Archers thread #172: Come on, Clive! Spill the beans and put us all out of our misery. Discuss The Archers here.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Thank you, @PseudoBadger, for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads.

All views on The Archers welcome here! New blood welcomed, and of course we are always delighted to welcome back former or occasional listeners/posters. We don't all agree on all points, although we do mostly try to be civil about it. Most of us are posting tongue in cheek a lot of the time, so don't worry about revealing that Clive sounds deeply misunderstood, or other unusual views.

Spoilers: not on this thread, please! We don't wait for the omnibus to discuss the weeknight episodes, but we do try our best to avoid cross-contamination from https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/radio_addicts/4636789-the-archers-spoilers-thread-7-cant-wait-for-702pm-join-us-here, where spoilers are positively welcomed!

For newer listeners, lurkers or those who just have no idea what we're talking about, @DadDadDad has created this useful thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/3557323-For-Archers-fans-a-guide-to-acronyms-on-the-long-running-discussion-threads-and-any-other-meta-thread-questions-you-may-have - BOOP point for him! (See thread for explanation.)

Fete over, cricket season over - can the Flower and Produce show be far behind? I don't think I've heard a mention of it this year. Have I not been paying attention?

In any real village, preparations for the Christmas show would already be under way, but not in Ambridge, of course. I am probably in a minority of one in regretting this.

With any luck, though, by Christmas this incredibly protracted tale of Alice, George and the crash will be behind us at last. Do we think Clive's really gone? I don't believe it. We won't be rid of him that easily. Will he go to the police himself? Will he attempt to blackmail his family or extort money from the Aldridges in return for information that would secure Alice's acquittal? Do we care? I find I don't really, unfortunately. I did enjoy hearing Clive for those few brief exchanges but I've had enough now. Unrelieved nastiness is not really what I want from TA.

Over to you!

He also told her that more recently, after the accident, but it's clearly not true. He's still thinking that if Fallon got pregnant, thry would keep it.

I do wonder if she's pregnant again, after all the sex a couple of weeks ago, and Harrison will find out after she's had a termination.

Why did you think he was male? Independent evidence? ”Cornelius”? Statistics nerd?

children’s gloves are available. In my experience 5 year olds can cope with adult grabbers, and usually delegate bag carrying to the responsible adult., who will of course be alert to tge risk and ensure the child doesn’t come to harm.

Obviously Irish insurance companies are setting different rules - not unusual, unfortunately.

We’ve moved to the new thread!

I know, but we might as well fill this one with nonsense to stop people starting intelligent discussions here that go nowhere.

Discussion continues here

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/radio_addicts/5164477-archers-thread-173-the-fall-of-the-house-of-grundy-discuss-the-archers-here

Cornelius, but that does not definitely mean he is actually male, any more than I think he goes round in 17th century attire inspecting dykes and drainage works. Never actually thought of him as a statistics nerd, either, just someone who found it interesting enough to track it. I find it interesting to read, but not interesting enough to track.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/archers/listeners/profiles/cornelius.shtml He was male.

Doing well for himself! https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/maths/people/andrew-titman

Obviously we made him who he is. 😉

They should give him a cameo role as Brad's tutor at Felpersham.

You mean there's another spreadsheet-loving Cambridge maths graduate with an interest in the application of statistics to health-related outcomes who is a fan of TA?! I wonder if he lurks here? (It's not me - I'm an actuary, didn't quite make it to the level of doing a PhD).

I am shocked his website doesn't mention TA...

Pretty sure male pronouns were used when people chatted about him, and “he” used to post in response so am sure would have mentioned if people got it wrong. There were loads of men on the old BBC Archers boards.

Ah yes, I think I read that at the time.

Yes, I know there is a new thread but can somebody remind me why the BBC retired the message board/forum thingy?

Was it complaints about Ambridge Extra that tipped them over the edge?

This is a huge issue in farming. Someone commented upthread that it’s unrealistic for Brian to be farming for the future and making plans. It might be unrealistic but it’s a very very fair reflection of a lot of farmers in their 70’s. And if you think families fall out over George type stuff then oh my days an IHT story would crack open the grumbles. The whole Aldridge thing is a huge mess waiting to happen. As is Pat n Tone.

Money, not wanting to facilitate endless criticism, and complaints about unfair competition from commercial concerns offering similar platforms. Also, once social media took off there was probably a falling off of interest. They were very naive when they first set up their innumerable message boards 25 years ago and rapidly closed most of them. Expensive to moderate and in some cases, e.g. politics, religion, football, reputational damage must have been a consideration as they attracted vicious trolls. Mustardland was the last one standing.

The short answer is "money", as Gasp0de says.

They had wasted a vast amount of money on poor IT projects (I know this because I knew someone on the provision end, and he thought they were insane even by pointy-haired boss standards) and were being charged an excessive amount per message board on their website, so they cut them back and cut them back and eventually got to The Archers' board when it was the last left standing and they'd redirected all the others to The Bull. I could tell you the excuse as well, because I kept it somewhere. Hang on.

========================================================
Closure of The Archers message board

Monday 11 February 2013, 12:00

Today we are announcing the closure of The Archers message board. It will close, in two weeks, at 12pm on Monday 25 February. All of us at Radio 4 and on The Archers team understand this news will be disappointing for regular users.

The Archers is extremely popular on digital platforms. More than 120,000 users regularly visit the website every week, the podcast is three times more popular now than it was in 2008 with downloads in the millions - and more and more listeners are talking about the programme on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

Amid that growth, traffic to the message board has reduced greatly. While there are around 10,000 regular visitors to the message board, the number of people who contribute actively has dropped below a thousand.

For some time, the BBC has been moving
away from message boards, as Ian Hunter explains in this blog post
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2011/01/delivering_quality_first_on_bb.html
and there are now no other BBC Radio message boards and only two
related to other BBC output.

The Archers community has been a rich, witty and fun space for fans over the last decade and we acknowledge the strength of the community. We hope that you continue to contribute to Archers discussions elsewhere online.

We will still be listening to you and we welcome feedback via this blog, on our Facebook page and through Twitter where Tayler and Keri will remain as our hosts. All feedback will be collated and shared with the programme team each week and published on our blog.

The board's vast archive will remain online. We’re giving notice so that you can make plans to migrate to alternative Archers forums and spaces, say goodbye to fellow Archers board users and discuss this move.

We will respond to comments and questions about the closure on this blog later in the week.

Nigel Smith Interactive Editor, Radio 4 & 4 Extra

Has anyone tried recently to provide them with "feedback via this blog"? It can't be done.

They had hired the company owned and run by Tayler whatever her name was to manage the closure. A bunch of disrupters were also brought in, including a very mouthy bloke who was extremely proud of having caused chaos on the Mudcat discussion forums (which survived his games). It seemed probable that the overall organiser of the closures was te,m_p;er.o - but mentioning them was guaranteed to cause a lifelong ban - hence my disguising the name here.

The BBC was fully entitled to close their own loss-making forums, but the way they set about it was extremely shoddy.

I'm sure they'd have got him appropriate size gloves. There's not really any huge risk of infection from a litter pick of this type, the risk of hep B/C/HIV from getting stuck with a discarded needle is close to zero and I can't think of any other risks/ LA enforcement officers are differerent, they'll be cleaning up the houses of hoarders etc, not just picking up a few crisp packets.

In both cases they were hauling dumped black bags out of ditches. Open air.

I'm pretty sure LA officers don't clear houses.

This Ambridge litter-pick collected sacks of stuff - I'd assume that odd crisp packets are picked up all day every day by people in the village, and this action was about stuff dumped (rather than dropped) in places livestock could access.

Nigel Smith
Interactive Editor, Radio 4 & 4 Extra

That announcement provoked the sublime Eliza Bennet to remark that they’d thrown the wrong Nigel off the roof

... and that's a wrap.