No hint Yahoo was to close news forums: executive

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2006/12/29/tech-yahoonews forums-20061229.html





No hint Yahoo was to close news forums: executive

Last Updated: Friday, December 29, 2006 | 7:18 PM ET
CBC News

A senior executive with Yahoo Canada Co. says he was surprised to learn
that the internet media company's U.S. parent Yahoo Inc. had shut down
its news message boards.
Users of Yahoo Inc.'s news discussion forums on Friday were greeted
with a note telling them the message boards had been removed and would
be replaced in the months ahead.
In a telephone interview with CBC News Online, Yahoo Canada's director
of public relations said he had last spoken with his office on Thursday
night and the call was the first he had heard of the closure.
"I didn't see anything that would have indicated that was something
they had planned," Clive Hobson said.
In a letter to readers, Neil Budde, Yahoo Inc.'s general manager of
news, said that the message forums had been removed to stop some users
from controlling the discourse. He also noted that there were technical
problems with the forums' structure.
"The Yahoo News message boards allowed a small number of vocal users to
dominate the discussion," Budde wrote. "In addition, related
discussions from similar news articles were not easily linked."

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Budde wrote that the company is working to create a new message board
system that will be unveiled early in 2007.
"While we work on our new community features, the message boards that
were linked from individual news articles have been taken offline,"
Budde wrote. "Over the next few months, we plan to offer new discussion
forums based on topics in the news and incorporating the latest
features to foster a better discussion for all of our readers."
Hobson said he did not believe users of the internet media company's
Canadian service Yahoo.ca would be directly affected by the move.
"I believe that I would have received a call on the cellphone if there
was going to be any impact," Hobson said.
A U.S. spokesperson for Yahoo could not be reached for comment.