135

We are still working out how to make the announcement. I'm afraid the PM function is not coming back, we are only opening the archive so users can get messages they had stored in their profiles.

More on this next week.

136

Captain, thanks, you know, I am pacifist LOL

137

Zabba - thanks but its still not satisfactory. Surely this was one area that was not being abused!

138

Zabba will these announcements next week address many peoples very real concerns over skype and twitter (from numerous previous posts)?

139

This is official LP statement to bloggers whose content used to appear (but is no more).

“Hi there

We hope this email finds you well. As a member of Lonely Planet’s BlogSherpa initiative, we wanted to get in touch to let you know that as part of larger changes to LonelyPlanet.com we will be decommissioning the BlogSherpa programme during the month of December 2012. This means the ‘Blogs we like’ section of our destination pages will disappear from our website, along with all the content from blogs on LonelyPlanet.com.

With more than 12,000 blog posts from over 500 bloggers, the BlogSherpa initiative has given us a great insight into our collaboration with travel bloggers and we hope it has also been a positive experience for you. As a small token of our appreciation, we’d like to give you a 50% discount on any item on Lonely Planet’s Online Shop. Please send an email tocommunity@lonelyplanet.com.au with ‘Blogsherpa’ in the subject line within the next 7 days if you would like to receive your unique discount code and we will send it to you.

The end of BlogSherpa is not the end for the relationship between Lonely Planet and bloggers by any means. We are currently building out new ways of featuring bloggers’ content and incorporating more guest writers, photographers and videographers into the Lonely Planet website more directly. We will communicate these plans very soon, so keep your eyes peeled to our website, the Thorn Tree forum and our social media accounts on Facebook, Twitterand Google+ for any future announcements.

One thing you can do immediately – if you’re on Twitter, when you tweet a link to a new blog post, tag it #lp and we’ll retweet the best throughout the day.

Once again, thanks for sharing your experiences with us, and we hope it was a good ride. See you on the road!

All the best,

The Online Editorial Team at Lonely Planet”

140

Zabba, or any mod - question - who is the person who has responsibility for the changes to LP?
A number of people will come up with ideas and what would be 'good', but eventually one person, one person alone is at the top of that particular tree. The one who has this has his/her project and is responsible for it.
Ultimately the DG of the BBC is where the buck stops, but who is the person driving the changes and giving the nod to what happens.
Who is he/she?

Or - a) you are not allowed to say or, b) you'll ignore the question?

141

Very pretty statement, but I think they should just keep it snappy and to the point... "Somebody said a naughty word, so this all needs to be burned to the ground. Peace out, fools."

142

go_2, or anyone else really. What is up with the post count? Regulars seem to have big numbers again under their names but I am reduced from over 4000 to 450. I appear to have 3897 posts from the SA branches archived in my forum activity. Just curious.

143

Re: email address associated with handle - you can change it, can't you? I'm responding to leela and Vinny above.

This handle was registered with an email address that no longer existed within a couple years. I changed the email in my profile to a different address then, and changed it to yet a different one a few years after that. I've assumed that if LPTT wanted to send me an email it would go to the address currently listed in my profile - no?

144

Same for me vnrose, I should show a couple of thousand but now it's down to around 172.

145

#143, I have a negative archive count of 21000+ and an activity number of 5000+. So not all regulars have had post counts revised and amended.

146

Thanks, at least I am not alone. I could save them the trouble of going through every post by telling them that there isn't anything remotely controversial (well, maybe that thread about the dynamite) but I don't think I am even interested in most of those old threads anymore. 99% of them must be about the reciprocity fee for Chile. A lot of the information is probably out of date. But they are welcome to knock themselves out having a troll through them.

147

I love the way they deleted all my PMs because it takes too long for a moderator to read through all my private stuff but now every thread I post on someone has to read through every single word I write to approve it!

I can't imagine a more spectacular waste of time. Actually, I can. If every time I wanted to make a post I had to send it to a mod via Twitter and they had to cut and paste it by hand onto the forum, that would be marginally more absurd. I guess I should be careful not to give the team ideas!

After ten years of using this site for free, all that goodwill has completely vanished. I feel insulted and inconvenienced.

148

Who actually is in charge of all this?
There has to be a person at the top of this particular tree.
Who is it?

149

On other branches, posts arent premoderated. but if they contain unsuitable words, they are blocked.