More of your say
- 18 Apr 07, 12:09 PM
If you visit the message boards this week you may notice a few changes. They are all there as a result of feedback from our users who, back in November, took part in a website questionnaire and a number of focus groups to tell us how they wanted the site to develop.
Their message was we want more clarity about just how many comments each debate receives, what is done with them, and the status of their own individual comment or complaint. They also want to see their messages published, but not necessarily ones from other people which they don’t think are as good or pertinent! They also want the pages to be a good read.
So, from this week on the right hand side of any debate, we now have a box with the total number of comments received, those published, those rejected and those in the moderation queue. At times this moderation queue will seem excessively large – today the Virginia shooting debate had over 6,000 in the queue, built up since last night when the moderator left at 11pm. When the debate is closed, the queue of messages is incorporated into the total as no further comments can be added by the team.
Members can see at a glance the number of comments they have had published, and how many complaints they have made in the last week. They will also see the status of all of the comments they have sent in. The four options are; a comment was published, it was unpublished (as the debate is closed and it didn’t get on), it is waiting to be moderated, or rejected, where a moderator decided it broke the House Rules.
All of these terms plus the House Rules are explained on the right hand side. There is also a page for complaints made in the last seven days – and the status of those; upheld, or not, or awaiting a decision.
We have also decided to highlight the messages made by the ´óÏó´«Ã½ moderators in a different colour so they stand out and are noticed. Usually these are requests from us to keep debates on topic and avoid having a dialogue between two users to the detriment of anyone else reading or contributing!
The statistics from our Have Your Say debates continues to rise - and we hope these changes will encourage more people to take part.
In January the number of page views to the Have Your Say part of the site peaked at over 12 million and we now have just under 200,000 registered users.
We now publish 49% of messages received – up from around 25% from a couple of years ago. Of course as soon as something momentous happens that people want to tell us about, that can rise to over 30,000 e-mails for any one topic and the percentage published will not be as high.
Please let us know what you think of the changes, and if you have any more suggestions to make. We really do want you to have your say!
Vicky Taylor is editor of Interactivity
