Good to see a quick response from the Beeb's Internet team to my comments about their blogs. This also seems to be them following through on stated plans as connecting to the blogosphere's reactions is noted as a gap to be closed.
I'm told that the Radio 4 PM Blog is already fixed - could Eddie Mair's constant carping + newish Saturday webbie PM have helped speed that I wonder?!
And I'm also told that ...
I think you're right about the notifications of errors. We can probably do more there in the 4 weeks or so before the first phase of the upgrade.I actually didn't mention error messages in my post here directly, but did in my initial (failed then succeeded) comment on the BBC Internet blog.
This is the point that they're responding to:
Don't think of it as a technical issue, think of it as a customer service issue.
You need to be upfront about the system's issues on the blogs themselves.
If someone cannot post, they won't come back and your mission of getting feedback is shot.
Your error message is a classic example of how not to do it. You should be much more usable and user-friendly and then maybe some of the failed commentators might come back (I have some 404 examples on my blog, here's one http://tinyurl.com/2mwk3c). You don't even have any help information which acknowledges your technical issues ('why your comment may have failed').
I have met some brilliant BBC usability people - maybe you need some of them in on your 'reviews'.
I get to post a comment on a BBC blog maybe 1 time in 20 that I try.
ReplyDeleteUsually it's the same unhelpful failure screen after a very long delay.
It does make the feature effectively useless most of the time (in fact probably worse that if they had none as writing something only to not be able to send it is actively annoying to most people).