broken...for instance the PM Blog has retrograded back to the poor performance of only a few months ago.

For goodness sake!

I'm really pleased that you took the time to explain all that.

Now, can you get someone to translate the murky bits into Plain English for the benefit of us numpties who don't know what your tecky definitions for expressions like 'iterative' and 'semantically marked up' are?

I'd be willing to have a go at a draft, being something of a words bird by trade, except for the fact that I didn't understand the murky bits myself!

(I think I like the sound of Recent Comments being flagged up though - on the PM blog we've been banging on about that for ages.)

but for all the fine words and techie processes, they create rubbish - buggy, flawed and unfit for purpose.

Perhaps the BBC should have less consultants and meetings and more talented designers.... or admit their home grown systems are over-blown, overpriced and never as good as everyone else's off the shelf platforms.

I'm with P Nutt and Fifi on this - it is difficult to understand what you are trying to tell us as you are using too many technical phrases and "in house" terminology.

For instance: "we developed, what we call internally, the vanilla skins that produce semantically marked up and accessible HTML with basic styling" - all very well telling us what you call them internally but you haven't actually explained what on earth you are on about to people you are posting to on an external platform.

Like Fifi, I note 'Recent Comments' is making a comeback. That is brilliant as we (on the PM Blog) have had many months of entreaties to bring it back. It is a very efficient way of keeping tabs on updates of discussions of personal interest.

Agree with some others that, certainly on the PM Blog, there have been repeated hic-coughs over the past few days: whatever you write in the 'Post a Comment' section, when you hit 'post comment' the first post of the thread appears until you re-fresh. There were also several double and one triple entry on 'The Beach' thread - these made by experienced bloggers unlikely to be the cause of the problems. A few gremlins need to be chased out there.

Gremlin Report:

Re. my last para: when I hit 'Post Comment' on mine above, I got the first post appearing instead of mine, until I hit 'F5' and refreshed.

so why is it 5 years on that you are looking at improvements? We listed the improvements we needed in 2005 and no-one from the BBC had a thought to listen then, nor since. But you are quite happy to spend thousands on your convoluted processes to come up with your cascaded tinkering that amounts to more bugs and dis-functionailty.

PS. why when I post on this blog does the first numbered post display at the bottom instead of my post?
Why do the listing of now pages "1,2,3,4 next" etc... get listed at the bottom of blogs but they link to no-where?
Why do spaces get removed from text in blog posts? These are old bugs but no-one listened when I reported them months ago.

PS. why when I post on this blog does the first numbered post display at the bottom instead of my post?
Why do the listing of now pages "1,2,3,4 next" etc... get listed at the bottom of blogs but they link to no-where?
Why do spaces get removed from text in blog posts? These are old bugs but no-one listened when I reported them months ago.

Why will this post not be allowed because the blog system returns "you already posted this"?

and then when you try to modify the blog post you find it has already posted it (without your knowledge) and despite it apparently rejecting the original post?

First up, I assume that although you talk exclusively of "BBC Messageboards", I assume BBC Blogs are also included in the revamp, as they use the same CMS (Content Management System).

Anyway, apart from what's already been posted, a couple of feature requests:

a) Clearer separation between Categories in the Categories panel - as a single category can occupy multiple words, a space isn't really sufficient to distinguish separate categories.

b) On the rare posts that exceed 500 replies, is it possible to draw more attention to the "1 2 3 4 5 Next" links, or at least have a "Last" link, as being in the same font size as everything else makes them a little indistinct.

I'm slightly baffled by your point about numbers below pages as I can't actually see them. But I do know that this is a known bug which is being dealt with. As is the other bug you mention about "you have already posted this".

These are "bugs" I noticed when I first used these blogs in 2008. How come they haven't been fixed yet?

Nick,

go to a blog with more than 500 posts and (as stated to you specifically last year) you will see 1,2,3,4... at the bottom. They mean nothing, and don't link. There are loads of other bugs concerning refreshing of pages with many posts... some of these bugs prevent you from seeing subsequent posts. All in all, a pathetic implementation for a mature blog.

I'm slightly baffled by your point about numbers below pages as I can't actually see them. But I do know that this is a known bug which is being dealt with. As is the other bug you mention about "you have already posted this".

These are "bugs" I noticed when I first used these blogs in 2008. How come they haven't been fixed yet?

I can send you a screenshot of the bug where the first post is displayed instead of your own newly posted post.

Those who've mentioned problems with the page links on multi-page posts, perhaps you could include a link to a blog post where they don't work?

There's a PM Blog post which has now exceeded 2,100 posts and seems to work fine (at least for the dozen or so regulars!):

http://unitedkingdom.bahce.site/blogs/pm/2010/02/the_beach_146.shtml

Hi Mittfh,

I have just gone back to some old blogs that exceeded 500 ( re: DOGs, HD Quality, Message Boards closing, lack of accountability etc.) and can't reproduce the bug now. It was such a long time ago that i mentioned it, without action from Nick, that I gave up using the links and always assumed, as usual, nothing would be fixed. Evidently someone did after 2 years. All we need now is for all the other bugs to be sorted.

as you can see above... the disappearing spaces bug continues... and inability to use backwards arrows, and first post displaying in place of the last... and so on.

In Post 83, OfficerDibble wrote:

• the disappearing spaces bug continues... and inability to use backwards arrows,

Back to the subject of the blog: How did the feedback result in two improvements that no-one has mentioned as a need?

The pinning of subjects by HOSTS is not a requirement mentioned before. We hardly have any hosts on the POV message board anyway, and to be frank, it is our community and surely the frequent users should have a say what is pinned, not a part-time, here today host with a vested interest. It is bad enough that the agenda is set on blogs, without it being skewed on Message Boards.

Second: Recent Discusssions. We have that already on single boards. I don't think many users will need to know that a post on the Archers Board is alongside the Parenting board, and Drum N Bass board. Who asked for that? Subscription yes.... but the BBC can't do that.

So please, before you expend lots of effort doing unpopular things that we haven't asked for and that destabilise the boards - please consult us to remind you of the list of imperatives that have existed since 2006. That, of course, assumes you are listening....... .... hello.... David?

Mittfh,

Hi, Do you mean I have to memorise codes to use a left pointing arrow? Very friendly.

Disappearing spaces. I don't really care what the excuse is, it is silly for a so-called professional platform to exhibit such bugs.

Nick Reynolds wrote:
OfficerDibble - I'm told that the "you have already posted this" bug when posting a comment has now been fixed.

Thanks

Thank-you Nick. Did they just switch the feature off?

Maybe before they try and put in features of marginal benefit that cause greater issues they should devote their time to things that are a priority.

and of course test.

or is that our role? I get the impression that the whole of the BBC Future Media is engaged in a technical exercise, and the audience, far from being the focus of all the effort, are merely the lab rats.

Nick

Can you also explain the "Categories" listing below. On proper blogs this represents the relative popularity of certain words. On yous it seems to be cherry picked. "Scrum" is included but only occurs once in a blog, yet DOG is not included in the cloud, yet occurs over a 1000 times on BBC blogs. Who edited that category list, and why?

Also if you search "Nagler" you get a blog by her on DOGs. If you search Dogs you don't get any reference. How can that be?

neatly sidestepped.

So back to my post 86. Can you answer those questions about the message board changes?

and where can I ask you those questions about the search of Blogs and Message boards?

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

I'm not getting a link when I pass the cursor over the bold bit in post 98. Might be me, of course ...

GOt it now, thanks to POV_Host http://unitedkingdom.bahce.site/blogs/bbcinternet/2010/09/changes_to_bbc_message_boards.html