Almost an year ago, I wrote an article on recycling old posts in a blog. It made fun of the BBC website for pushing very old posts - perhaps unintentionally - back to the front. That article pictured how a BBC report of 2006 on J.K. Rowling’s 7th Harry Potter novel, became the most popular in 2013.
It was not a one-off incident. The popping up of very old articles from 2004 to 2009 as most popular read, is a continuing headache - at least for the readers, in the BBC website.
It would feel great to claim that even the editors of BBC read my article, and act on it. But the fact is the old posts popping up as the most ‘popular reads’ in a news site like BBC is a horrible mess, and the people responsible would act, even without stumbling on to my blog.
However it came about, in July 2014, the BBC on its website tried to implement a notification for such older articles. As we hover over the article links on the sidebar, a notification appears with the warning that ‘This story is older than 1 month’.
Which is a fine, sensible, and one of the most practical solutions ever.
Here is a snapshot of the problem on 07-08 July 2014.
The article ‘The joy of bidets’ was posted online on 07 July 2014. By 08 July 2014, it was being tagged with ‘older than 1 month’ alert, in an inexplicable mess up.
BTW the proof that this screenshot was taken on 08 July is the other articles which show up before the bidet one. Just Google for them like ‘Rare clouds seen over seaside town BBC’, and you will still find them as they were.
Someone must have pointed out the fiasco to BBC. For it disappeared within a few days (weeks?). And we are back to square one.
Reading about the mess-up in the ‘Galileo satellites on wrong orbit’, the ‘Many dead in Madrid plane crash’ caught my eye. It was the number 1 most popular read today, 23 August 2014. Only the article is from 2008 - about the Spanair plane crash!
Guess BBC does not have to worry too much about Google and other search engines, unlike ordinary bloggers like me. Still, I hope they would give one more thought to their readers.
It was not a one-off incident. The popping up of very old articles from 2004 to 2009 as most popular read, is a continuing headache - at least for the readers, in the BBC website.
It would feel great to claim that even the editors of BBC read my article, and act on it. But the fact is the old posts popping up as the most ‘popular reads’ in a news site like BBC is a horrible mess, and the people responsible would act, even without stumbling on to my blog.
However it came about, in July 2014, the BBC on its website tried to implement a notification for such older articles. As we hover over the article links on the sidebar, a notification appears with the warning that ‘This story is older than 1 month’.
Which is a fine, sensible, and one of the most practical solutions ever.
- practical: because it must be the easiest coding insert;
- sensible: because it will not ‘break’ whatever coding is in place;
- fine: because it alerts the user about the out dated nature of the article;
Here is a snapshot of the problem on 07-08 July 2014.
The article ‘The joy of bidets’ was posted online on 07 July 2014. By 08 July 2014, it was being tagged with ‘older than 1 month’ alert, in an inexplicable mess up.
BTW the proof that this screenshot was taken on 08 July is the other articles which show up before the bidet one. Just Google for them like ‘Rare clouds seen over seaside town BBC’, and you will still find them as they were.
Someone must have pointed out the fiasco to BBC. For it disappeared within a few days (weeks?). And we are back to square one.
Reading about the mess-up in the ‘Galileo satellites on wrong orbit’, the ‘Many dead in Madrid plane crash’ caught my eye. It was the number 1 most popular read today, 23 August 2014. Only the article is from 2008 - about the Spanair plane crash!
Guess BBC does not have to worry too much about Google and other search engines, unlike ordinary bloggers like me. Still, I hope they would give one more thought to their readers.
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