Oh The Irony Of It All

Oh The Irony Of It All

8:03 AM, 7th August 2017, About 7 years ago 7

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When one of our established members compared the functionality of the new Property118 website to that of The Guardian yesterday I must admit to being flattered.

Naturally, The Guardian was held up as being the better of the two in terms of functionality, and much as I disagree with much of their content, I have to agree that their website functionality is better than ours. But so it should be. They have a champagne budget to play with (Krug Grand Cru at that), whereas we are operating with a comparatively Tesco Value Lemonade budget, R Whites at best.

And there lays the irony, they are a left wing Newspaper group bordering on socialistic journalism whereas Property118 is run by for the benefit of capitalistic rental property business owners.

Our mission is to facilitate the sharing of best practice. For this reason alone, we must do all that we can to improve commenting functionality. Last year the Property118 website served over 5 million unique user sessions. If just 1% of those visitors had contributed to discussions by sharing their knowledge, just imagine how much more useful information they would have added to the Property118 shared knowledge bank.

The discussion ended in our established member offering the following ‘wish-list’ in regards to Property118 commenting functionality.

“I click on the ‘Reply’ link for the message that I want to comment on

If I am not logged in I am offered a popup dialog in order to be able to do so.

If I am logged in a popup dialog appears that invites me to enter my comment text

I enter my comment text

I click on ‘POST COMMENT’

The web site reloads the page with my new comment in context (i.e. attached to the message that I was commenting to but offset slightly (to the right) to make it clear that it is a response rather than a new message and aligns the view window so that I am presented with the page I was looking at when I made the decision to comment in the exact same pixel perfect place that it was before subject only to my additional comment.”

As you maybe aware, Property118 is only a small operation, just a team of four at the moment. We outsource our website development to an amazing company in Norwich called Accent Design, whose passion for what they do for the money we pay them is off-the scale! Nevertheless, our budget to develop the Property118 forum comes entirely from donations and whatever money we can spare from our own funds.

If you like the suggestions above in regards to commenting, please help us to make that a reality sooner rather than later by clicking on the button below.

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Comments

Anon

9:06 AM, 7th August 2017, About 7 years ago

Socialists are generally more philanthropic. Nevertheless, I have much to be grateful to Property118 for and I like the idea so I have made a donation. Hopefully, many others will follow my lead and the improved commenting functionality will appear soon

H B

8:20 AM, 8th August 2017, About 7 years ago

"Socialists are generally more philanthropic."

More philanthropic with other people's money 🙂

Marlena Topple

11:33 AM, 8th August 2017, About 7 years ago

I understand that property is a political issue but I don't think making party political statements is in the best interests of Property 118 or landlords.

Mark Alexander - Founder of Property118

11:46 AM, 8th August 2017, About 7 years ago

Reply to the comment left by Marlena Topple at 08/08/2017 - 11:33Why not?

Our ancestors fought and died for the right of free speech so why should we not exercise that right on a forum such as Property118?

Property118 is is privately owned website for private landlords. It is not the BBC and does not claim "independent journalism" like The Guardian does, which in my opinion is laughable anyway.

Marlena Topple

12:50 PM, 8th August 2017, About 7 years ago

Indeed. My only concern is that overt party political bias undermines our message in the minds of policy makers from one political party or another.

Mark Alexander - Founder of Property118

15:04 PM, 8th August 2017, About 7 years ago

Reply to the comment left by Marlena Topple at 08/08/2017 - 12:50Agreed, but I am one voice of many.

There are landlords who post on this forum who I would describe as "champagne socialists". Please also consider that "Axe The Tenant Tax" campaign employed the services of Cherrie Blair QC because Steve Bolton and Chis Cooper felt she was best for the job.

Property118 and forums like it are the online version of a pub. I'd like to think the visitors to our 'online pub' are quite sophisticated but they don't all have to have the same political opinions.

If the policy-makers were to take the time to read Property118 the chances are that many of the issues we discuss would have more influence on legislation, e.g. the scrapping of section 24, Universal credit etc.

Fed Up Landlord

22:47 PM, 8th August 2017, About 7 years ago

I have been commenting on Property 118 for several years. During that time I have learned an awful lot from the site and it's contributors and have in turn reciprocated with my knowledge on Right To Manage and leasehold. As a result of Mark's posts I started letting my own properties and then other landlords and now have my own lettings agency. This would not have happened without Property 118 and I do subscribe to it every month. It is like as Mark says- an online pub. Some people you get on with and others you don't. That's life but we all respect each others right to have their say as long as it's not abusive. And it's not all pro-landlord. We have tenants on here asking for help with landlord issues and landlords on Property 118 help them. For free. How good is that?

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