Suggestions to help boards.ie

Firewalkwithme

Having read a couple of Dev's posts on the threads about boards slowness I just want to make it clear from the start that I am aware that some kind of upgrade is expected in early march before everyone starts telling me that it's already being looked after.

(It's a pity that I even felt that I had to make that statement isn't it?)

Anyway, here's the main point of my post. I spent several periods of up to 15 minutes yesterday afternoon trying to open the thread about boards slowness but to no avail. I was able to read it later at home and some of the points raised got me thinking.

The first one was about providing negative feedback without suggesting a possible solution.

The second was about boards.ie's sources of revenue, i.e. advertising and subscriptions and where these revenues go, i.e. - back into the site, hardware etc.

The third major point of interest was the admins lack of available time to sort out the new hardware.

So, as I said - I began to think. And think I did. Until I had an idea and then another and so forth.

The two major problems facing the admins as I see them are, generating enough revenue to improve the website and finding the time to implement the improvements. Therefore would it not make sence to employ someone (even on a temporary or part time basis) to help with the technical side of things? Obviously this person would need to be paid so extra revenue would be needed. So how about a few one off fundraisers to help out? I am thinking of something along the lines of a family fun day out where people can take their kids along to some kind of event where the kids can have a good time while the adults are encouraged to spend or donate a bit of cash. Prize draws, paid amusements and competions along with overpriced food and drinks could raise a few quid! I'm sure there are plently of people who use this site who would be interested in going to such an event while they may be put off going to something like a boards beers event because the perception of existing cliques could be putting them off.

Other possible fundraisers could be quiz nights, race nights or why not a poker night since there is such a good following on boards?

Similar to Wikipedia, boards is a community run website, not for profit. Wikipedia recently launched a pledge drive to generate some revenue. Why doesn't boards do the same? Make it clear what the purpose of the drive is and perhaps offer some kind of incentive to offer a donation such as everyone who enters gets an entry to a prize draw or if a certain target is reached then the admins will take a stroll down Grafton Street in their underwear

I'm sure many of you reading this can think of plenty of other ways to raise a few euro for boards. Communities are supposed to work together to solve their problems, not bicker about them endlessly. Getting the users of boards more involved in fundraising and hopfully seeing the fruits of these labours pay off can only help add to the sense of community on boards.ie.

Beruthiel

Cartoon Head,
This is not the first thread on suggesting ways to help Boards out.
None were accepted by the Admins last time.

Though they are very greatful for people wanting to help them out, they prefer to carry on as they are for now.

Firewalkwithme

Beruthiel wrote:

Cartoon Head,
This is not the first thread on suggesting ways to help Boards out.
None were accepted by the Admins last time.

Though they are very greatful for people wanting to help them out, they prefer to carry on as they are for now.

Anyone can change their mind. Perhaps the Admins might do that this time round? I suppose I will just have to wait and see if any of them reply here.

6th

Its a nobel idea alright and I cant understand why the admins didnt want the help last time ... pride?

Anyway, Boards.ie Idol (see sig) might be a start if it looks like it could be popular?

I subscribe as my way to give something back but if there was more I could do I would.

padser

Cartoon_Head wrote:

Similar to Wikipedia, boards is a community run website, not for profit. Wikipedia recently launched a pledge drive to generate some revenue. Why doesn't boards do the same? Make it clear what the purpose of the drive is and perhaps offer some kind of incentive to offer a donation such as everyone who enters gets an entry to a prize draw or if a certain target is reached then the admins will take a stroll down Grafton Street in their underwear
.

Correct me if I'm wrong [and I'm sure somebody will] but is boards not a 'for profit' company at this stage? With a community of 75,000 it certainly could be profitable.

Firewalkwithme

6th wrote:

Its a nobel idea alright and I cant understand why the admins didnt want the help last time ... pride?

Anyway, Boards.ie Idol (see sig) might be a start if it looks like it could be popular?

I subscribe as my way to give something back but if there was more I could do I would.

The Boards.ie Idol idea sounds good but it does say that money raised would be for charity, why not for boards.ie?

6th

Boards.ie Idol is just an idea at present so its not a definate and its not decided if it would be for charity .... its all open.

Terry

padser wrote:

Correct me if I'm wrong [and I'm sure somebody will] but is boards not a 'for profit' company at this stage? With a community of 75,000 it certainly could be profitable.

Closing in on 100,000 at the moment, but not all of them would be regular users.

The most ever on-line at once was something in the region of 1,600 people.
Not everyone who reads this crap* is a member either.

You're looking at about 15,000 regular users. I'm just guessing here, buy that seems to be roughly the amount (percentage wise) who are regular users on other forums I visit.






*Referring to my own contributions, of course.

padser

Terry wrote:

You're looking at about 15,000 regular users. I'm just guessing here, buy that seems to be roughly the amount (percentage wise) who are regular users on other forums I visit.

Well say that those 15,000 users visit on average 3 times a week and get shown 2 adds each time they visit. Thats 90,000 adds (I would suspect thats pretty conservitive).

Unfortunately I have no clue what an online add retails for [maybe someone does], but at 5c would be €4,500 per week. I don't know how many subcriptions or how much they cost.

Major cost is obviously the servers [which again I'v little or no clue how much they cost].

Anyway, back to the OP, I'd say boards easily covers its costs at least!

Mr. Presentable

Speed it up by limiting users to access one day a week I'll take Tuesdays!

Boards.ie is a business, and as such is run to make a profit. The final accounts may show a loss, but this is usual among businesses anyway, otherwise they have to pay Corporation tax. In business, especially small companies, if there is a profit in the offing directors'll try to spend it on infrastructure (servers?) or take it as a dividend.

No need in my mind for charity. I subscribe because I feel if a service is worth using it is worth paying for, and despite what Mods say about the sub being a "donation" it is payment for a service (albeit only slightly enhanced compared with "free" access (which is paid by the ads, so not free either).

IMHO btw.

Rabies

nipplenuts wrote:

Boards.ie is a business, and as such is run to make a profit.

I don't think that is the over all aim of the admins in my opinion.
They created something that has grown beyond expectation and keep it going because it gives something back to the community while creating one at the same time.
If Boards.ie as a company was to pay the admins for time incurred over the years, then definitly it would be in debt. I don't know the status of the Boards.ie accounts nor do I want to. All I know is, it is here and I enjoy the site including it's ups and downs.




*i'm drunkl, so all the above is a ramble.

aidan_walsh

padser wrote:

Well say that those 15,000 users visit on average 3 times a week and get shown 2 adds each time they visit. Thats 90,000 adds (I would suspect thats pretty conservitive).

Unfortunately I have no clue what an online add retails for [maybe someone does], but at 5c would be €4,500 per week. I don't know how many subcriptions or how much they cost.

Major cost is obviously the servers [which again I'v little or no clue how much they cost].

Anyway, back to the OP, I'd say boards easily covers its costs at least!

Now take into account the growing percentage of people online who install ad-blockers.

Stark

padser wrote:

Well say that those 15,000 users visit on average 3 times a week and get shown 2 adds each time they visit. Thats 90,000 adds (I would suspect thats pretty conservitive).

Unfortunately I have no clue what an online add retails for [maybe someone does], but at 5c would be €4,500 per week. I don't know how many subcriptions or how much they cost.

Major cost is obviously the servers [which again I'v little or no clue how much they cost].

Anyway, back to the OP, I'd say boards easily covers its costs at least!

I've seen the accounts before and we're talking small change in terms of revenue, nothing like €4,500 a week. (I think it was a lot closer to 4,500 per annum). You can request the accounts yourself from the CRO.

Stephen

I use adblock to block annoying and irritating ads (Flashing pile of crap designed to look like windows dialog boxes anyone?). I have it set to allow ads from boards.ie in particular

padser

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining or annoyed about the situation, I am perfectly happy to have add's pop up on my screen to pay for my access to the site.

I'm simply responding to the OP's comment about a 'fundraiser' and saying I doubt it is necessary as the online traffic over this site must surely cover its costs!

I would request the accounts from the CRO except
a) I don't particularly care
b) I'm pretty sure I would have to pay - even for an online version!

Firewalkwithme

The lack of response to this thread tells me something. The boards community doesn't actually seem to exist in any real sense.

Considering the responses that were given, I'm going to break them down and tell you how I see them:

Users: The vast majority are all to quick to complain but very slow to help.

The vast majority of moderators who regularly post on this forum: Only seem to be interested in a feedback thread when it involves an argument instead of a positive thread.

Admins: I don't know since not one of them has even bothered to respond.

copacetic

Cartoon_Head wrote:

The lack of response to this thread tells me something. The boards community doesn't actually seem to exist in any real sense.

Considering the responses that were given, I'm going to break them down and tell you how I see them:

Users: The vast majority are all to quick to complain but very slow to help.

The vast majority of moderators who regularly post on this forum: Only seem to be interested in a feedback thread when it involves an argument instead of a positive thread.

Admins: I don't know since not one of them has even bothered to respond.

possibly responses have been slow since we have all seen the work the guys have done recently to make boards a much more positive experience for users.

I for one was quick to subscribe when I saw that boards had become a site that could be used as intended.

Firewalkwithme

daveym wrote:

possibly responses have been slow since we have all seen the work the guys have done recently to make boards a much more positive experience for users.

I for one was quick to subscribe when I saw that boards had become a site that could be used as intended.

This thread and all responses to it (until tonight's) were posted prior to the recent upgrade.

I've been a subscriber for over a year, not just since things improved. I subscribed in the hope that things would improve and they did.

I think the first post in this thread best explains what I was trying to propose so I'm not going to repeat myself. All I'm saying is that the response has been disappointing though perhaps not all that surprising.

copacetic

Cartoon_Head wrote:

This thread and all responses to it (until tonight's) were posted prior to the recent upgrade.

I've been a subscriber for over a year, not just since things improved. I subscribed in the hope that things would improve and they did.

I think the first post in this thread best explains what I was trying to propose so I'm not going to repeat myself. All I'm saying is that the response has been disappointing though perhaps not all that surprising.

yes i understand that but the upgrade happened in the meantime which might be one of the reasons for the slow responses.

Your are a bit of a moany 'I'm a community of one here people' fecker though, that could be the other reason nobody bothered to reply. I know I'm sorry I did now..

aidan_walsh

The boards community doesn't actually seem to exist in any real sense.

In many ways, I'm not convinced that there is a "boards community". Rather, I see boards as a number of communities working who commune independant of each other under the same web address. There are many crossovers, people who belong in several communities, just as with any other walk of life. Boards as an entity has become too large to have a single community alone.

Users: The vast majority are all to quick to complain but very slow to help.

Assuming we can talk about boards as a single community, this fact is pretty much a given in many large communities anyway.

Admins: I don't know since not one of them has even bothered to respond.

One the one hand, they responded in the past saying they weren't interested in fundraising ideas. I can't find the post now, but I know that it was pretty detailed.

On the other, things have worked out better in the mean time without the need for a community intervention, no matter how well intentioned. You know the changed that have taken place, and we have been told that old features will be reimplemented in the future.

Firewalkwithme

daveym wrote:

yes i understand that but the upgrade happened in the meantime which might be one of the reasons for the slow responses.

Your are a bit of a moany 'I'm a community of one here people' fecker though, that could be the other reason nobody bothered to reply. I know I'm sorry I did now..

The whole point of my original post was not to be negative. It is only the lack of feedback that made me adopt a negative attitude.

It proves my point that it took a negative attitude from myself before this thread garnered any real attention.

Firewalkwithme

aidan_walsh wrote:

On the other, things have worked out better in the mean time without the need for a community intervention, no matter how well intentioned. You know the changed that have taken place, and we have been told that old features will be reimplemented in the future.

The upgrades have been fantastic, I'm only to happy to admit that I'm amazed by the improvements but you can't rest on your laurels.

If anyone could point me to the previous reply from the admins re. fundraising I'd appreciate it. Thanks in advance.

Vexorg

Hi Cartoon_head

We have always stated that money for hardware was not an issue, but the spirit of your suggestion is appreciated, we have had many offers of assistance many public and even more private but just throwing money and people at it was not going to solve the delay, and the fact that we had enough funds to cover the hardware meant we could not in all honestly accept more.:)

The real culprit was timing, and the only solution was to find the time to do it ourselves, we are currently working through this process as best we can.

V

Firewalkwithme

Thanks for responding Vexorg. Good luck with the rest of the upgrade work.

r3nu4l

For the record cartoon head, I've been reading/watching the thread with interest.

While I thought your ideas had merit, I felt that it wasn't for me to comment. I felt that only the Admins and maybe the SMods or those who have had previous experience of this question should comment.

Now that the Admins have had their say, I've learned something more about boards.ie A while ago I learned that the idea of Mod Awards isn't such a clever one

DeVore

Cartoon Head, noone was ignoring you but things have been a bit hectic between the upgrades and personal travel (I arrived back last night from Asia after 3 weeks, for example. Cloud has been in Boston at a conference etc etc)

Partly the reason we dont really get into replying to these sorts of well intentioned suggestions is that it takes a long time to write detailed replies which effectively translate to "this wont work" or "we dont want to do that".

For example, since we are short of time rather then anything else, suggesting that we organise a family day out is spending the very currency we are short of. Additionally, we have no guaruntee that enough people will turn up to make it profitable which could leave us with at best a small profit, and at worst a debt after a lot of work.

We dont put a "donate to this site" paypal button up because firstly, we dont actually NEED money, we need time. The money the site generates is sufficent to cover its growth, we've had the servers bought for the recent upgrade a week after we decided to do it, but two months before we had everything in place to install them. So, money is not necessaraily our issue.

To clarify further on the monetary front, this IS a FOR-PROFIT site. We have always said that. If someone walked up to us tomorrow and offered us 20 Million for the site, we'd most likely sell. But its not our primary goal which is the bit people find hard to understand sometimes. In fact we have several goals as each of the admins have differing reasons for doing the job. I cant speak for the others but I know that leaving a mark, however small, on the development of the Irish internet and our society in the future drives me to continue being involved. Thats just me though....

We serve 8 Million ads a month. We would be lucky if that generated 2-3k a month. If I had to choose one single item that people misunderstand the most (and the greatest disapparity between their belief and the truth too) then it would be the advertising model on the internet. Its simply a total fallacy that you can make a business from it alone.

So where does that money go to? Well, in part it gets saved for server upgrades. Part of the ads are given to suppliers in contra deals. The remainder is stored in our legal defence fund.

If you consider that I charge (and am regularly paid!) 1000+ euros for a single days meeting to analyse a company's internet strategy or to advise on how to manage a website launch, you can see that there is no point in me invoicing Boards. I'd hate to think what Regi et al could charge. Know many people who can design a datacentre? How many website admins run 5 server, load balanced clusters? Cant be more then a handful!
So the idea that we could possibly generate enough money to pay the admins is just not realisitic. In fact, if we employed even one medium level IT guy or programmer, we'd spend all of our revenue on his wages leaving none for future upgrades.

I know people think we simply roll along with the site and go where it goes but in fact we've had over 7 years of experience planning and running it. It doesnt go to plan always but mostly we muddle by. The trick is that its a VERY SENSITIVE system.... one screwup and we end up growing faster then we should, or not linking revenue to growth, or mis-spending our revenue (on things like wages etc) or over working the mods, or the Smods, or the admins and things break down. If we pay one group, will we alienate another? etc etc etc.

People offer to work for us occasionally, and thats very generous but managing them can be more time consuming then doing the job yourself. Plus we have no idea if the person really IS a unix-guru or an SQL genius or a tosser with an inflated belief in his IT abilities who will be way out of his depth with our (rather complex) system and possibly wreck things.
Again, management time becomes a factor.

Individual revenue generation ideas (like a poker night or a karaoke) wont work because they will generate a few hundred quid profit and we would need to run a dozen a month successfully to generate enough to employ someone. By the way, poker events are a very poor way to generate cash by the way, if they break even they are considered successful.
Any such events will need to be successful every month, month on month to maintain the system. This is a critical part of planning around boards.ie ... sustainability. It has been the reason we survived the Web crash, the reason we have grown so big without a budget and the reason we can run this site as an aside rather then burden it with our salary costs.

We are set up to self power and self finance and grow organically. None of this happened by chance, we planned it this way. Admittedly we didnt plan on it being anything like as successful as it has been , I think Cloud and I had delusions of grandeur about having 1 Million page impressions a month. We are well out of our first plan and even our second plan and are free wheeling it now but the lessons we have learned as we sailed, self-referentially, past the sites who were trying to use normal business models have been engrained in us now. We move slowly and carefully and try not to disturb the balance.

So, thats as comprehensive an answer as I can give you without carving out some of my brain. This year will see things accelerate for us as we benefit from economies of scale but the essence of what I have said will always be a factor for us because of our unique business approach.

DeV.

r3nu4l

/picks jaw from floor

Today I learned a lot! Thanks for sharing that DeV

[in one ear out the other]Now what about a boards.ie Admins Full Monty night? That could raise money. Or a sponsored 'keep your clothes on' night where we Brothers of the Receding Hair and Beer Guts forum promise to keep one item of clothing on for every thousand euro donated, or how about...[/in one ear out the other]

DeVore

I think Aidans point about Boards not being a single community is well made. Boards is not a single community the way it once was. Adapting to that change has proved to be a big problem for some people. Boards is really a group of diverse communities, sharing some common members, benefitting from the critical mass of the general public who congregate here to cross-pollinate each other. One of those communities (a kinda special one) is the community who are interested in how this site is run. Their forum has been Feedback but I am beginning to think we might need to recognise that community formally and create a Boardserati forum where people can kick around various ideas about Boards and its existance. Might free up feedback for actual Feedback

DeV.

oscarBravo

DeVore wrote:

...I am beginning to think we might need to recognise that community formally and create a Boardserati forum...

/starts practicing funny handshakes

watty

I'd hate to publically post some of my ideas for boards. They might be misunderstood.

delly

r3nu4l wrote:

/picks jaw from floor

Today I learned a lot! Thanks for sharing that DeV

I was gonna post something similar, but that'll do nicely.