About pages that are no longer updated

"This page was last updated in October 2007" or "This page hasn't been updated for a while" - What does this mean?

We aim to make sure that all of the pages we publish on BBC Online are as accurate, reliable and as useful as possible. Where a particular radio, tv series or other BBC event has ended we generally leave the related web page online, just in case visitors may find it helpful or interesting in future. However, for some websites in order to avoid confusion we add a banner notice to the page to make it clear that we're no longer keeping these pages up to date.

We leave these pages online for reference purposes only, and you should be aware that the information provided may be out of date or otherwise inaccurate due to the passage of time.

"Why don't you always publish the date of the last update?"

The date shown in the banner is normally calculated automatically using the last-published date, however in some cases this doesn't reflect when the actual content changed. For example, pages may have been republished by an automated system, without the content changing.

Where this is the case we use a more general form of words in order to make it clear that in editorial terms the page hasn't been updated recently.

Why don't you just delete these pages when the programme has ended?

Our view is that these pages often contain a lot of information about the programme or event which may be of interest in the future. We don't want to delete pages which users may have bookmarked or linked to in other ways.

This also means that if a programme series or event returns, we can update the content of the page and remove the banner notice very quickly.

Where else can I find information about BBC programmes?

For our most detailed list of BBC programmes, please visit BBC Programme pages.

When do you delete pages from bbc.co.uk?

In general our policy is only to remove pages where the information provided has become so outdated that it may lead to actual harm or damage.

Anything else I should know about this notice?

Our in-house name for this process of labelling pages as "last updated" or "this page hasn't been updated for a while" is "mothballing"!