I totally agree,Madame Doyle. Why aren't full time members of staff paid to look after the forum, and to enrich the website.
Exactly. You'd think it would be a privilege and dream job to run an Agatha Christie website and represent her work to all her fans. Where is the first place people come to enrich their experiences of a newfound or favorite author or subject? The official website. I get the impression that it's "just a paycheck" to the administrators of this site. I'm aware that the site is probably run by a design company, but the marketing team who liaisons with the Agatha Christie publishers or is part of their company should show more passion. They seem to have a hiring problem.
I'm very disappointed in the website because the one place I can come to talk more in depth about Agatha Christie and her books would be on the official website. And there just doesn't seem to be much excitement in updating the content. There was a time I strayed away from the website and right when I come back I see a lack of discussion and a lot of members seem to have fallen by the wayside.
@ChristieFanForLife if you set up a Facebook page to direct fans to your blog, it would receive traffic. I followed a person who reread Agatha Christie over the course of a year, and she posted the links to her Facebook page. Another lady did the same thing for reading Nancy Drew in a year but used Twitter. You will receive the visitors, and they will appreciate your work. Through the social media sites, you will generate discussion, much more so than on here. That is where many of the fans who posted here originally have gone, to their own sites or other private group pages on Facebook. This official website should be embarrassed that grass roots efforts are more successful, and think of the financial opportunities being lost, because the fans who maintain blogs and run their own forums are not advertising the DVD's and other new items. The official site should be a one-stop place for all fans, but it's dead.
Hi everyone, first of all sorry for the slow response and
thanks for your patience. Thank you so much for taking the time to feedback your
thoughts about the forum. It’s great to see fans who are eagerly discussing
Agatha Christie’s works and I’m looking forward to becoming more involved in
the discussions.
From reading through the thread some
of the points that we’ve picked up on that you would like to see in the forum include
more interaction between forum staff/moderators with users, insightful information
from our work with the family and Christie experts, to be kept updated on the
latest adaptation and publishing news, some of the same content shared on
Facebook and other channels to be expanded on and shared in the forum and potentially
to post interviews with the family or people who work with Christie.
I’m going to
take your comments and suggestions to the team here so that we can start
working on extra content that we can bring to the forum. I’ll also talk to the
forum developers to see how the forum functions can be improved. Please feel
free to continue giving your feedback.
A Long while a few changes ago The Moderator said the Forum was a small part of the site which would explain perhaps why there is no-one to administer it because the people who do are sometimes doing other things which are more important in the Eyes of Agatha Christie LTD so we get ignored.
I think a Book a Week would be a bit much especially for those who like to treat The Books or some books like a Fine wine or Lovely Meal and take their time over them which is what I like to do with some.
Some of the books start the same and then veer of into other directions, for instance 2 Poirot's might start with Poirot receiving a letter and then differentiate from there, we could discuss examples of this in the books if this hasn't been discussed before, I am at my happiest when on thissite or thinking what I am going to say on this site that is ofcourse when I am not reading, Watching or Listening to anything Christie, BTW next Week on Radio4 Extra(Mon-Thurs there are Christie Short Stories 9.30 PM-10.00 PM
Also interviews with those dramatising the novels to see how they are reading the novels and interpreting them, and finding locations, etc. Ask some of them to keep a diary and post it on the website, perhaps.
Also interviews with those dramatising the novels to see how they are reading the novels and interpreting them, and finding locations, etc. Ask some of them to keep a diary and post it on the website, perhaps.
I have had a really great idea for content - I think! Why don't the 'team' present photographs of actors who could play Hercule Poirot (for instance, Kenneth Brannagh) and use computer graphic technology to add a moustache, change the shape of the head as you would with prosthesis; darken the eyebrows; fake putting in green lenses, and see who looks good! Who knows, with the right 'disguise' Tom Huddlestone might look good as HP! You could do the same for Miss Marple, Ariadne Oliver and Hastings. Maybe Julia Walters would make a great Marple (or Ariadne) with the right cosmetics. Let's get some computer wizardry going, and move beyond the medium of words, to celebrate fanship for this the best-selling of authors.
Hi Tuppence, I've had another interesting idea for website content. Why don't you ask someone to write an article on the types of forensic investigative tricks used in Poirot's time. I'm thinking of things like the hat press and the trick to read a letter that has been burnt, as Poirot does in Murder on the Orient Express. You could get someone to video doing it, and put it on the website.
I'd suggest to any fans that they read WIkI for interesting details about the television productions based on Agatha Christie novels. I think that material found on WIKI could also provide stimulus for scholarly and entertaining feature articles to be written for the website. Here is an interesting idea I found for an article after looking on WIKI for the Miss Marple television series. I read that when the cast were filming A Caribbean Mystery in 1989, they went to the hotel where Miss Marple had stayed thirty years before and spoke with the owners Budge and Cynthia on whom Agatha Christie based a couple of her characters in the novel, and who still owned the hotel. The owners were able to show the cast what WIKI cite as being a treasure trove of memorabilia. Well, surely the memories of some of the cast or the director could be called up via interview and research to uncover what were the items of memorabilia, was there an article written at the time - and are there any photos? A new article could be written on that same subject. There is an interesting little tale in there, I am sure.
You suggest some great ideas, @Griselda. I hope that they are implemented. It seems to me that the Book of the Month is the best route to go in terms of organizing the content of this site. For example, most reading groups set a schedule of the coming year's list, and so that would give the web site admins enough time to plan ahead for the content, which would be articles and features related to the current book such as you mention in your above posts. Not only would this enrich our reading experiences, but it would help facilitate the discussions, which would hopefully be better moderated by some new admins. We know that the publishers want to keep selling books in addition to retaining current fans, and a livelier discussion group with a greater momentum would be a good way to get these new fans and sales. They don't seem to realize that loyal fans like the ones posting here are a resource to tap into for marketing efforts. Every time they alienate one of us from this boring web site, they lose the opportunity to sell more books.
I entirely agree, Madame Doyle. And, I'd add that with exciting content, they would attract experienced writers to contribute pieces on Christie, and talented directors to adapt the novels for stage and screen . We need a means of gathering all the information (fact and anecdote ) which exists already in the public domain, or else, all the material will eventually become lost.
Yes, indeed. Surely it must be the work of a moment to erase them - for the moderators, that is. If nobody is checking the site, then one day something, not simply annoying, but rather of a quite unsavoury and unsuitable nature might be posted.
You are right. More than twelve hours later after attention has been drawn to the problem, the spam is still there. It just shows that the alleged moderators do not visit this site on a daily basis.
It's extraordinary. Also, with the exception of GKCFan, they don't, either, reply, on an ongoing and timely basis, to comments posted by forum members. There is little in the way of summing up, contributing their own views, and enriching the debate with research.
I don't exclude GKCfan from the rest of the moderators in my criticism. He will reply, but there is not much substance in his vague posts. You and other members show more knowledge of Agatha Christie's works than any of the moderators. Why hasn't the spam been removed yet? It's going on days now. And you are right that sooner or later it's going to be something less innocuous.
That is the worrying thing, as you comment at the end of your post. We have some forum members and posters who have not yet attained eighteen years of age, I believe, and thus some form of content monitoring would be very much indicated.
@Griselda ... I'm beginning to realize that our first problem here is that we have moderators who either have not read much of Agatha Christie's work or else they are not fans (working for the developers of this site or the marketing team). They just pull facts out of books and hope we don't notice. Members like you and ChristieFanFor Life demonstrate a much better familiarity with and appreciation for her work. I wish we had more true fans running this site.
I think that there is a real problem here that you are getting to the heart of. I think that the issue is, possibly, organisational. GCKFan has written articles on AC, and has a very comprehensive knowledge of the facts, so I don't doubt that he is actually a fan. Perhaps the moderators are unsure of what their role ought to be.
Tuppence mentioned that the moderators would be having a forthcoming meeting, I don't doubt that such a meeting has taken place, it is just that I can't imagine that such an event is happening very often. Moderators must live in different countries... or do they?
The way the moderators conduct their interventions is as if they don't know what each of the others are doing. Take the example of the enthralling quiz which we recently enjoyed. One of the moderators sent me a clue - directly to my personal email address, which was quite an astonishment, since I recognized the name, but did not know this fellow member to be a inner trustee of the AC organisation with access to personal information such as email addresses. Although this individual contacted me as though a member of staff, he was listed at the end of the competition as one of the winners! Usually staff don't actually enter competitions, so this is rather odd! At one point, this same member also seemed to be posting criticism of one aspect of when tips and hints had been given out to help those who were struggling to complete the quiz. And this same moderator commented that there is not much traffic in terms of visits to the website. All these comments appeared to me to be off-message, unorthodox, and suggestive that this set-up is not cohesive and running in an integrated and professional way. I would favour the interpretation/theory, that the current crop of moderators are probably not paid very much to do what they are doing, but are doing some work on the website as a bit of a hobby. There are probably circumstances which make it not their fault that the feedback they give is lacklustre.
I do think that there should be an official biographer and historian retained permanently by AC Limited, and that their expert advice should be there to be drawn on by the moderators. This expert could act on leads which we fans provide, and could conduct new research in the directions indicated. This provision would, I believe, give the moderators the necessary authority to make original statements, and it would embolden them to make more proactive use of their role.
It seems to me more likely that spam post are not being removed because the moderators are unsure of whose job it is to do this. Perhaps they lack, some of them, the technical facility to remove the spam.
I think there is genuine knowledge on the part of the moderators, but, for some reason, they are undecided, at present, as to how to run this site. There must be secretarial-type functions associated with the web-page, and perhaps the moderators are good at doing these types of tasks. I have suggested to Tuppence before that the best strategy would be to examine other forums for other writers to gain ideas as to what type of writer's tone, approach and moderation, but this long-heralded re-vamp seems to be producing no positive changes. (Incidentally, I am astonished that Tuppence doesn't acknowledge my posts offering suggestions of what might work well on the website. I would have thought that common sense would have indicated a simple response along the lines of 'Thank you for your thought-provoking idea').
Let's hope for improvement. I wish I could suggest which types of approaches to moderating work well, but I don't know myself, since I don't visit other sites.
Hi regular contributors. Has anybody seen what the book of the month is for August? Has it been posted on this forum? I went on the Twitter AC account, and it said that The Mysterious Affairs at Styles is the August Book of the Month. There is a quantity of detail, in fact, on Twitter which is not on this forum.
I wonder what the point is in having Book of the Month sometimes on this forum, and sometimes in the newsletter. Anyway, it hasn't been discussed yet, and it is now 11th August, so the plan to 'instigate' and 'support' discussion is going backwards, and more regular participants are falling away, month by month.
Comments
From reading through the thread some of the points that we’ve picked up on that you would like to see in the forum include more interaction between forum staff/moderators with users, insightful information from our work with the family and Christie experts, to be kept updated on the latest adaptation and publishing news, some of the same content shared on Facebook and other channels to be expanded on and shared in the forum and potentially to post interviews with the family or people who work with Christie.
I’m going to take your comments and suggestions to the team here so that we can start working on extra content that we can bring to the forum. I’ll also talk to the forum developers to see how the forum functions can be improved. Please feel free to continue giving your feedback.
A Long while a few changes ago The Moderator said the Forum was a small part of the site which would explain perhaps why there is no-one to administer it because the people who do are sometimes doing other things which are more important in the Eyes of Agatha Christie LTD so we get ignored.
I think a Book a Week would be a bit much especially for those who like to treat The Books or some books like a Fine wine or Lovely Meal and take their time over them which is what I like to do with some.
Some of the books start the same and then veer of into other directions, for instance 2 Poirot's might start with Poirot receiving a letter and then differentiate from there, we could discuss examples of this in the books if this hasn't been discussed before, I am at my happiest when on thissite or thinking what I am going to say on this site that is ofcourse when I am not reading, Watching or Listening to anything Christie, BTW next Week on Radio4 Extra(Mon-Thurs there are Christie Short Stories 9.30 PM-10.00 PM
Tuppence mentioned that the moderators would be having a forthcoming meeting, I don't doubt that such a meeting has taken place, it is just that I can't imagine that such an event is happening very often. Moderators must live in different countries... or do they?
The way the moderators conduct their interventions is as if they don't know what each of the others are doing. Take the example of the enthralling quiz which we recently enjoyed. One of the moderators sent me a clue - directly to my personal email address, which was quite an astonishment, since I recognized the name, but did not know this fellow member to be a inner trustee of the AC organisation with access to personal information such as email addresses. Although this individual contacted me as though a member of staff, he was listed at the end of the competition as one of the winners! Usually staff don't actually enter competitions, so this is rather odd! At one point, this same member also seemed to be posting criticism of one aspect of when tips and hints had been given out to help those who were struggling to complete the quiz. And this same moderator commented that there is not much traffic in terms of visits to the website. All these comments appeared to me to be off-message, unorthodox, and suggestive that this set-up is not cohesive and running in an integrated and professional way. I would favour the interpretation/theory, that the current crop of moderators are probably not paid very much to do what they are doing, but are doing some work on the website as a bit of a hobby. There are probably circumstances which make it not their fault that the feedback they give is lacklustre.
I do think that there should be an official biographer and historian retained permanently by AC Limited, and that their expert advice should be there to be drawn on by the moderators. This expert could act on leads which we fans provide, and could conduct new research in the directions indicated. This provision would, I believe, give the moderators the necessary authority to make original statements, and it would embolden them to make more proactive use of their role.
It seems to me more likely that spam post are not being removed because the moderators are unsure of whose job it is to do this. Perhaps they lack, some of them, the technical facility to remove the spam.
I think there is genuine knowledge on the part of the moderators, but, for some reason, they are undecided, at present, as to how to run this site. There must be secretarial-type functions associated with the web-page, and perhaps the moderators are good at doing these types of tasks. I have suggested to Tuppence before that the best strategy would be to examine other forums for other writers to gain ideas as to what type of writer's tone, approach and moderation, but this long-heralded re-vamp seems to be producing no positive changes. (Incidentally, I am astonished that Tuppence doesn't acknowledge my posts offering suggestions of what might work well on the website. I would have thought that common sense would have indicated a simple response along the lines of 'Thank you for your thought-provoking idea').
Let's hope for improvement. I wish I could suggest which types of approaches to moderating work well, but I don't know myself, since I don't visit other sites.