There's just such an
amount of stuff that doesn't meet the eye here. Are we to take it that even Lewis Hamilton's thundering emergence hasn't made the difference in numbers for ITV to retain F1 rights? Soccer that much more profitable? Not according to the latest figures from the Sports Business Group at Deloitte: Formula One is the highest earning sport per event
in the World. In overall income, F1 ranks third (NFL and Major Legue baseball being 1, 2), but certainly beats Premier League. Something just doesn't "compute".
I "came" to F1T from the original BBC 5Live messageboards for two reasons: 1) BBC changed the msgb format, or basically discontinued it and tried to establish a new less distinct environment with the 606 msgboards and 2) F1T is much closer to the focus I have on Formula One than any other msgboard that I know of. When prompted for suggestions by the BBC, I offered mine (
at length, as one might expect if accustomed to my particular strengths and foibles) and was pretty much alone at the time in doing so, as for the most part the sometimes expressive former 5Live members saw the actions of the BBC moderators and service providers as irredeemable. Now, I'm intrigued by Bernie's statement: "
The BBC has some innovative ideas to consolidate and expand our UK fan base." Now, as "Beeb" eventually
did take an interest in some of my suggestions and even seemed to make use of those (
to a degree), I'm interested to see to what extent the rest of my suggestions will be reflected in these "
innovative ideas":
checkered, Nov. 7th 2006, BBC 606 - 'The new 606 - your feedback' wrote:Well, dear anonymous 606 Manager,
am I to assume “constructive” can be equated to “taken into account as possible when attempting to improve the service to the general benefit of manager and contributor alike via technological means pertaining to the functions and presentation of the new 606 board”? If so, here goes.
Layout
First, the width of the article and comment column – it’s just too narrow. I know there’s a readability issue with wider columns but seriously, I wonder how many readers still have their monitor set at 800*600 pixels? On my laptop’s widescreen, barely a third of the horizontal dimension is utilized and the rest is left empty: A space that is glaring white and doing no favours to my retinas at the moment. Tone it down and if at all possible, have the columns react to the width of the monitor, up to a limit. And as much as red is BBC’s current signature colour, keep it down to a minimum or at least use hues that aren’t so visually aggressive.
Second, if the width of the written comments seems constricted, the dimensions of “comment on this article” box are just prohibitive. One would expect to be able to inspect most of what one has produced in a glance and not have to constantly roll up and down. Currently, if I take the trouble and time to contribute, I just open an external text editor and cut and paste the text to the text box – a complication I could do without. I also suspect that seniors, who are increasingly web literate, could have vision related issues with such a small text box.
Format
While more or less information is provided for navigation on the top of a page, I’d wish it stayed the same no matter where you “are” in the virtual framework i.e. the search bar should always – and I can’t stress this enough – always be found on the top of the page in exactly the same place. The same goes for the “sort by” bar, although in the long term I fail to see any benefit in the option to sort the articles/comments/discussions alphabetically.
But navigation won’t be eased significantly enough unless there’s also a hyperlink navigation tree available - it will suffice if the pages directly above the page viewed in the hierarchy are clearly visible. I’m not against evolving to a less hierarchical and potentially a self organizing structure, but the main avenues, topics and entities should be immediately obvious to the contributor and not subject to having to make a search of some sort. Make hierarchy and equality parallel, not mutually exclusive. If the service isn’t completely transparent, the environment is perceived as either open to implicit manipulation of the contributors’ behaviour or unnerving in its undecipherable dimensions.
I must also strongly suggest that the total number of comments to an article be always visible, as well as the time of the latest comment posted. Contributors should be able to determine whether they want to list all articles based on the most recent comments by default. While the user rating is an interesting feature, an activity rating as a function of time and some sort of a relevance rating could sometimes be more useful/applicable.
Articles
As things stand, only articles are enabled for motorsport. I do hope that in time, the report and profile fuctions can also be included ... I would think that providing such “distinctiveness” beyond football really isn’t such a hassle in a virtual environment. You have the template at your disposal, obviously.
I commend the idea of enabling contributors to use the article format. The traditional messageboard environment pretty much discourages from making greater than fleeting efforts, since the contribution is potentially quickly lost in the banter and not followed up by very many thoughtful replies. Maybe contributors could be enabled to edit an “online magazine” of sorts in their own member pages, collecting choice articles and comments there in a logical entity. Perhaps contributors could even manage such “publications” as collective efforts, providing a medium to those functioning mainly as fans or hobbyists.
Still, sometimes people just want to kick off a conversation and thus the 606 motorsport ... whatchamacallit ... “section” sports single sentences, or sometimes barely that, that are nevertheless billed rather grandiosely as “articles”.
The user rating function does little to alleviate this and since I don’t want to see censorship (deleting articles based on the economy of words or scantness of content) I suggest that you formulate a “pre-article area” where contributors can put forward ideas that can be shaped forward once likeminded contributors are found. Thus it would also be necessary to enable contributors to post articles together.
Thank you for your attention; and if this has inspired further thoughts on your part or you have comments, I’d be most interested to read them.
checkered, Nov. 7th 2006, BBC 606 - 'The new 606 - your feedback' wrote:On the subject of quoting, it also dawned on me that written content is not the only pertinent material that could be included in an article or a comment.
I’m not an intellectual rights expert, but if streaming video, audio, or pictures are included from an off site source but clearly indicated as such and dutifully coded so that it isn’t a copy or a reproduction of the original file, but actually is the original file, it isn’t a copyright infringement, is it? I mean, the content can be proved, code by code, to be an independent website viewed in the context of another website, right?
Many an article could benefit hugely from relevant videos or photos, and it would also make the 606 more “graphically lively” and the articles and discussions more informative. In my time at Five Live motorsport messageboard I haven’t yet seen links to off site content abused in great numbers or in any significant way, even if it hasn’t exactly been the most stringently policed neck of the net ... in my experience.
Anyway, I know there are also fans here who do go to tests, events and races with their own digital cameras etc. who really should, at will, be able to share their experience in full with other community contributors. That wouldn’t even constitute a copyright issue. Equally, for example the F1 organisation already has “race weekend” pictorials on their site (and video feeds will follow soon if I have any idea which way the net is headed) ... BBC could attempt to negotiate the right for 606 contributors to attach that material for non-commercial non-benefit purposes to the articles and comments without financial compensation.
Especially as organisations such as the FIA or F1 Administration don’t sport blogs, chats, messageboards or what have you for their fans. They could extend that right to the commercial networks’ messageboards too, for good measure, so as to not have a “conflict of interest” or “unfair competition” from a publicly funded organisation. All in the name of getting more people interested and participating, right?
Yes, I know these are tall orders for the 606 managers. I’m not pressing these matters as if I expected to have them resolved yesterday. But do look into these and please do comment on the concerns and hopes put forward here as best you can. If there’s something you don’t know as of yet, then just write so - I’m the last person to bedevil you for that.
We all function within our resources. I guess if there’s anything that is a given about running a messageboard (or whatchamacallit), it is that participants are so many and diverse that there are always going to be those who pose surprising questions and pressures on the service and its managers.
All the best.
Mike © - 606 Manager, Nov. 14th 2006, BBC 606 - 'The new 606 - your feedback' wrote:Checkered thanks for your feedback on the new 606, you've certainly given plenty of it! I've passed them all on to the relevant people who are currently working with us to sort out the teething troubles with the new 606.
As with all things technical some can be implemented quite quickly while others take longer. I will try to keep you updated as to what is going on as I when I know.
Chris R - BBC Sport, Nov. 15th 2006, BBC 606 - 'The new 606 - your feedback' wrote:checkered - many thanks for your insightful and construxctive feedback. We are working on the navigation to give more structure to it when you are in an article as well as uncovering some more features of the system. Developments expected in the next couple of weeks.
The size of text boxes is also growing (thankfully!) but regarding column widths when I have made similar points to our designers they always refer me to research about the ideal number of words/characters on a line.
As far as embedding links to photos and videos into 606 it is something we are making some progress on. The BBC has to take great care doing something like this for all kinds of editorial, commercial, accessibility and rights reasons so it's a tricky subject as you say. However I expect we will eventually allow such links, subject to some house rules.
James D - 606 Manager, Nov. 16th 2006, BBC 606 - 'The new 606 - your feedback' wrote:Folks,
As you may have noticed, some changes have been made to the site.
For a full list of what they are, read Tara's piece here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/606/A17431021
checkered, Nov. 19th 2006, BBC 606 - 'The new 606 - your feedback' wrote:Hi Mike, Chris R, James D and Tara!
First of all, thanks for actually taking the time to wade through the comments. Mine especially came out with little or no regard for economy of words! The navigation changes (members online, most recent) certainly, definitely seem to be an improvement and I’ll spend some time gathering experiences of the new options before opining about those again. And I especially value that all content types were enabled for all sports – thank you. Maybe representatives of the teams can be persuaded to contribute to the profiles themselves, too! That’d be great.
Since you’re very much at the “business end” of this environment as managers and such, you do need to have the time to step back and review the entirety of the service, too. Nevertheless, I do hope you make it a habit of prompting us participants for ideas periodically, too.
Or in other words, I’ll hold you to the promise of this “not being the last time we will make changes”. In a bit of a leap from usability to technology itself, I’ve been wondering why, when one clicks on a link on the 606 sidebar for example (in which seems to be a frameset structure), does the whole browser window content always seem to refresh? I admit I’ve only the experience of someone who has done a couple of web pages as a hobby, but I thought the main idea of using a frameset was that only part of the structure refreshed at a time. It might be, of course, that security aspects or something like that overrides such considerations, which I can of course accept as such.
The closing of the Five Live is a real point of discontinuity which is clearly visible on the motorsport section. The immediacy of the medium can work against making changes; just the other day I was reading an article at the BBC Technology News about a web consultancy having put the “losing interest” limit of internet retailers’ front page being dowloaded at a mere ten secs! No surprise then that major changes of format prompt strong reactions. I believe, though, that these can be compensated and addressed by novel approaches and options. And I believe the BBC has the clout and stature to enable those.
On my previous response, I wasn’t merely talking about embedding links to photos and videos, I was suggesting embedding actual photos and videos as such from external sources, especially ones provided by FOM or FIA if at all possible. I appreciate the “trickiness” of all this, but as if by cue, Max Mosley addressed the same issue just last Thursday when he held a press conference with Burkhard Goschel about how the FIA and the GPMA have come to a comprehensive agreement about the near-to-midterm future of F1. Here’s an exact quote from mr. Mosley (if you want a link to the whole text, I can provide it):
"... What they are talking about is an audience. It may well be that in the more distant future the internet will play a bigger role. The Formula 1 images should be freely available to the public. That is fundamental to the manufacturers and to us."
Now, I don’t know how you might perceive this, but to me it appears to be an outright invitation for unspecified partners to start pilot projects in doing just that. Now, this statement alone could provide a framework of exploring how, instead of if, it can be done. It might prove worthwhile to explore this possibility promptly.
Chris R - BBC Sport, Nov. 27th 2006, BBC 606 - 'The new 606 - your feedback' wrote:checkered - now I'm just a sport editor who has never coded a page in my life but in my understanding these pages are not in frames, even if certain things like navigation are shared in a template.
As for what Max Mosley said, I'm no lawyer either but, judging by what I found on fia.com, it looks like he is talking about "free-to-air TV" (such as ITV1 which of course shows F1 in the UK) rather than making things freely available in the "open source" way you describe over the web.
Now, taking a completely, utterly, conceited view of the latest developments I have to wonder how far the BBC is willing to go to lure me back?! Oh well, I have to confess to commenting a few driver columns over the last year or so (
Kovy was and Mark is a columnist there, also a development that appeared after my comments). Oh well, I'll be most interested to see what comes of it. "TV" as an independent media has long since vanished and it's high time F1 moved with the times. I hope the "Beeb" can pull it off.
