Train GraphicClick on the map to explore geographics
 
I need help
FAQ
Emergency
About .
Travel & transport from BBC stories as at 09:55 29 Apr 2024
- End of the road for 'Banksie' pothole campaigner
Read about the forum [here].
Register [here] - it's free.
What do I gain from registering? [here]
 22/05/24 - WWRUG / TransWilts update
02/06/24 - Summer Timetable starts
17/08/24 - Bus to Imber
27/09/25 - 200 years of passenger trains

On this day
29th Apr (1973)
Patent award for Janney (Buckeye) coupling (*)

Train RunningCancelled
10:10 Newbury to Reading
Short Run
07:00 Gloucester to Plymouth
09:23 London Paddington to Oxford
09:23 Swansea to London Paddington
14:02 Oxford to London Paddington
PollsThere are no open or recent polls
Abbreviation pageAcronymns and abbreviations
Stn ComparatorStation Comparator
Rail newsNews Now - live rail news feed
Site Style 1 2 3 4
Next departures • Bristol Temple MeadsBath SpaChippenhamSwindonDidcot ParkwayReadingLondon PaddingtonMelksham
Exeter St DavidsTauntonWestburyTrowbridgeBristol ParkwayCardiff CentralOxfordCheltenham SpaBirmingham New Street
April 29, 2024, 10:08:04 *
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Forgotten your username or password? - get a reminder
Most recently liked subjects
[151] Clan Line - by Clan Line !
[83] Visiting the pub on the way home.
[17] South Western Railways Waterloo - Bristol services axed
[16] access for all at Devon stations report
[10] Labour to nationalise railways within five years of coming to ...
[8] Misleading advertising?
 
News: A forum for passengers ... with input from rail professionals welcomed too
 
   Home   Help Search Calendar Login Register  
Pages: [1] 2
  Print  
Author Topic: About Twitter feed @PassengerForum  (Read 18346 times)
grahame
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 40844



View Profile WWW Email
« on: July 10, 2013, 13:58:26 »

I'm experimenting with a new twitter feed - @PassengerForum - to be automatically updated as people post to the public (guest viewable) boards.
Logged

Coffee Shop Admin, Acting Chair of Melksham Rail User Group, Option 24/7 Melksham Rep
grahame
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 40844



View Profile WWW Email
« Reply #1 on: July 10, 2013, 15:30:55 »

Please start to follow @PassengerForum and let others know about it too - this feed's come about as a result of user request, and my need to understand the new Twitter API for posting statuses onto a feed.   It means that occasional visitors here can have a quick summary come to them - usually within half an hour of a message being posted, and complete with a link to the page on which the new message is posted.

See profile of the new feed (and whether you think I've chosen appropriate images!) at https://twitter.com/PassengerForum
Logged

Coffee Shop Admin, Acting Chair of Melksham Rail User Group, Option 24/7 Melksham Rep
JayMac
Data Manager
Hero Member
******
Posts: 18924



View Profile
« Reply #2 on: July 11, 2013, 01:13:53 »

grahame.

Should this feed/link not be a little more area specific? If linking to the Great Western Passengers' Forum (aka Great Western Coffee Shop) then @PassengerForum may be a little too generic.

Passing comment from someone who uses Twitter but sparingly, so I could be way off the mark, but I think I've got a handle on what makes a good address and/or hash tag. I think the words 'Great' and 'Western' need to be in there somewhere.

Changed of course in future years when National Express win the franchise and decide to go with a bonkers name.

To paraphrase Jim Royle. "One? My ar*e."
Logged

"Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for the rest of the day. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."

- Sir Terry Pratchett.
grahame
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 40844



View Profile WWW Email
« Reply #3 on: July 11, 2013, 09:57:31 »

grahame.

Should this feed/link not be a little more area specific? If linking to the Great Western Passengers' Forum (aka Great Western Coffee Shop) then @PassengerForum may be a little too generic. ...

But how to get "Thames Valley, South West England and South Wales" into the handle?  I can tinker around with the description (and will probably do so) ... I'm not sure I want the / a company name in there, though. With "First Great Western Coffee Shop", every page comes complete with a disclaimer that we are talking about the company / franchise, and there's no room for such a disclaimer in a tweet or twitter handle.

I considered (and did not go for) running a series of feeds, board by board or area by area.  As it was in my testing I found myself being too aggressive and getting a ticking off from Twitter ...
Logged

Coffee Shop Admin, Acting Chair of Melksham Rail User Group, Option 24/7 Melksham Rep
Chris from Nailsea
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 17895


I am not railway staff


View Profile Email
« Reply #4 on: July 11, 2013, 23:28:31 »

Please pardon me if I'm missing the obvious, but could the feed not be called '@GreatWesternPassengerForum', simply reflecting the name of the franchise, rather than First Great Western as the current franchisee?  Tongue
Logged

William Huskisson MP (Member of Parliament) was the first person to be killed by a train while crossing the tracks, in 1830.  Many more have died in the same way since then.  Don't take a chance: stop, look, listen.

"Level crossings are safe, unless they are used in an unsafe manner."  Discuss.
bobm
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 9843



View Profile
« Reply #5 on: July 12, 2013, 07:37:05 »

The problem with Twitter names is they are limited to 15 characters.  It makes sense when you think of people sending you messages and having to quote your username as it would eat into the 140 character message limit.
Logged
ellendune
Transport Scholar
Hero Member
******
Posts: 4453


View Profile
« Reply #6 on: July 12, 2013, 08:18:39 »

The problem with Twitter names is they are limited to 15 characters.  It makes sense when you think of people sending you messages and having to quote your username as it would eat into the 140 character message limit.

How about @GWPassengers
Logged
grahame
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 40844



View Profile WWW Email
« Reply #7 on: July 12, 2013, 09:35:02 »

Thanks for the inputs.  The initial purpose of the feed is (a) to produce an outward facing feed that occasional members who are twitter users can follow to get a summary of what's going on and (b) to help me learn the Twitter API version 1.1 which is documented, but its hard to find exactly the bits you need at times and work out a procedure for setting something like this us.  For both of those, the name isn't critical.

Looking ahead, though, where are we headed?  We're looking more and more at integrated transport and complete journeys ... and so I wanted to use a feed name that doesn't imply a limit purely to train, nor purely to a particular franchise / company.  And there's also more of an issue using part or all of a company / franchise name on a twitter account name than on the forum; every forum page includes a disclaimer that the site is not run by First Great Western, and there's no way that can be included within the 140 characters.

Logged

Coffee Shop Admin, Acting Chair of Melksham Rail User Group, Option 24/7 Melksham Rep
Chris from Nailsea
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 17895


I am not railway staff


View Profile Email
« Reply #8 on: July 12, 2013, 20:10:11 »

The problem with Twitter names is they are limited to 15 characters.

There you are, then: I was indeed missing the bleedin' obvious.  Embarrassed Roll Eyes Grin
Logged

William Huskisson MP (Member of Parliament) was the first person to be killed by a train while crossing the tracks, in 1830.  Many more have died in the same way since then.  Don't take a chance: stop, look, listen.

"Level crossings are safe, unless they are used in an unsafe manner."  Discuss.
bobm
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 9843



View Profile
« Reply #9 on: July 12, 2013, 22:06:22 »

Not really - I only found that out six months ago!  Grin
Logged
TonyK
Global Moderator
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 6438


The artist formerly known as Four Track, Now!


View Profile
« Reply #10 on: July 13, 2013, 08:18:13 »

I am follower #13 @Nympton
Logged

Now, please!
grahame
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 40844



View Profile WWW Email
« Reply #11 on: July 13, 2013, 08:34:27 »

& ' < and > characters have various special meanings in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) ... this post is purely a test to see if I've managed to fix an undocumented and unintended feature which caused them to display incorrectly in early "spike solution" testing of this twitter feed. 
Logged

Coffee Shop Admin, Acting Chair of Melksham Rail User Group, Option 24/7 Melksham Rep
grahame
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 40844



View Profile WWW Email
« Reply #12 on: July 13, 2013, 09:26:20 »

And " fixed too ...
Logged

Coffee Shop Admin, Acting Chair of Melksham Rail User Group, Option 24/7 Melksham Rep
grahame
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 40844



View Profile WWW Email
« Reply #13 on: July 14, 2013, 14:23:10 »

Further testing
Logged

Coffee Shop Admin, Acting Chair of Melksham Rail User Group, Option 24/7 Melksham Rep
ellendune
Transport Scholar
Hero Member
******
Posts: 4453


View Profile
« Reply #14 on: July 16, 2013, 23:40:30 »

The sheer volume of tweets is just making it impossible to follow any other meaningfully. So the twitter feed is of no use to me.
Logged
Do you have something you would like to add to this thread, or would you like to raise a new question at the Coffee Shop? Please [register] (it is free) if you have not done so before, or login (at the top of this page) if you already have an account - we would love to read what you have to say!

You can find out more about how this forum works [here] - that will link you to a copy of the forum agreement that you can read before you join, and tell you very much more about how we operate. We are an independent forum, provided and run by customers of Great Western Railway, for customers of Great Western Railway and we welcome railway professionals as members too, in either a personal or official capacity. Views expressed in posts are not necessarily the views of the operators of the forum.

As well as posting messages onto existing threads, and starting new subjects, members can communicate with each other through personal messages if they wish. And once members have made a certain number of posts, they will automatically be admitted to the "frequent posters club", where subjects not-for-public-domain are discussed; anything from the occasional rant to meetups we may be having ...

 
Pages: [1] 2
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by MySQL Powered by PHP Powered by SMF 1.1.2 | SMF © 2006-2007, Simple Machines LLC Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS!
This forum is provided by customers of Great Western Railway (formerly First Great Western), and the views expressed are those of the individual posters concerned. Visit www.gwr.com for the official Great Western Railway website. Please contact the administrators of this site if you feel that the content provided by one of our posters contravenes our posting rules (email link to report). Forum hosted by Well House Consultants

Jump to top of pageJump to Forum Home Page