Live Feeds

[AVB]

Hi all,

We are about to implement a nice feature called live feeds.

Our robot "BluesNews" will automatically post live feeds from the official website into a thread in the "News & Rumours" forum section.
I will also implement more feeds from other sources, so that we can get the information on this forum straight away without having to manually add them in.

The feature is still in testing phase, so you might see some strange threads being created in this section for the time being. I will post an update to let everyone know, once it is fully complete.

Thanks,
Kevlar

Permanently suspended.

[Hutchinson56]

Ok, but can I just suggest that we have separate sub-forums for News & Rumours, which are after all, very different subjects.

[Mehitabel]

Excellent idea, Hutch. It'll stop us doing knee-jerk reactions of horror every time the Daily Mail has an article about one of our players deserting us (not).

I wondered who this BlueNews person was who kept posting new threads! Is it possible for the robot to work in such a way that the article is actually visible instead of us having to click on the link?

[AVB]

Yeah, I am still working on it at the moment.
I will surely create different sub sections.

Edit:
Ok I think I managed to fix it and get it all working now.
We shall test it out for a few days and see if there are any problems.

If there are any problems, please let us know in here.

For the "From "The Media"" section, It will gather feeds that are related to the word "Chelsea" and sometimes it will show threads that are unrelated to the Football Club.
Some examples are "Chelsea Handler".

So if you see them, just ignore it. Either me or the moderators will delete them.

Thanks.

[BluesNews]

I will keep everyone updated with Chelsea's latest news, transfers and rumours.

[AVB]

Permanently suspended.

[Hutchinson56]

I think that's wise. From what I saw, it wasn't working out as expected.

Further to what I was saying earlier, I would suggest that rather than creating a new sub-forum, Rumours & News should simply be remained Rumours and so everything else Chelsea related (news, general discussion, miscellany) should go in The Shed. The Chelsea section would then look as follows - I've also included a possible description for the Reserves & Youth Team section

The Shed
Chelsea related news & general discussion

Rumours
Chelsea related transfer speculation

Reserves & Youth Team
Anything to do with the Chelsea second string, Youth Team, and The Academy goes here

Vintage Chelsea
Memories and history of pre-Abramovich era Chelsea: 1905-2000.

Having renamed the Rumours section, anything non-transfer related would then go into The Shed, which I'd be quite prepared to do as and when I've got time.

What do people think?

[Mehitabel]

To be fair. I think you really need a real person who is capable of sorting the wheat from the chaff. It was potentially a good idea, but it ended up making the site look silly by choosing articles written bu muppets!

[AVB]

I think that's wise. From what I saw, it wasn't working out as expected.

Further to what I was saying earlier, I would suggest that rather than creating a new sub-forum, Rumours & News should simply be remained Rumours and so everything else Chelsea related (news, general discussion, miscellany) should go in The Shed. The Chelsea section would then look as follows - I've also included a possible description for the Reserves & Youth Team section


Having renamed the Rumours section, anything non-transfer related would then go into The Shed, which I'd be quite prepared to do as and when I've got time.

What do people think?

Im not sure about that, because don't forget the transfer windows are usually short, so once the transfer window ends, there are usually less or even no debate at all. This will most likely make the Rumours section dead.

Maybe we should leave it as it is for now?

The only reason I decided to enable the feeds is that it makes the forum look more lively, so it seems like there are threads being posted every few hours rather than days.

[Hutchinson56]

Im not sure about that, because don't forget the transfer windows are usually short, so once the transfer window ends, there are usually less or even no debate at all. This will most likely make the Rumours section dead.

Well not really. Take a look at the BBC Gossip Column, and the official site's Rumour Mill, these are updated daily, even hourly. A rethink of the description would help, maybe something like:

Chelsea related gossip and transfer speculation

Or you could have separate sections for Rumours, News and The Shed, but the problem there, which we have already, is the grey area between what constitutes News and the miscellany that belongs in The Shed. So from that perspective it's much simpler to combine the two.

The only reason I decided to enable the feeds is that it makes the forum look more lively, so it seems like there are threads being posted every few hours rather than days.

Good idea in principle, but as you say it just makes the forum look more lively, in other words it's artificial. That and the randomness of the articles posted actually detract from the overall quality of the site.

No, what we need are more members making more posts. And that's something we'll just have to work at. We have to keep starting new threads and responding to existing threads, in the hope and expectation that people will respond.

[Mehitabel]

But it doesn't really make it look more lively. To make it genuinely lively, you need real people engaging in discussions, and that's not going to happen if you keep posting ridiculous articles. It achieves the opposite - it puts people off.

[AVB]

But it doesn't really make it look more lively. To make it genuinely lively, you need real people engaging in discussions, and that's not going to happen if you keep posting ridiculous articles. It achieves the opposite - it puts people off.

What do you mean and how would it put people off?

If I copyied and paste the same articles and made the thread, wouldn't that be the same?

[AVB]

Im going with Hutchinson56.

The Shed
Chelsea related news & general discussion

Rumours
Chelsea related transfer speculation

Reserves & Youth Team
Anything to do with the Chelsea second string, Youth Team, and The Academy goes here

Vintage Chelsea
Memories and history of pre-Abramovich era Chelsea: 1905-2000.

Updated

[Mehitabel]

What do you mean and how would it put people off?

If I copyied and paste the same articles and made the thread, wouldn't that be the same?

But presumably you would use your discretion and intelligence not to post totally ridiculous articles again and again - there were 3 identical threads with Alastair Grant articles claiming John Terry had unleashed "a torrent of vile racial abuse" which is arrant nonsense.

It puts people off because it makes the whole site look silly and juvenile - lacking any mature judgement on which articles are worth publishing and which are fit for the bin.

Yes, there are some very interesting articles in the newspapers, but it takes a real person to apply some intelligent choice on which are worthy of adding to the site.

[Hutchinson56]

What do you mean and how would it put people off?

If I copyied and paste the same articles and made the thread, wouldn't that be the same?

No. The differences, as I've tried to explain, are to do with discrimination (in a positive sense), relevance and necessity. What you had in the "From The Media" section were a hotch potch of random articles, many of which are nonsensical, a few of which are not even Chelsea FC related. No quality control, no real incentive to even look at that section. Furthermore, formatting tends to get lost, leaving the article looking messy, even unintelligible.

Then there's the official site. There is absolutely no need to simply duplicate every news article posted there. If any member deems an article to be interesting enough, then a new thread can be started, or it can be added to an existing, relevant thread. As an example, I've just added a comment to the Gary Cahill thread about this afternoon's Cahill Special press conference, found by checking the official site, which I do anyway, so having the item in an "Official Chelsea News" section would be a waste, and less than helpful because of the amount of formatting that is lost.

[AVB]

But presumably you would use your discretion and intelligence not to post totally ridiculous articles again and again - there were 3 identical threads with Alastair Grant articles claiming John Terry had unleashed "a torrent of vile racial abuse" which is arrant nonsense.

It puts people off because it makes the whole site look silly and juvenile - lacking any mature judgement on which articles are worth publishing and which are fit for the bin.

Yes, there are some very interesting articles in the newspapers, but it takes a real person to apply some intelligent choice on which are worthy of adding to the site.

Sorry to upset you, but I don't post them. The robots gather what the RSS feeds have to provide and automatically creates threads accordingly.

I did state the feature was in testing phase, so there was obviously going to be some problems. Anyways since there are so many "complaints", I removed it straight away yesterday.

[Mehitabel]

You didn't upset me, and yes, I knew they were selected by a robot,because I had read the whole thread. That's the point I was making - that while robots can replace men for some things, they are not equipped to make rational decisions about which articles to select.

Good that you reacted promptly to the feed back. We will all try to create threads as and when topics of interest arise.

[AVB]

Thanks for sharing your feedback.
I personally never tried that feature and when I tried it out, I personally didn't like it myself.
The formating is messed up, because vbulletin and RSS is quite dumb and does not know how to format properly.

Anyways, I've moved the threads to the correct places, so all the rumours should now be in the "Rumours" forum section.

[Hutchinson56]

Looks good. However, further to your earlier misgivings, i.e. to broaden the spectrum a little, maybe you could change the description of the Rumours section to:

Chelsea related gossip and transfer speculation

[Mehitabel]

Excellent! Now we have to get a few more members to join in discussions. What about these women from the girly group? Would they be interested in dropping in from time to time to give us the benefit of their ideas?