Boards as social history

looksee

I happened to read a thread that started in Bank of Ireland forum in early 2009, asking whether it was worth buying shares as they seemed to be rising. I have no real interest in financial matters, but it was interesting reading people's actual thoughts on the state of the nation's finances, rather than what they claimed they thought in retrospect.

Over the last number years we have, really for the first time in history, a blow by blow, day by day record of what people were actually thinking as history unfolded. Not the considered (?!) stuff of media sources, but the thoughts of ordinary people.

How long will Boards be able to store everything? Have the early years of Boards already gone? I know there have been questions about the history of Boards occasionally, but has anyone done anything about the threads that tell social history? There must be a book in some of those threads!

AlmightyCushion

The very first post is still there (http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=1). I can't imagine the people behind boards removing posts to save space seeing as storage is just getting cheaper and cheaper.

minidazzler

That's the kind of thought that keeps me up at night, that everything I write here is pretty much permanent and in 5 years I'll regret a lot of it (as I do now for a fair bit of what I wrote when I was on boards in 2007...)

PC CDROM

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=30986

Always good.

Bar the cleansed history

looksee

Yes, that's the sort of thing I mean. Not sure if this is feedback or Humanities come to think of it.

_AVALANCHE_

looksee wrote: »

How long will Boards be able to store everything? Have the early years of Boards already gone? I know there have been questions about the history of Boards occasionally, but has anyone done anything about the threads that tell social history? There must be a book in some of those threads!

14 years of Boards.ie (everything posted on the site) is alot smaller than you might think, this time last year it was only 28GB!!!!:eek: Compressed it was only 6GB.

I could store it uncompressed....90 times over with the externals I have in my bedroom.

I remember Dav or Devore....or someone, saying, that the national archives store some of the bigger event threads so that their would be a permanent record. I hope it's not political bull they're storing.

That is a pretty damned interesting idea. Would be cool if at some point boards releases a book, which is essentially a chronicle of events that have happened during its history. It could be a Reeling In The Years style affair.

Tom Dunne

Fascinating all right.

But I think there are two strands to such an endeavor - commentary on historical events as they unfold, plus, a history of Boards.ie itself, which I think has parallels to the usage of social media in Ireland.

For me personally, the advent of the social forums (BGHR, TLL, tGCC and many others) was a fascinating time during the evolution of the site. It took social networking from the realm of the internet into the Real World(tm). There's probably a sociological thesis in there somewhere.

Completely agree. It added a much larger aspect to it.

I was actually thinking about this recently - through those forums and the Regional ones (in my case the Galway one), a large portion of my social life and my friends can be attributed directly to boards.

Dav

Storage of the content of Boards is not a concern - as it's just text, that doesn't take up a lot of hard drive space. There's about 30GB as mentioned above and attachments would be something similar. Boards will continue to store everything.

This site is a living historical document in a lot of ways - that's very much a part of what we do and one of the biggest reasons we don't allow people to mass delete their posts. We also get copied into the National Library's archives during significant events like general elections and so on - last time was for the Presidential Election: http://collection.europarchive.org/nli/

Also, for the record, we have no interest in publishing a book based on stuff on the site. However, we may do something with the mind-numbingly and monumentally stupid emails we get send into the office - people would probably think we were making it up

Captain Darling

I feel its important for future generations have free access to our toilet habits, so please god, dont delete 95% of our posts in AH.

Samich

*wrong thread

later12

The National Library of Ireland collect and record blogs from Irish people who post their opinions online. It's a pity they haven't used boards.ie as part of this project. I would have thought it would have been a far more rounded and comprehensive snapshot of public opinion and Irish social history than a random collection of blogs.

It will indeed be a fascinating historical resource in years to come. Never before in human history have historians had access to the complex opinions and ideals of more than just a handful of the most elite. Social media, opinion polls and indeed online message boards are going to turn that around completely.

Imagine if boards.ie had been around in 1916

Sean_O_Casey wrote:

Dev(alera) wrote:

OMG some guy in GPO declaring a Provisional Republic. Cool.

Fenian nutters. Blast them with piss

wrote:

Dev(alera) wrote:

:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

mike65

If boards had been around in 1916, the uprising would never have happened!

Morag

later12 wrote: »

The National Library of Ireland collect and record blogs from Irish people who post their opinions online. It's a pity they haven't used boards.ie as part of this project.

Dav wrote: »

We also get copied into the National Library's archives during significant events like general elections and so on - last time was for the Presidential Election: http://collection.europarchive.org/nli/

They do.

Steve

Dav wrote: »

However, we may do something with the mind-numbingly and monumentally stupid emails we get send into the office - people would probably think we were making it up

Please do.. we need some relief from austerity

Fenian Army

later12 wrote: »

The National Library of Ireland collect and record blogs from Irish people who post their opinions online. It's a pity they haven't used boards.ie as part of this project. I would have thought it would have been a far more rounded and comprehensive snapshot of public opinion and Irish social history than a random collection of blogs.

It will indeed be a fascinating historical resource in years to come. Never before in human history have historians had access to the complex opinions and ideals of more than just a handful of the most elite. Social media, opinion polls and indeed online message boards are going to turn that around completely.

Imagine if boards.ie had been around in 1916

Sites like political world are archived;

http://www.politicalworld.org/showthread.php?t=12030&highlight=national+interest+scholarly

So I'd imagine boards is too, but the political discussion on that site tends to be more "high brow" for want of a better word