BBC News Online

The site launched a set of semi-official RSS 0.91 syndication feeds in June 2003 and upgraded them to RSS 2.0 in March 2000^{[citation needed]}. Every news index has its own RSS feed, including the in-depth sections.

Since June 2006 the site has been providing real-time user information on its most popular news stories.

The neutrality of this section is disputed.
Please see the discussion on the talk page.(January 2008)
Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.

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Forum

The site has a forum called 'Have Your Say'.

Under then Editor Pete Clifton, the system behind the forum was upgraded in 2005 to allow for comments to be added faster and appear in real-time, subject to varying levels of moderation.

The impartiality of the forums has been criticised by organisations such as News Sniffer: moderators are accused of sometimes appearing to promote their own agenda.

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Criticism

The site is primarily funded by the television licence, paid by all UK households owning a television set, and used to carry no advertising. The World edition has received some subsidy from the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office through its grant-in-aid to the BBC World Service. This has led to complaints of unfair competition from commercial rivals. Others note that large numbers of international visitors enjoy the site at the expense of the UK public, leading to suggestions that foreign users be shown advertising or charged subscription fees when accessing the site. Proposals to include advertising on the international version of the website were discussed by the BBC Trust in February 2007, but were opposed by BBC journalists, who feared it would weaken public trust in the impartiality of the BBC. In November 2007, the site did start to carry advertising.^[2] The advertising consists of large animated banners, which has led to complaints that these make the site's content harder to read.^[3]