I promised a thread on the future of Boards...

dr.bollocko

My concern is that any plans on the future posters or a future direction might be like trying to herd cats. That said I salute anyone willing to grab the bull by the horns.
In all of it though the one thing that really matters is that we as mods and the admins also keep listening to the posters that keep this place going.
Cos without them I'd just be here deleting spammers and sighing occasionally.

Eoin

big b wrote: »

With respect, Eoin, I don't think I've got it the wrong way round at all.

A charter....influence politicians....
Of course outside agencies will view the membership size as an opportunity to "speak to the masses". But what the masses here have in common is a use of boards.ie, not allegiance to one cause or another.

What I meant to say is that external organisations react to what is said here in normal conversation because of the size of this site. As in any influence we have here is due to the huge amount of threads and posters - not that there are any crusades or anything like that.

Nevyn

eoin wrote: »

But wasn't the core identity of this site not 99% gaming for a while? Now the site has evolved so it's just one part of a large community. As the site gets bigger and bigger, it's going to have more influence in off line matters, and I think that has to be taken into account.

True but it's user based used to be predominatly smart people )with a few muppets and tards) as people found boards.ie while in college or from IT professionals wiht a few people like Beruthiel who surfed in due to other interests and we broke them into how we did things and the accepted standards and norms here on the site in terms of rules and culture.

That has drastically changed over the last 3 years and as more and more joe soaps get internet and pc/laptops/netbooks/macbooks/net enabled phones then it's gets harder and harder to instill or pass on what makes boards boards and some sort of reference documents are needed, as posters/mods/admins saying, that's not how things are done no longer seems to be enough
and we maybe looking in a while at the inmates taking over the asslyum and boards.ie being a place people don't want to hang out online any more or take part in discussions as they are no longer civil informative and fun.

eoin wrote: »

I think you've got it the wrong way around. Any influence this site will have in off line matters will be because of its station and membership size. As seamus has said, people and organisations are starting to react to what is said here.

I think it's both, real life is having an effect on boards.ie and boards.ie is having an effect on real life.

One of these things being the shift from nick/handles/usernames being utterly different to a person's real name and people now willingly using thier names on facebook ect. It's changing how people perceive the internet and people on it and people and organisations see the point in wanting to interact with joe murphy where as they didn't see the point in interacting with DeathGiver1000. They have figured out there are real people on sites like boards which makes what happens next damned intresting.

Eoin

Thaedydal wrote: »

I think it's both, real life is having an effect on boards.ie and boards.ie is having an effect on real life.

One of these things being the shift from nick/handles/usernames being utterly different to a person's real name and people now willingly using thier names on facebook ect. It's changing how people perceive the internet and people on it and people and organisations see the point in wanting to interact with joe murphy where as they didn't see the point in interacting with DeathGiver1000. They have figured out there are real people on sites like boards which makes what happens next damned intresting.

Yeah, I see what you mean.

My point was that I think that any influence this site might have is because so many people chat about issues here - not that there are any particular crusades that the site itself as an entity is championing.

crocro

1 Do like the other Dev and write a constitution with principles. boards.ie has no written ideals or fundamental principles as its stands - just some in-jokes.
2. Said constitution lays out powah structure. council/elecyted reps, independent judiciary, you name it.
3. Whole thing should be self organising and self-perpetuating. You let it grow, let it make mistakes and hope it emerges as a successful cyber nation state and not Zimbabwe II
4. You need more famous people interacting with forums. Special well moderated threads that run for an hour and are flagged in advance. Authors on creative writing forum, sports people, politcians whatever. For some of the niche forums, the relevant person will only be of interest to small set of people (not Heat magazine famous).
5. You need to be explicit about the nature of boards.ie. Is it a community? Really? Is it your pension plan? Is it both? Whatever the answer just be honest and lay it out there. No more of this we're all on a big hippy bus bs.

Nevyn

crocro wrote: »

1 Do like the other Dev and write a constitution with principles. boards.ie has no written ideals or fundamental principles as its stands - just some in-jokes.

Have you read the site faq?

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/faq.php?faq=bie_faq

seamus

big b wrote: »

I just think that any attempt to generalise an opinion as being that of the users of boards.ie would be very unwelcome & ultimately to the detriment of boards as a business.

Exactly, that's what I'm saying, there's no intention of doing that.

But what the masses here have in common is a use of boards.ie, not allegiance to one cause or another.

And that is *exactly* what will draw them here. They spend enough time hearing from people with hidden agendas, unions and special interest groups and so forth, but they so rarely hear from the guy on the street, and the guy on the street so rarely has his viewpoint put across.
boards.ie provides access to that "guy on the street" with no hidden agendas, no particular cause. If you post something for criticism/questions, there'll be nobody toeing a party line except their own.

The benefit of doing this is more the PR win than anything else. Do you think Vodafone saves money by employing someone to answer technical questions on messageboards which could easily be solved by a large callcentre? No. But the PR benefit of it is enormous. Conducting problem and conflict resolution in public and actively going out there and publically engaging with your target audience makes people like you. It makes them think you're listening.
/aside

Earthhorse

seamus wrote: »

And that is *exactly* what will draw them here. They spend enough time hearing from people with hidden agendas, unions and special interest groups and so forth, but they so rarely hear from the guy on the street, and the guy on the street so rarely has his viewpoint put across.
boards.ie provides access to that "guy on the street" with no hidden agendas, no particular cause. If you post something for criticism/questions, there'll be nobody toeing a party line except their own.

Don't you think that people with hidden agendas will follow them here? Do you think that boards has no users with agendas?

seamus

Earthhorse wrote: »

Don't you think that people with hidden agendas will follow them here? Do you think that boards has no users with agendas?

Everyone has an agenda. But groups with very specific agendas don't have the means to organise themselves and act with one voice on boards - the freedom of the medium prevents any one group from pushing their agenda above the public's.

Yes, you will have your "I'm with Sinn Fein, and I disagree with everything you say" types, countered by, "I'm with FF, I love you" types, but overwhelmingly it's just, "I'm Joe Bloggs, fix the country you muppet" types.

Earthhorse

seamus wrote: »

Everyone has an agenda. But groups with very specific agendas don't have the means to organise themselves and act with one voice on boards - the freedom of the medium prevents any one group from pushing their agenda above the public's.

I think you underestimate them.

Black Swan

DeVore wrote: »

It might be that its a short document, but you can still end up with a short document after a lot of hard thinking.

Like the Pirate's Code... “more a set of guidelines?”

CreepingDeath

I suppose the future of boards depends on what your priorities are eg.
a) money
b) freedom of speech ( within reason )
c) fair moderation
d) scaleable organic growth of the site, so 300% growth in users won't overwhelm the sites functioning
e) political force ( eg. with site wide polls on major issues, not just thread specific polls )

The idea of public versus private forums might mitigate some of the freedom of speech issues.
Where subsets of users can be part of the site and also a distinct subset, which really individualises the site and promotes loyalty.

So maybe splitting boards into private groups is part of how it can grow without the need for as much public moderation. So people can rant in private and post in public.
I am assuming that part of the problem with boards expanding is how to moderate the public side of it effectively.

I also work in the anti-fraud and anti-money laundering software sector.
Similar to reported posts, we have "alerts" against financial transactions with priorities against each one.
So maybe as the need for moderation increases with the number of users, if a user reports a post they must specify the nature of the report in a follow-on screen eg.

• 1. legal reasons,
• 2. racism,
• 3. personal abuse,
• 4. spamming
• 5. forum specific guidelines broken

and a moderator can rank the reported posts in order of priority and address them in an ordered priority sequence.

* actually I haven't reported a post so maybe ye do this already

I'm not sure if mods get a flood of reported posts, but by allowing the forum users to report posts they do most of the work in vetting posts.
The site becomes sort of self-administering/regulating as the number of users scales.

And if an individual user decides to overuse the "report post" feature they can be blacklisted, or have a priority multiplier against them so a priority 1 from them is effectively a priority 4 or lower.

That's my 2 or more cents on boards anyways !

MrMicra

surely one could just create more moderators? as Karl points out the moderators are volunteers and I would have thought if a poster proved a poor moderator he or she could be removed.

Orion

crocro wrote: »

1 Do like the other Dev and write a constitution with principles.

Fortunately John Charles McQuaid is dead. Unfortunately his constitution lives on. Fortunately DeV(ore) has more common sense than DeV(alera).

CreepingDeath wrote: »

I suppose the future of boards depends on what your priorities are eg.
a) money

That's my issue. As I mentioned in another thread money seems to have become the primary focus of boards. I know we now have "community reps" but that position appears to be more focused on raising income than engaging the community. If the position was renamed "marketing rep" it would be fine - but it isn't. It's a pretense that the community is #1 whereas money is more #1. I could have this completely backwards but that's how it appears to me rightly or wrongly.

I have no problem with Boards Ltd. making money - but I don't like being misled (I was about to say 'lied to' but that would be a bit harsh).

snyper wrote: »

Personally, i just one of those seagulls that will come flyin' in now and again to grab a fish - i like this boat - its big and the fish taste good. Im a seagull, i dont really care who the captain is or what type of boat it is as long as the fish are plentiful.
Of course if the boat owners dont keep abreast of the pressing matters keeping the boat successful - they wont be anymore fish

Not sure about the analogy but agree with the meaning. The users make the site. Pi$s off enough users and you lose the site.

That all said - I enjoy being part of boards - despite my misgivings about the current direction. It's an amazing conglomerate of varied communities. There are cliques - as there will be in any community. There are differences of opinion. There are discussions about the direction of the community which is unheard of in a site this size. While I accept that DeV wants to retire on the strength of boards I would not want to be a part of a community that's primary function is raising money for a board of directors. That just makes it a commercial site rather than a community site. The two can co-exist but it is a fine balance between the needs of the community and the needs of the bosses. The problem is once the line is crossed it cannot be uncrossed.

Daysha

The only serious issue I take with Boards is the way ban appeals are handled here. I know there are some places that don't have any sort of appeal system implemented, but that should never be the case here given the number of moderators we've got. I'm not a fan of posters appealing a ban in a forum everyone can read, and even though it's gotten better since they have been switched from feedback to helpdesk, I still don't like how 5/6 admins handle every single appeal on a website with over 200,000 accounts. There should be far more "regular" mod involvement, just not on the feedback scale that we've seen before.

I'm a mod on a seperate website and I have to say the appeals system works extremely well, the only problem being I don't know how it would be implemented through vBulletin. But fwiw I'll describe how it works.

1 - If a user wishes to appeal a ban, they submit a "ticket" giving a reason why they disagree with the decision. ONE regular mod not involved with the original decision is then given the job of responding to said poster and decides whether to keep or lift the ban.

2 - If the user still feels they were hard done by, they can submit a 2nd ticket, except this time it would be referred to the next higher power, in Boards case, the CMods. The CMod can read the 1st ticket and the first appeal response and he/she would make a decision.

3 - Finally, if the user is still unhappy with the responses, they can submit one final ticket, which would then have to responded to by the site admins. The admin would make a final decision on the matter and the case would be closed after that. In my own forums case if a user takes the matter all the way to the admins and it's not overturned, then they are banned from appealing future bans for a set period of time, but that doesn't necessarily have to be implemented here.

I should stress that this is all done "behind the scenes". The only people who can read the tickets and responses are the user in question and the mods who replies.

Why is it better than what we have right now? Well for starters, there is a set structure to the way the procedure is done and everything is just streamlined so much better. The problem with what's happening now is that certain threads with ban appeals can drag on much longer than they need to. With this system they are limited to up to 3 posts to express their objections. It's also good practice to have more mod involvement and get used to making decisions outside their usual forum boundaries, and since they'd be looking at it from an outsiders point of view there can be no issue involving favouritism etc.

Like I said earlier though, we don't use vBulletin, and issues such as deciding which mods reply to certain tickets would need to be addressed, but it's certainly at least worth thinking about.

big b

DeVore wrote: »

+2

Everyone should have a Seamus, they really are so handy.

DeV.

He seems a good 'un, alright.:),



earth horse has a good point too ref secret agendas/collaborations etc.

But as my old boss used to say "just because it's tough, doesn't mean we don't do it"

Agent Smith

Rb wrote: »

A "boards without DeVore" two years from now? Interesting...

I would say that I would hope you'd pay those involved in this "feedback" you'll be asking them for, however I think it's more than apparent that there's enough gob****es around here who'll work for free for you to milk before it should come to that.

I'm glad you're more forthcoming about where your priorities lie for the site (i.e making mula for you to retire on) and I certainly cannot blame you.

Nothing beats Free Labour! Hell, i'd do the same.

just dont flake out and sell boards to someone like Microsoft.


"The Unix forum, sponsered by Windows 7"

crocro

Thaedydal wrote: »

crocro wrote:

1 Do like the other Dev and write a constitution with principles. boards.ie has no written ideals or fundamental principles as its stands - just some in-jokes.

Have you read the site faq?

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/faq.php?faq=bie_faq

That's a FAQ, a list of rules. A constitution defines the type of rules that are allowed - the meta-rules. It also defines who has authority to do what.

seamus

seamus wrote: »

I'll declare at the start that I've talked with Tom plenty of times on various "future of boards" topics, so I somewhat have the inside track here.

The intention is not that boards.ie "the company" wishes to influence politicians by representing its members and applying pressure, but that boards.ie itself is seen as an essential means of communicating with the public, and by virtue of its very nature, the public are then directly given the power to influence those politicians. There are a large number topics that I can recall on Politics where I thought, "If only the politicians were reading this thread, they'd know exactly what the best course of action is".

This is not something that boards will need to chase. It simply needs to be prepared for it. The "Talk To" set of forums and the commercial interaction side which seems to get some people's backs up, isn't something which boards.ie chased. Nobody went out there cold-calling companies and asking them if they wanted a forum. The companies themselves were queuing up asking, "How can we talk to your community" and until Dav and Darragh were hired, boards just didn't have the resources to handle these requests properly.

It's only a matter of time before a politician or a political party comes to boards asking, "How can I talk to your community?", and boards.ie needs to be ready to catch them, pin them down and sit them in front of the community.

DeV is not talking here about leading the community into any grandiose ideas, or telling people that, "We are going to go in this direction and to hell with you!", but rather simply making sure that the site is adequately ready for the new dimensions which it will organically develop itself.

Good post.It's as far as I've had time so far to go in this thread and wanted to make 2 quick points-so apologies if they're made already.

The community managers from what I can see are coming into their own enhancing the "product" that the posters use in the way you describe without from what I can see to be honest any negatives.

If I was to second guess what DeV is see'ing now , it's the fast leaps the site is taking since their role was created and the other new roles.
It's logical to want to craft the road ahead in advance and be somewhat prepared.

Just getting back to politicians also-Surely the anonymity principle on boards.ie will be a problem for political interaction.
OK I know posters on boards often inadvertently [usually] leave some trace to their identity and obviously everyone is traceable so ,not anonymous to the admins of the site but will politicans interact in a meaningful way if they have no idea who they are talking to or where they are from,or any of the normal person to person verifications of what someone is saying etc?
Has there been any thought into that?
Commercial entities that deal on boards have had usernames associated with real people [customers] but is this going to happen with politics or campaigns? I'd doubt it but maybe this has been discussed and a road examined for that?

Dyr

One of the definitions of forum from some online dictionary is this:
" A public meeting place for open discussion."


I reckon boards is a success because:
a) it's the biggest "forum" going in ireland.
b) it's a great repository of localised information. Do an irish google search on some topics and you'll inevitably find boards threads near the top of the result.

These are both due to the user community. Given that some of the other bright ideas launched by the boards group haven't set the world alight (o hai social.ie, biki, boards.everywhere ) would you really mess around with boards.ie single real asset? Not that it would make much difference, the sheer volume of the user base makes boards nearly immune to bad decisions imo.


Most people who use boards dont give a f**k about it's culture or whatever else, that guff is mostly only for those who want to rise up the ladder to be a mod or cmod etc. IMO boards is managed horribly a lot of the time and it doesn't really affect it's core service for most users, so why bother with the window dressing of a constitution? Would it even be honest?

johnnyskeleton

DeVore wrote: »

How should users be represented, and to *what* are they represented? Should there be some form of Supreme court, separated from the Judicary, Legislative and Policing branches?

Take a step back. It's just a website. The last thing it needs is a bloated civil service and real world judges already get enough guff on the site without setting up even bigger, easier targets.

DeVore

I think people have read maybe too much into what I have said (or I havent said it very well, I did say I havent given this my usual amount of thinking).

This question was raised by asking "what if Tom gets run over by a train".

As you might expect, I'm not *wild* about the premise... but its a good question.

DeV.

minidazzler

DeVore wrote: »

I think people have read maybe too much into what I have said (or I havent said it very well, I did say I havent given this my usual amount of thinking).

This question was raised by asking "what if Tom gets run over by a train".

As you might expect, I'm not *wild* about the premise... but its a good question.

DeV.

If you want you can give me your password and if that happens I will take over as DeV. Make DeV the face as boards rather than an actual person.

Kinda like in 1984 :P

seamus

DeVore wrote: »

This question was raised by asking "what if Tom gets run over by a train".

Sounds like something I'd say, but only because we have the "bus" contingency in our work. I.e. you need to document everything you do in case you get hit by a bus tomorrow...

It's a lovely thought

Doctor DooM

DeVore wrote: »

I think people have read maybe too much into what I have said (or I havent said it very well, I did say I havent given this my usual amount of thinking).

This question was raised by asking "what if Tom gets run over by a train".

As you might expect, I'm not *wild* about the premise... but its a good question.

DeV.

Hm.

Seems to me all we need to do then is show Tom this.

Problem solved, nes't pas?


(Sorry for adding the humour. With my serious DooM hat on, I don't think there's any point in getting all worked up until we see more. My only worry is mods getting too restricted in their scope. Homogenisation would not be good for Boards. Can't see it happening though.)

watty

zuroph wrote: »

If it aint broke dont fix it IMO.

It is broken. It does need fixed.

Good move on DeVore part. Depending on what they come up with.

Wibbs

watty wrote: »

It is broken. It does need fixed.

Good move on DeVore part. Depending on what they come up with.

I defo agree with the latter, but not so sure of the former. I don't think it's broken as such. I certainly don't think it's broken as far as what Boards is now or was say a year ago. My concern would be the road ahead.

Is what in place applicable there? In that I'm not so sure. For me anyway I think boards can be and has the best chance of being much much more than a message board. I think a concentration on polishing that which is essentially the past with a little of the present while worthy may miss out on what it could and deserves to become.

I think the real life social aspect is what should be promoted more and more. That's where the actual growth, not random google clicks/web 2.0/number of registered(but not active) user base growth will stem from and feed back into the "brand experience". That's what will extend the reach of this entity. That's what will bring many more real users and content into the site.

The involvement of politicians/commercial reps etc in debate here is a great move forward. Hats off to those involved in that aspect. A hard one to navigate at times, but it's been handled really well.

The creation and nurturing of real life stuff like the Boards cycling lads and lasses, running, drama, photography, football, standup comedy and many more is a great move forward. The users and mods involved in nurturing that should be held up as real heroes here. Kudos all around.

I would say more official organised or at least bannered "Boards" events should be encouraged. More things like the boards awards where the community feels they have an input and a fun one too. I think more users want that than any "say" in the direction, or structure of boards itself.

As for the structure itself? I think and IMHO, there is too much of a "mods" biased vibe. I think it's a little too much of a good thing in a way. Mods get too much focus. I think that comes from the users and mods equally. I'm just not sure it's that healthy at times. I think it can contribute to a them and us thing. I think it can contribute to bias for some over others. I think it can contribute to hubris too. All natural and pretty low level in fairness considering how many mods there are. We're bloody lucky that way, but I still reckon that can be improved.

Any contribution I make as a mod is entirely in the service of the user base and the community. That's where it begins and ends as far as I'm concerned anyway.

seamus

Wibbs wrote: »

I would say more official organised or at least bannered "Boards" events should be encouraged. More things like the boards awards where the community feels they have an input and a fun one too. I think more users want that than any "say" in the direction, or structure of boards itself.

The problem with these is that boards ie no longer a single community to whom the idea of a beers, for example, can apply.

Boards awards in days gone by were fun and games, but wholly infeasible at this point. Biggest muppet? Hottest poster? Great fun, but how in God's name do you do that again without getting into trouble and getting names from a fair spread of the community?

I think the boards "banner" is great, but boards needs to stand back from organising anything. If the Athletics guys want to run a triathlon event through boards, then hooray and print up all the boards banners you like, but don't expect any organisational assistance from boards.ie HQ. This is your event, boards is providing the loudspeaker with which you can reach your public, but that's about it.

DeVore

Divorce her Seamus, marry me. We can be in Prague by midnight.

I'm very sick today so I will keep this brief.

Things arent broken, now... but they will break. By "break" I mean, lose the reason I/we started this thing. Or lose the unique self governance aspects over time.

Imagine this (it wouldnt happen on my watch but its by no means out of the question)... Imagine that i'm dead or not here... Some dickhead of a "sales guy" comes in and says "Lets brand all the forums, we can sell sponsorship for them, Broadband Forum, sponsored by Eircom" lets say. Now the community, admins and mods get up in arms, this isnt the "Boards way"... but who has final say? Well the community does, it will leave if its not happy. But thats not a good outcome for anyone.

With the introduction of commerce, politics and journalism we need to guard our community with a short, clear document of our purpose, our structure, the way things are decided and who decides what. That way we dont lose our direction.
We also simply cant rely on me to sort things out when sh*t hits the fan so we need to improve the way we resolve conflicts, but that is another days battle.

DeV.

AlmightyCushion

minidazzler wrote: »

If you want you can give me your password and if that happens I will take over as DeV. Make DeV the face as boards rather than an actual person.

Duffman cannot be killed only the actors who play him.

DeVore wrote: »

We also simply cant rely on me to sort things out when sh*t hits the fan so we need to improve the way we resolve conflicts, but that is another days battle.

DeV.

Isn't that why we have all these shiney new admins though. If mr salesman comes along with his awesome new plan, they tell him "tough titties but that just isn't gonna happen". They also deal with **** when it's found it's way on to the fan.