Options
BBC and old news
scorpio man
Posts: 4,960 Forum Member
✭✭✭
Anyone know why the BBC keep putting old news on their website 'News' page ?
Todays example .
Gaddafi killed....20 Oct 2011
France has too many foreigners....7 March 2012
Billionaire to build Titanic 2....30 April 2012
Rio summit ends....23 June 2012
Pope Benedict XVI to resign ....11 February 2013
Todays example .
Gaddafi killed....20 Oct 2011
France has too many foreigners....7 March 2012
Billionaire to build Titanic 2....30 April 2012
Rio summit ends....23 June 2012
Pope Benedict XVI to resign ....11 February 2013
0
Comments
It's been like this for a few days, so my guess is that their website is under some kind of attack, with bots constantly reloading loads of old pages in order to put the servers under strain.
A lot of things like this happen to large websites that you never hear about unless the site actually crashes. But lists like that can provide clues.
It didn't merely try to eat it, it succeeded in doing so.:D
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26413101
That's the 'Most Read' section. As the name implies, it's automatically populated by the most read stories.
Oh right.
Thanks for that.
Lol
that, presumably, would be why it was eating crocodile instead of old boots and supermarket trolleys
It's not a glitch.
So how comes a article from years ago pops into the top 10? I've even done a google search related to the article to see if it has hit the news again and most of the time I find nothing...
Weird.
This does happen on the BBC site I have noticed it occurring a every 2-3 months. I can see the odd story becoming popular again but some of the stories that get tagged make little sense. I think it is more likely caused by them updating the content servers on the website which clears out some of the data in the most read section.
Once the data is populated again the stories disappear as the most recent news floats to the top. I believe this is the case because it tends to start at weekends and late at night when it is most likely such changes are made.
It's merely down to the amount of people clicking links to that article, and the links to those articles are more than likely posted on high-traffic sites like Reddit. ∴ the story is classed as being amongst the 'most read' and appears in the automatically generated 'most read' list.
It ain't rocket science!
And is self-fulfilling as readers on the BBC site (like the OP) click on the "most read" link to see the story...