F1

Live Blog Improvements! Any ideas?

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 55 total)
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  • #128367
    Funkyf1
    Participant

    Hi everyone, first I want to thank Keith for hosting the Live blogs for race weekends, along with the assistance of mods, it’s a great opportunity for people all over the world to be able to follow the practice, qualifying and race action. I myself live in Australia and we are not privileged to any on screen action prior to qualifying so be able to follow the progress and use the live feeds the crew supplies is what every fanatic needs. My only frustration in using the live blog is the fact that I don’t always get auto posts, meaning sometimes I can wait up to 2 minutes before seeing my posts, by the time it’s posted on screen, the topic has changed and my comment is irrelevant. I don’t know if this can be changed or managed but would love to have more of an input. Can someone explain to me why this happens?Does anyone else have any feedback? Once again to all the people involved, thank you, you do a great job.

    Funkyf1

    #150326
    Prisoner Monkeys
    Participant

    Auto-comments are usually given to the regulars around the blog, the people that the mods recognise as being … well, regulars. With the sheer weight of responses that the average session gets, there’s a need for moderation – largely to prevent things like flame wars and swearing from getting through. The regulars like Steph and Icthyes and Scribe and a few others have been around long enough to know the rules, and often have something of worth to say, so the moderators don’t need to worry about them. When I first joined the blog, I didn’t get auto-comment, but after a few months I got a reputation as a regular and I’m upgraded to auto-comment for the live blogs almost as soon as I join them. I’m not boasting here, just saying – if you want auto-comment, you might have to hang around for a little longer. Get known as a regular, and it will eventually follow.

    #150327

    Mods are very limited by the Cover-It-Live system. They get so many posts to approve plus the 20 unmoderated users plus all the Twitter stuff so by the time they’ve got a comment and approved it AND everything else is calculated, it’ll appear. That’s not really they’re fault, that’s the technology struggling to keep up to us. Added to that that F1 is such a fast moving sport, a lot of things can happen between you typing something and it appearing.

    Yes it’s frustrating for some and I can appreciate it, but the key thing is that it is still a live blog and not a live chat.

    #150328
    Ned Flanders
    Participant

    Yeah, as PM and MG have said there is limited capacity for auto comments. But yeah, it is annoying when there is a big delay for your comment to get published, but there’s not much that can be done about that I think

    One suggestion I have is cut down on the Twitter posts. A lot of them are pretty mundance and boring, often stating things we can see for ourselves. Plus they tend to be posted in clumps so all the normal comments get obscured. Obviously a lot of the Twitter feeds are very informative, but some of them are a waste of space

    #150329
    Prisoner Monkeys
    Participant

    Don’t forget, Ned – there are some of us who don’t get practice (or even qualifying). The Live Blogs and Twitter updates are sometimes the most information we get.

    PS – sorry for not mentioning you as a regular, respected member earlier (I knew I was forgetting someone).

    #150330
    Scribe
    Participant

    The only thing to be done is to keep on posting! An post well like PM says. What we can do in return is try to read the modderated posts a little more and respond if you’ve something interesting to say.

    If your a regular contributor on the forum and the comments section and I recognise your name I’m far more likley to read and respond to your comment. Keep going, definatley liveblog for the practice sessions as there tends to be more space on the unmodded spots and generally less trafic altogether. If you become recognised and appreciated and as regular and good contributor you’ll start getting unmodded on the practice sessions before you get the same on the race and qualifying. Remember though as Geoffrey says this is a blog not a chat, all though a nice amount of chat goes on.

    And finally, volunteer to moderate, we always need more mods on the liveblog, it means you can’t concentrate fully on the race, but you’ll only spend a certain amount of time actually publishing comments, you make friends with the other mods and you get to give something back to the site that we all love.

    #150331
    Icthyes
    Participant

    If a person wants to see the Twitter posts, they can join Twitter and keep an eye on them. They’re often useless by the time they get posted to the live blog.

    #150332
    Funkyf1
    Participant

    Must agree with Icthyes on the Twitter issue, not only can they be outdated, but often contain large amounts of info and more so pictures which occupy the majority on the blog page. There is no need for pictures in live blogs. Thanks for your input regs and mods as stated you run a great blog.

    #150333

    Great idea for a thread guys, please keep the ideas coming!

    #150334
    Hare
    Participant

    The one main thing that bugs me, is the size of the console. It WAAAAAY too small. I’m using what? 1/16th of my screen real estate on my machine? I can see, maybe 5 comments at a time? And when theTweets comes, which I actually like, it shifts all my text out of view. I’m constantly scrolling up!

    The same with the Mod console, you’re constantly scrolling to the bottom of the page to check the latest tweets. This is annoying, especially when you’re on laptop, and you’re relying on a trackpad.

    Otherwise, everything (bar the auto comments, but I mod and don’t usually have to deal with that) pleases me.

    #150335
    Hare
    Participant

    Incidentally, the auto comments depends a lot on the Mod holding the fort at the time.

    I recognise pretty much all of you when you come and it makes my life easier to give you auto comments. I often wait for a couple of comments just to make sure it’s not an imposter.

    I think the rest of my suggestions are really software based, and not ‘Keith Based’. For example, I would rather we all had accounts on CoverItLive, and auto comments was granted too all of us by mods who knew us, then they stuck for the season, not the session. The we could all have our Gravatars beside our comments, which always looks cool.

    #150336
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    @ Hare

    YES! You beat me to it. That is the one major annoyance for me. If you glance away from the console for a bit you can return only to have to scroll up, then skim read as more comments keep coming in.

    But this too may not be ‘Keith Based’ .. ? But it’s still a wonder why the box is so small.

    #150337
    plushpile
    Participant

    Is there any alternatives to CoverItLive to try?

    Most of my problems with the live blogs come from there, the content is usually good it’s just a pain to read.

    TBH when I’m at home on my computer I don’t usually bother with the live blogs because it’s a pain to read, but when I’m out and on my iPhone the live blogs are much easier to read and excellent as it helps me ‘watch’ a session when I’m away from a TV.

    #150338
    Ned Flanders
    Participant

    PM- thanks :) there are loads of other regulars who deserve a mention too, but because I’m lazy and I don’t want to miss anyone I won’t try listing them.

    I still think there are too many pictures and Twitter posts. Of course, a lot of them are great, but some of them are just stating the obvious. If it were possible to be selective with the twitter feeds rather than just posting anything and everything, that would definitely be my main suggestion

    #150339
    wasiF1
    Participant

    @ Hare agree with you the screen needs to be a big bigger.

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