Last month, North East Buses asked its members: Would you like to see the Go North East thread contented? After further discussion on how our original ideas could be improved, 75% of the community agreed that they would like to see Go North East, Arriva North East and Stagecoach North East’s threads contented. A mere 25% said that things should stay as they are at present. With the majority of the feedback being positive, we decided that we would go ahead with some of our original proposals and also elaborate on some of our ideas too to suit the wants and needs of the community. After many hours of hard work splitting and categorising the posts in our operator threads, it was decided that we didn’t quite like our proposals as much as we did when we first discussed them in June, and that even if we did still like the proposals, they were simply going to take far too long to accomplish. We realised that changes still needed to be performed, but the question was ‘what changes?’

As part of the above changes, a personal project of my own was to design fleet lists for each main North East bus operator (GNE, ANE and SNE). These fleet lists would be created in a database format, where those using the fleet lists could search in a specific field for what they would like to view – by fleet number, registration, chassis/bodywork, livery, depot etc.
We believe that these fleet lists will be an asset to North East Buses, but adding these fleet lists to the site was simply not good enough – we needed more.

An already existent item on the market at present is fleet news. We appreciate that there are websites at present which offer fleet news for the main bus operators within the North East as well as independent operators too, but our ideas were thriving at the prospect of adding this feature to the site too. We all thought that we could improve on how fleet news is currently distributed on these websites, and we could link it to our fleet lists and to our already established forum too. In April, it became apparent to us that some of the posts on our forums often insinuate things that may not be true. As North East Buses was the first enthusiast community to receive a link inserted on Go North East’s “Enthusiast Area” section of their website, we realised that if customers were to stumble upon this page and subsequently view our discussions on the forums, we would not like to have our members’ opinions shown as fact if said opinions are representing Go North East or any other party in a bad light. Members and non-members alike have also expressed that they would prefer it if opinion and speculation could be separated from fact. We definitely feel that the addition of fleet news would resolve any issues that the community have at the moment – the information given on fleet news (containing repaints, loans, transfers, addition and losses from the fleet etc) would be fact, while the posts in our discussion threads is merely discussion. It can include opinion and speculation, and the information given in these threads (should it concern future plans) should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Finally, posts in our main operator threads have been split into parts of 200 posts each. These changes ease pressure on our site’s database and it also allows the reader to digest what is being said a little easier. The parted threads are then locked, but discussion can still be carried through into the next thread if/when necessary.

I am therefore delighted to inform you all of our (well anticipated and much awaited) changes, rolling into effect from today.
Our fleet lists: Go North East, Stagecoach North East and Arriva North East.
And of course, our fleet news sections! Dedicated persons (fleet news reporters) are allowed to post in these sections, and should see bi-weekly updates from these persons. Each thread is relative to the bus operator’s sub-forum it is under.
As part of the changes, we have also divided our service suggestions by bus operator. There was some discussion of Nexus service suggestions while also discussing Go North East, and this has been the case with a few other posts too – in this case, they have been put into the thread where they were best suited where the original discussion derived from.

Some of these updates are still being carried out as I write this post and will continue to be carried out through today. No posts will be lost in this process, so keep on posting as normal! You’ll notice a new link to our fleet list homepage will be inserted on the navigation bar once the page is complete. Until then, you will have to navigate to the fleet lists by the direct links given above.

What’s planned for the future? Starting off with Go North East, we hope to allow members to click on a vehicle within the fleet list and see a photo of it hosted on Flickr. This will work alongside my personal Go North East: “Buses By Brand” collection, so frequently discussed by myself on the Go North East forums. If this proves to succeed, it will be gradually rolled out onto the Stagecoach North East and Arriva North East fleet lists also. The coding is in place, we’re just waiting for all the photographs to be uploaded! Again, this will prove to be a unique feature brought to bus enthusiasts in the North East, and we hope it will be a well-used feature which is appreciated by all.
If in time the resources are available, we also hope to trial fleet news for independent operators within the North East too. If these resources are not available, normal discussion can continue on our dedicated threads for these operators.

Your feedback is also greatly appreciated. Do you like the updates? How could they be improved? What would you have done differently if you were performing these updates? Have you got any other suggestions?
Post below!

Many thanks.