Morning all.

So... The Like button is now a Recommend button.

There should now be a 'proper' two-step Recommend process (including a genuine cancelling option).

And you can opt of our seeing the Recommend button by going to Customise/Other Options/Hide the Facebook "recommend" button on threads and selecting 'Yes'.

Merry Christmas and thank you, Tech!

I'm not quite sure, LIZS. It depends what works best and what's easiest for Tech to code up and implement. But that's certainly the kind of thing...

Good morrow. I bring you tidings of great joy developments afoot.

OK, so as well as releasing the reconfiguration of the new Like button to make it properly two-stage and cancellable , we're also going to...

• Change it to a "recommend " button, rather than "like" button because we reckon that's a better word (smacks less of the trivial/icky/frivolous etc)

• Fix it so that people who really don't want to see it don't have to (ie they'll be able to hide it, if they're logged in to MN)

We hope to be able to release all of those changes for you tomorrow.

@hiyule

thanks - but don't do it on your day off have a and mince pie I say

You have mail, hiyule...

Right, I'll check our logs and see what happened, hiyule

Oh, and by the way, hiyule, Off the Beaten Track is here. It's under 'Other Stuff' on the Talk Topic page.

No need to apologise, IAmNotSoPissedOffAnyMore.

'Tis enough to see you're not IAmSoPissedOff any more

Hiyule, did you not see my post earlier on this evening? Please scroll down if you missed it.

And we are certainly not refusing to delete old posts/threads. Are you saying you asked for this - and we said no?

Oh no, do I need to again?

Evening all.

It's my day off today but we didn't want another day to pass without some MNHQ presence on this thread, so here I am for a wee while.

As you may have noticed/realised, there aren't that many of us at MNHQ at the moment, so it's been hard to respond to your questions, objections and comments as quickly and as effectively as we normally do. And for that we do apologise.

We're sorry, too, that we managed the release of this Like button so poorly. As we've posted before, we didn't expect the uproar it generated (because the Like button/Share button has been there for ages in the Viewport bar already) but we should still have made sure there were more of us around to answer your questions, and we should have tested the button more thoroughly.

For those who may have missed our previous posts, we're beavering away right now on a coding workaround that makes clicking the Like button a proper, fail-safe two-step process (with a genuine chance to Cancel, if you clicked on the button by mistake). Tech tells us he's almost there with this, so we're hopeful that we can release it very soon (after some testing ).

Just a couple of extra points: Facebook haven't paid us any money to put this button on threads. Yes, we hope the button may drive some traffic Mumsnet's way - which, in turn, may bring in some more revenue to run our servers, pay our staff etc - but there was no 'deal' with Facebook to get the button put on top of threads (or in the Viewport bar).

And yes, just to clear up any confusion, the 'f' button right at the very top of every MN page (to the right of your PM inbox) is a button that, when you press it, takes you to our MN page on Facebook. It doesn't paste any links to your wall. But the 'f' button in the Viewport bar (and at the top of threads) does paste links to your own FB wall - and doesn't connect you to our MN page on Facebook.

As for the other questions people are saying we're not answering, we hope you'll take it on trust that we are working on some answers! As you probably all know, Justine is on her hols and only intermittently contactable. We'd like to think we're pretty good at second-guessing what her answer would be to most of the outstanding queries but we trust you'll understand that we don't think it's a good idea just to post a "guess" answer on the boards. We'd rather wait and post the real deal.

And yes, before you all say it, we should have figured it would be a dodgy idea to release this change just before Justine went on her hols. That was kinda the icing on the cock-up cake, wasn't it?

OUR internal communications even....

Which is not to say that it's not regrettable that we gave the wrong info. Clearly out internal communications failed, and we will work on how we ensure that doesn't happen again.

Anyway, I'd better sign off as I'm getting out of pure tech stuff and the shed might indeed get locked and/or flooded with irate MNHQers.

Yes, some of the people at MNHQ misunderstood how the button worked and gave some wrong information. But that's all. We really haven't been trying to mislead. If we had, we wouldn't be able to do so for long. How these things work is published information and easily verified. If we were telling untruths we'd be found out very quickly.

We do know what it does. We control what information it sends to facebook. We just don't have any ability to get any extra information beyond that from them. And they don't have any ability to get any more information from us.

Hi C-Sisters, just fyi, fb has announced its intention to phase out the older "share" buttons in favour of like buttons. I'm not sure why they have done that really - often I want to share something I don't particularly like, but want to draw friends' attention to (like a news story or similar.) But done it they have.

Actually custy that's not quite right. By the time the box pops up, you've already posted. The popup is just letting you add a comment if you wish. But if you do nothing, the "Like" still happens.

Hi BR, that's true about the accidental click. That's why we are looking into the two-step process. That should prevent accidental posting.

If we just gave the option to hide, you could still accidentally post to FB if you were logged into FB but not logged into MN. We wouldn't know to hide the button as you wouldn't be logged into MN, but if you were on FB the button would still post to your FB wall. Basically that button talks to facebook not us.

TBH I think it is always possible to log out. You could for example just go to facebook.com. If the browser is logged in, click log out on facebook. Then continue browsing. From that point forward, clicking "like" wouldn't post to a facebook account as there's no facebook account logged in.

The other questions are policy issues for Helen and crew, and not for me to comment on really, but technically you can always log out, even on a shared computer.

Hi, there are some misunderstandings here. Leaving aside the merits or otherwise of posting threads to FB, just on the technical level:

The facebook like button is a one-click process by Facebook's design - if you are logged in on facebook - i.e. you clicked remember me on facebook when you last logged in. If you are on a shared computer, clicking remember me on facebook, or not logging out is a risky thing to do as the next person to use the computer can just go to facebook.com and "be" you. That's nothing to do with Mumsnet.

Facebook's own intro to the like button reads "The Like button lets users share pages from your site back to their Facebook profile with one click."

Facebook MIGHT pop up some options when you click (at their discretion) depending on how your Facebook account is set up (for example they might ask if you want to post on your personal page or a business page you manage.) In most but not all cases they invite you to provide a comment.

Again, that's not something we at MN know about at all. We don't have any data about your facebook account or its behaviour at all. There is no link between your facebook account and your MN account. If you click like when you are not logged into facebook, a facebook login prompt will appear in a popup asking you what facebook account to log into and post to.

We do take this issue seriously and are looking into changing the like buttons to a self hosted version that would ask you to click a second button and something like "please click again to confirm you want to post this thread to your facebook wall." As long as that works satisfactorily it should be ready in the next day or two.

But, we can't control or access your facebook account in any way. If you are worried about cross posting from sites that have FB like buttons to your facebook account, you should always log out of FB after using it (by clicking Log out explicitly on facebook.)

Ok, I'm aware there are still some questions we haven't answered but I'm sorry to say I have to go now.

I will try to look back in this evening. And I will make sure we update Justine on what's being said ? although I'm afraid I can't guarantee when she will read our update.

Yes, we made it hideable because some people complained that they didn't like it dangling down at the top of threads all the time. Afaik, no one complained about the FB Like button on it.

That is exactly what we're working on, Quint.

Yes, it's the dangly thing - which you can hide (but not disable).

Well no, not just because of a change we've implemented; if you're sharing a computer with others, you really should do it anyway - to safeguard yourself and the others.

Yes, it has BobbinRobbin. The general link to our Mumsnet page on FB is right up at the very top, to the right of your PM inbox.