Boards Goliath

Red Hand

Hi everyone!:)

First of congrats to the people who have come up with this site, for it is a fine achievement indeed!:)

Now, the lead-up to my question, or at least my main question for Admins, Super and Pleb. mods, and all you fair and gentle common folk in boardsland.

From the time I joined this site, I have noticed that certain topics get brushed aside by various mods and cliques within boards, usually telling the OP that this topic has been "done to death" or that it is somehow irrevelant, since it was brought up here in 2001.

Now, I have a slight problem with this. There have been a number of threads that I found interesting to read and would have liked to post a comment on, only to find the thread in question locked after a short period by a mod, and to be told that it has been discussed before ad naseum. That may well be very true for the "old guard" of boardsies (which seems to be pre 06ers according to some and pre 05ers according to others. I recognise that this for the most part is just humour and will pass no further comment on it.:) )

But what about the recent posters who have joined? They may not have had the pleasure of discussing a certain topic before, or may feel that subject when brought up here (when they obviously weren't members) back in 2001 needs a fresh perspective. Now I realise that various threads can be reused again and again and need not be opened anew, for example the How many countries have you visited? thread from some months back.

Tying in with this subject, I have been wondering lately about that label that one sees at the corner of the opening screen-the one that pr(l)oudly proclaims that there are "Now 75,000 of ye takin'!" It is an impressive figure indeed (so long as one trusts boards.ie for not exaggerating the number to bolster their sponsers or as a marketing strategy to attract new subscribers and as long as one factors out pesky multiple account holders such as ******* and his ilk).

Now to my question(thanks for bearing with me!:)).

Has boards gotten a tad big?

It seems to me that it has. For quite a while it slowed considerably due to the pressures exerted upon it by so many users, losing the very useful Find all posts by this user function in the process. Oh, I'm not criticising boards for it's popularity btw, but as time goes on, one would naturally come to the conclusion that boards.ie will become even more popular than it is at present, putting further strain on the servers, thus making it perhaps slower? In fact, the majority of users may be forced to become subscribed members and pay for it's upkeep?

What do you, the common user, think of this? Has boards gotten too big? Could it fragment into smaller boards sites, that may compete with one another for users? Maybe a group of mods could soon jump ship and set up a rival boards? They have the know-how after all. Would you join it if they did?

Perhaps a baby-boards.ie site could be established for fresh members? Or a senior-boards site for those that have heard it all before?

Whoops, looks like I machine-gunned ye with questions there! If you have any thoughts upon my very fragmented post, please reply.

(Apologies in advance if some of this has been discussed in AH before.)

smashey

Jeremiah 16:1 wrote:

Hi everyone!:)
It seems to me that it has. For quite a while it slowed considerably due to the pressures exerted upon it by so many users, losing the very useful Find all posts by this user function in the process.

Subscribed threads covers that.

Maybe feedback or helpdesk might be a better location for this.

Karoma

Moved from AH (A few minutes ago; after a wee edit.)

User45701

Keep it as one site but i could understand maybe splitting after hours because some topics are unfairly locked.

For when this gets moved to feedback/suggestion why not have a special after hour where any topic goes, no flaming or spamming tho same rules as after hours except any topic is allowed, ban anyone who starts posting loads of **** ********* **** ***** ect.

fade2black

I tend to always agree with threads like this. A lot of the mods who lock threads like these are fairly new mods who are probably trying too hard. They're generally not challenged because hey, how often do you see mods challenge other mods. Boards.ie would be no where if it is today if it wasn't for the every day users who are far more important than the mods are. If a thread has been closed because it has been done to death, have a look back through a few pages, if it's not there then it hasn't been done to death and in my opinion you have every right to start it again.

The Admins of this site, at the end of the day, are the only people who should forcefully, and permanently, close a thread.

Unfortunately, too many mods believe that they are born with the boards silver spoon in their mouth and everyone is else is just a noob. It looks like this is the way it's always going to be...until of course, people realise that boards might just become a boring community full of power mad moderators.

Red Hand

User45701 wrote:

Keep it as one site but i could understand maybe splitting after hours because some topics are unfairly locked.

For when this gets moved to feedback/suggestion why not have a special after hour where any topic goes, no flaming or spamming tho same rules as after hours except any topic is allowed, ban anyone who starts posting loads of **** ********* **** ***** ect.

That is such a good idea! A mini-General forum where one can post whatever they like, with the safe knowledge that it won't be carted off to some obscure forum to die a lonely death. Those threads that take off, take off and those that don't fall down the list, eventually entering the recycle bin as normal.

This thread could indeed die a lonely thread, both due to the quality of the OP's original post and it's location in feedback.:o

I wanted to ask the common user/newbie what (s)he thinks in AH as that is where most are likely to be found...but I guess they can go look for it here...if they are familiar with Feedback, which is a communication forum between mods and non-mods, if I am not mistaken?

Adam

I don't agree with splitting the website in general, as I believe one will find that it eventually all ties back to the After Hours issue circa. 2006. In short, the idea of mods more actively moving threads is to draw attention to the vast resource that is boards.ie, as recognised by the OP. I don't believe I would be mistaken in saying that After Hours is the most frequented section. At what points do we split the website?

Do we section off the likes of After Hours, Humour, TCN, Mustard etc. (i.e. the more light-hearted forums) into one website and the more specific forums (i.e. EVERYTHING else...) into another? Or perhaps Art related forums over here, Tech related forums over there etc.?

Should that occur, it would boil down to this: If a user is bothered enough to visit the relative site (say they were posting some photography and visited the Art related sub-site), they would have been bothered enough to visit the correct forum in the first place, hence negating the point to splitting the site.

Regarding the "baby-boards.ie"/"senior-boards.ie" thought; Perhaps thats a possibility, but still raises issues. For one, where is the cut off point on threads and how long ago they needed to be posted before they are considered "done to death"? I don't think it would solve much at all. This community thrives (outside of AH) on the fact that the oldies have seen it all before, and can therefore lend their experience to others, the new guys, who need help. If we had one board for old and one for new, who helps who?

Secondly, there is enough egotistical mindsets amoungst the boards oldies (and perhaps I'm considered one of them from your point of view, where as to me and other 2004'ers its from those even further back) without them being sectioned off, placed above the rest so to speak, without splitting the site. This is not directed at all or any in particular, but as fade2black pointed out, there is too much of an "zOMG teh stoopid n00b" attitude a lot of the time.

As for a new mini-General Forum, what goes in there that can't in After Hours? Anything "general" can probably still be covered by the pethora of fora availible across the site. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on this none the less.

So while it looks as though I've pretty much shot down everything you said, it was a very well put together post, a pleasure to read, and I look forward to more from you!

seamus

Jeremiah 16:1 wrote:

That is such a good idea! A mini-General forum where one can post whatever they like, with the safe knowledge that it won't be carted off to some obscure forum to die a lonely death. Those threads that take off, take off and those that don't fall down the list, eventually entering the recycle bin as normal.

This thread could indeed die a lonely thread, both due to the quality of the OP's original post and it's location in feedback.:o

I wanted to ask the common user/newbie what (s)he thinks in AH as that is where most are likely to be found...but I guess they can go look for it here...if they are familiar with Feedback, which is a communication forum between mods and non-mods, if I am not mistaken?

This entire topic has indeed been done before, but it was a while back, so I'll comment.

There seems to be four types of people on boards;

1. Those who don't care what happens on After Hours and just continually post there.
2. Those who complain the moderation on After Hours is too harsh and that it should be a "bargain bin" for every random thread
3. Those who think there isn't enough moderation on After Hours and continually complain about threads being in the wrong place.
4. Those who don't look at After Hours.

Groups 2 and 3 exist constantly. For every one person (e.g. you) who thinks that After Hours is on too tight a leash, there's another who's sick of the same threads appearing time and time again. Everybody cannot be pleased all of the time. You are free to voice your concerns, but regardless of how many people support you, you can't always get what you want.

Now, in terms of the size of boards, the strain on the servers isn't necessarily from the volume of users. (To avoid any confusion here, I'm speaking as best I understand the situation, and not as a representative of the Admins). The core issue with speed is caused by fundamental software inefficiences in the vBulletin software which only become problems at the kinds of loads that boards.ie gets. More servers will not solve the problems, the servers as they are, are comparable (or better than) servers on which much larger sites are running, and boards.ie has enough income from subscriptions to afford more server power if/when required.

There was an attempt, last year to get "portals" up and running, that provided access to a board, or a section of boards, that made it look separate to the rest of the site. This is close to what you're talking about, and is probably the closest you're ever going to get. Afaik, they were lost when the upgrade to vb3.5 took place, and haven't been put back to try help the speed problems.

Asok

Dude! since when has throwing piles of shiney hardware not fixed an IT problem!

Sparky

When they are not plugged in!

Seamus makes a very good point on his 4 groups:

1. Those who don't care what happens on After Hours and just continually post there.
2. Those who complain the moderation on After Hours is too harsh and that it should be a "bargain bin" for every random thread
3. Those who think there isn't enough moderation on After Hours and continually complain about threads being in the wrong place.
4. Those who don't look at After Hours.

As far as the site getting too big! I think this is an issue that the admins have seen coming down the road and are dealing with it as they can.
After all the admins are making money out of this site and so too are the advertisers. It would be stupid not to put it back into the very thing that makes you the money. In the current legal suitation Boards ltd is in at the moment, I think that it has become a priority for now and once finished, it will be back to the business of getting the site back up to its full fuctional working order.
For you that means your search function back on etc etc.
As far as the number of 75,000 members. That was the official number of registered users in the database at the time. Page impressions is what the advertisers look for. You don't need to be a member of the site to click an advert at the top of the page.

DeVore

Server issue is in hand and I wont say more until its actually sorted because I've promised it before and it hasnt come through (by no fault of ours I might add).

Consider this: 80% of people are happy with Boards in general. They dont say anything about it here because they are happy. 20% are not, 20% of them will complain. Thats about 4% of the community. 4% of 1000 is 40, not too bad, doesnt really add up, over a year its less then one complaint a week. At 100,000 we'll have 4000, thats a lot more and they will support each others complaints. That SEEMS like a lot more but its the same percentage.

We DO need better ways to filter the information here but the first step is to fit new servers, reactivate the deactivated features and then see where we are.

DeV.

DeVore

ps: while the admins have never said we want to do this for the good of our health, none of the other admins have ever been written a cheque or paid for their contribution. I was when I worked for two months for the site part time back in '04 i think. We'd *like* to be, but our legal defence fund has swallowed anything that was left after the servers.

DeV.

plonk

I like boards alot and when I have time i browse it constantly but im sure the admins are putting as much money as they can afford into it and thats all they can do. As for the mods moving or closing threads complain about them. They are doing as they see fit and nearly every1 thinks they would love to be a mod (or be a gr8 mod) but im sure its not all it cracks up to be.


I like boards



Ps Well done on adverts(I posted an ad today and its already on page 3)

Orion

DeVore wrote:

Consider this: 80% of people are happy with Boards in general.

And why not 100% tbh. Sure the site crawls at times. Certainly there are people who's posts I disagree with regularly. Yeah there are mod decisions that I think may be ott occasionally. But at the end of the day this is a free service provided for no apparent reason apart from - you want to do so.

Jeremiah 16:1 wrote:

Tying in with this subject, I have been wondering lately about that label that one sees at the corner of the opening screen-the one that pr(l)oudly proclaims that there are "Now 75,000 of ye takin'!" It is an impressive figure indeed (so long as one trusts boards.ie for not exaggerating the number to bolster their sponsers or as a marketing strategy to attract new subscribers and as long as one factors out pesky multiple account holders such as ******* and his ilk).

Dev et al are the ones who take all the risk and no reward from this site. What difference does it make to them if the numbers are inflated? They don't make money from this site - any funds raised go into upkeep or replacement of the servers. All dev work is voluntary.

Jeremiah 16:1 wrote:

the majority of users may be forced to become subscribed members and pay for it's upkeep?

Nobody is forced to subscribe and nobody will ever be forced to - Dev's own words. I did because I wanted to - not because I had to. What do I get for subscribing? Shag all really. I believe there's webspace available which I don't need. I get 4 nice shiny stars and I can change my tagline - woohoo None of that is worth 50 quid. But I use the site regularly. I've got help here for diferent thngs. And I've made friends here - been to their houses, met their wives/husbands/scratching posts. That's priceless.

Faith

Well, while we're here: I'm very happy with Boards. I feel that the speed issue has more or less been resolved, or at least I haven't noticed any delays recently. Go team!

DeVore

Thats mental Macros, love hearing that sort of stuff. I remember the first day the admins found out that we had a "Boards Baby". Two people who met through boards had gotten married and along came junior.... Everyone affects everyone else indirectly. Every action has a million repercussions but you cant often point to them. Seeing a picture of a baby and thinking "if it wasnt for boards" just made me feel very very strange lol...

A lot of people have arrived in the past 2 years so probably this seems like unsustainable chaos. Actually its been unsustainable chaos since day 1. The reason why the admins (and a good number of mods) are not all running around panicing is that we've seen this about 4 times before at least. Everyone claims the sky is falling and then the servers arrive and we've all been led to the promised land by Michael Dell and then someone new arrives and we welcome the newbie with open arms and then he invites his mates and then they invite others and then... Zion falls, Zion gets rebuilt.

I'm in an odd mood today

DeV.

Adam

Ah Dev, ever 'd!

scojones

Nice thread OP. You raise some interesting points. One you should make note of is After Hours is not all of boards.ie. Sure, it's the busiest forum on the site, but the way it is moderated is not how the rest of boards is moderated. What I find funny about the threads being done to death scenario is that we no longer have a decent search facility (in my opinion) so it is very hard for average joe user to see if a similar thread has been created before. Please don't comment on BoardTracker, that's a different debate altogether.
I really do not think moderators should lock a new thread created which touches or is the same as an old thread which is lost through time. It would be better practice for the moderator to MERGE the new thread with the old thread. Bada Bing Bada Boom, everyone is happy, probably bar the moderator who has to find the original thread to merge to, but that's the price you pay for being a moderator. If you're lazy, you really should not be moderating on here.

I was a mod of After Hours until my work took over my life. I'd really prefer to see the other mods of After Hours put this into practice, because I certainly would.

Karoma

There's also the other side to be considered: people (Inc. mod's) bitching that an old post has been dragged up ... :rolleyes:
Sorry folks, nobody can win. Ever.


Seriously though, I'll generally let threads touching on previously-discussed topics go provided:
I'll generally only lock or move the threads threads described if the topic was constantly high-volume for a long time and the majority of Boards.ie will probably be aware of its existance, or if the OP is posting about a topic that is currently on the front/same page and in plain view. Even then, I'll let these things slide for a little bit and give them a chance if the OP or any of the first few replies are promising (By which I mean that they will stand a chance of adding something new.) - This is rare. Very rare. It's usually the same opinions re-hashed and it really doesn't add anything.
I also don't like the insinuation that this is a mod-lead situation and that it's down to the mod's to decide it should be locked or binned each time - usually, the decision is made for us by a dozen quick replies to the OP with "Done.To.Death." or links to the recent discussion of the topic. I could, and would willingly delete these and leave the thread open, again, if there's hope that this will bring something new to the table.

There's no clear set rule for what is the best case of action - as above, you can see that I have several conditions in mind when acting on these threads - your feedback is welcomed and it is good to discuss these things with feedback from all of the mod's.


As for the mini-boards... People already see AH as a mini-Boards - they seem to think that they can and should post any topic under there for traffic consideration, or they're genuinely ignorant of the fact that so many other fora exist, or they seem to think there's a unique atmosphere to the forum. I will not tolerate the first two objections for one moment. Your thread will be removed, locked, or binned . Posting everything on the basis that "there isn't enough traffic in the appropriate forum" is an absurd arguement: It's because of people like you that there is less traffic in there, and you'd still stand a chance of getting a quick and decent reply anyway. As for the third, atmosphere, arguement... I can kind of appreciate this from all sides. However, a lot of the time, this misconception comes from a lack of posting in other fora: not all other fora and users are quite as serious, or have a set atmosphere as you presume. Each forum can be what you make of it, not what the current users or mod decides to make of it (Although, you should take this into consideration and apply common sense obviously.)

fade2black

I got two jobs through Boards.

r3nu4l

OP, you raise some very interesting points and have put them forward very well, nice to see a Feedback thread that is actually...feedback:eek:

On the dragging up old threads issue, not so long ago I facetiosly dragged up an AH thread from 1999...just to see what happened...I've never seen Ruu so angry I couldn't sit down for a week In that case of course Ruu was right to slap my wrist and lock the thread.

On other occasions I have seen mods (not necessarily Ruu or even an AH mod) lock threads that are old (maybe 6 months or more) but have been raised again by a new user who has voiced an opinion. On some occassions the locking was probably unfair as the user may have had a valid opinon but then other times it is very fair.

Some mods have openly stated they can't stand old threads been raised for any reason...I created a thread asking for opinion on raising old threads and got my answers there While I don't agree in general, I can see the point. If a thread had 150 replies beforehand it is unlikely that this latest reply is going to add anything new and instead brings the thread to the attention of the trolls and general silly posters

I first came across boards in Jan '06 and have posted consistently since then. I promised myself that if I made 1500 posts and wasn't bored of boards I'd subscribe for a year and have done so. It feels good to give something back

Ruu_Old

I don't get angry (only at my new computer 'Blue screen' I call it). Anyway I'll be the first one to admit that I was very quick with the padlock at the start but I am letting more threads go as of the last few months. I move threads that I deem relevant to other areas, a note is left for the other mods to throw it back to me, I have no problems with this and it hasn't happened yet.

I might not be correct in every decision, I am only human, just with a sweeping broom and just doing my bit to keep boards ticking along. Certainly no harm in giving other forums some traffic and new users to see that there are more forums on boards.ie. I take plenty of suggestions on board, those who have PM'ed me know how I deal with this and respond accordingly. Some people do use AH as a mini boards already as Karoma has mentioned and we move those threads without a complaint, even though there have been a number of repeat users (they are notified normally). Just my 2c.

smashey

r3nu4l wrote:

OP, you raise some very interesting points and have put them forward very well, nice to see a Feedback thread that is actually...feedback:eek:

This thread was first posted in AH even though it was clear from the title that it would be better suited in feedback. (Karoma moved it to feedback). This seems to be a recurring problem. People just dump threads in after hours on the presumption that anything goes, without too much thought on the subject matter.

DeVore

smashey wrote:

This thread was first posted in AH even though it was clear from the title that it would be better suited in feedback. (Karoma moved it to feedback). This seems to be a recurring problem. People just dump threads in after hours on the presumption that anything goes, without too much thought on the subject matter.

If people think that, then warn and then start to ban the persistent ones. If they or others complain, I'll get involved (and lets face it, that never ends well).


DeV.

Hang on a second.... this is a thread in Feedback where mods are listening to a users feedback and discussing it? WTF? Arent we supposed to rally round and throw fruit and abuse the OP as a clique??

Eh? Thats only for the rude ones? oh, my bad.

sceptre

It's relatively rare for old threads to be dragged up on Politics and even rarer on Literature, though new posts to old threads would tend to work better on the latter as a rule. Where it's done on Politics it's usually where there's some new update to something newsy that was posted a while back. Generally it's a better idea to link to the old thread but as far as I can tell (as we don't have an official policy) we tend to take it on a case by case basis. I guess it's because much of what's discussed is news or current affairs related that it so rarely happens. It may well happen more on Political Theory but it's not he busiest forum around so I doubt it'll be much of a problem.

azezil

While we do see certain individuals complaining about old threads being rehashed, I've been spreading my manly goo to other online forums, its been my experience that Boards is actually considerably more tolerant of revisiting old topics.

It also pisses me off when people complain that a topic has been covered before, just wanna stick a fork in their eye! >_<

r3nu4l

smashey wrote:

This thread was first posted in AH even though it was clear from the title that it would be better suited in feedback. (Karoma moved it to feedback). This seems to be a recurring problem. People just dump threads in after hours on the presumption that anything goes, without too much thought on the subject matter.

I'm not talking about where it was originally posted, the fact is that a user was giving actual feedback in the first place and stating the case rather well rather than posting a whining rant about all the things that are "wrong" with boards.ie and the mods and vBulletin etc.

As such the replies he has received have been respectful and educational, letting him know that one of the problems he spoke about is not a lack of hardware but an inherint fault within the software.

As DeVore implied (jokingly, with a dash of truth ), it's unusual for Feedback replies to contain anything more than a 'get lost you spanner' type of response.

As for threads being dumped intho AH, yes it happens all the time and the mods move a load of them to the correct forum. I too feel that persistent offenders should not be treated with the courtesy of having their thread moved but instead should have them locked or binned.

Sometimes offenders genuinely make a mistake or haven't been around long enough to know that there is a [insert obscure forum here] forum available to post in As always, without a policy in place it's up to the individual mods and a sticky by Ruu has asked that people report bad posts and suggest where they can be moved to to make the mods jobs easier. As it it the AH mods have done a great job of tidying up AH, although I'm sure there are loads of regular AH users who would disagree I'm glad I'm not modding it, that's for sure, it's a full time job over there

Exit

I've never understood the whole "It's already been discussed" mentality on internet message boards. Can you imagine something like that happening in real life?

Billy walks up to his mates and says "So lads, what do you think of that new Oasis album?" and his mates all turn around and say "Eh, sorry Billy, but we all had a similar discussion 2 months ago without you, therefore we're not gonna talk about it now!"

Why not open up the Recycle Bin forum to the public, and instead of threads being locked, mods just move them there and let whoever wants to continue the discussion continue the discussion without moderation. The Recycle Bin seems like a waste of space as it is; why not just use it as a dumping ground for all the rubbish and repeated threads?

r3nu4l

Whie I agree with your points Exit, I imagine the argument goes like this...

Your mates have a conversation about the new Oasis album, they have an in-depth discussion on the merits or lack thereof, they exhaust the converstaion, taking notes as they go along and move on.

You come along a week later and want to discuss it, but you have the notes and can see what was said so unless you have something totally new and original to add to the conversation that took place, your friends are going to say...'Yeah, very interesting but if you read page 4 again, you'll see that Johno already said that...'

That is the argument against what you are saying although I don't necessarily agree with it totally

Red Hand

r3nu4l wrote:

Whie I agree with your points Exit, I imagine the argument goes like this...

Your mates have a conversation about the new Oasis album, they have an in-depth discussion on the merits or lack thereof, they exhaust the converstaion, taking notes as they go along and move on.

You come along a week later and want to discuss it, but you have the notes and can see what was said so unless you have something totally new and original to add to the conversation that took place, your friends are going to say...'Yeah, very interesting but if you read page 4 again, you'll see that Johno already said that...'

That is the argument against what you are saying although I don't necessarily agree with it totally

That's why Johno and the boys have that stenographor at hand!:)

DeVore

Now to be clear R3nu4l, the reason why...

DeVore implied (jokingly, with a dash of truth ), it's unusual for Feedback replies to contain anything more than a 'get lost you spanner' type of response.

is because quite a large number of the OP's here deserve nothing more then "get lost you spanner" replies.

This is one OP who gave some feedback in a non-derogatory, overbearing, know-it-all way and got responses that befitted that approach.

People who come here and say "the mods are all bastards" cannot then cry foul and take to their beds with vapours if the mods jump in with both feet.

DeV.