Boards is becoming a Ghost Town

Unknown Soldier

I started here at the end of 1999, when the internet was the Wild west. It was good Craic. Boards was described, many times, as being a village that became town, that became a city etc.

Civilisations rise, and fall...

It is now the year 2016 and there is just so much tech out there that the social aspect of boards.ie will evolve into what is was in its early days.

People can now "vent" on so many platforms, a lot of them being comments sections.

The future for boards.ie seems to be an "Information" portal, on a personal level.

Where people ask questions, get answers, and discussions evolve.

You want to know how to "balance" the rads in your gaff? You will probably end up here.

Take up a sport and want to know more? You'll probably end up here. People will use their real names too, no more DEATHGIVER2000

Want to have a go at SF? the world is now your oyster.

The online dating thread over in After Hours has just been closed by Ken. His closing post was condescending and a little aggressive.

This is why posters complain about moderation on here. That thread was harmless. A bunch of posters discussing their experiences, asking questions, making points, having fun.

Why exactly was it closed?

qo2cj1dsne8y4k

When somethings modded to within an inch of its life, and it's no longer interesting or fun. That aside, there's definitely a more sinister side to posting on a message board like this, which would make me wary of getting too involved on certain serious topics. I do like boards, but to be completely honest, its lost most of its appeal for me, and it's not somewhere I can see myself hanging around for much longer.

wyrn

You know, I may be the only one but I feel really sorry for the UX / UI designers who worked on the revamp. They were commissioned and HQ signed off on it, so it must have seemed grand. I'm sure they thought they'd created something wonderful and would give something new to boards, whereas it seems to have crashed and burned. They probably put a lot of thought and work into creating the responsive site and it must be hard for them to read some of these (even the constructive ones) criticism. I'm not a designer but I know I'd be crushed if I had created something and the users cried out for the legacy version instead of the new one. I really really really do not understand some of the changes (especially all the extra empty space) but I'm sure there was some sort of plan or reasoning behind it.

So, if any of the designers are reading the feedback, I'm sorry it hasn't gone to plan for both you, your client and the users. I really hope some sort of happy medium can be found.

dudara

Deleted User wrote: »

The online dating thread over in After Hours has just been closed by Ken. His closing post was condescending and a little aggressive.

This is why posters complain about moderation on here. That thread was harmless. A bunch of posters discussing their experiences, asking questions, making points, having fun.

Why exactly was it closed?

I'm not aware myself why, but have you PM'd Ken or one of the other mods to ask why?

dudara

dudara wrote: »

I'm not aware myself why, but have you PM'd Ken or one of the other mods to ask why?

I have and the reason given was that it was going off topic and getting too chatty. I am now compiling a list of ridiculous threads which have been allowed to remain open. There is one currently over there called Art. It doesn't even have an OP.

Calhoun

wyrn wrote: »

You know, I may be the only one but I feel really sorry for the UX / UI designers who worked on the revamp. They were commissioned and HQ signed off on it, so it must have seemed grand. I'm sure they thought they'd created something wonderful and would give something new to boards, whereas it seems to have crashed and burned. They probably put a lot of thought and work into creating the responsive site and it must be hard for them to read some of these (even the constructive ones) criticism. I'm not a designer but I know I'd be crushed if I had created something and the users cried out for the legacy version instead of the new one. I really really really do not understand some of the changes (especially all the extra empty space) but I'm sure there was some sort of plan or reasoning behind it.

So, if any of the designers are reading the feedback, I'm sorry it hasn't gone to plan for both you, your client and the users. I really hope some sort of happy medium can be found.

We can't say for sure if it's an out and out failure as we don't have the numbers but I would not feel sorry for something that has failed to deliver for the users.

If you build something and lose sight of your customer then it's bound to fail.

However in this case the users are not the customers so you would wonder what brief was given.

I'd also say a big part of the problem was changing so much so fast, if you look at the likes of amazon ect they do continous micro design so it changes over a longer period and is easier to adjust to.

Penny Tration

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I have and the reason given was that it was going off topic and getting too chatty. I am now compiling a list of ridiculous threads which have been allowed to remain open. There is one currently over there called Art. It doesn't even have an OP.

In fairness, they did give mod warnings to stay on topic, and some people were doing some pure cringey flirting.

K-9

Eh, ridiculous threads are AH!

Seriously, there's a private forum for online stuff? Used to be anyway. AH was always strict on flirty chatty stuff in my time there, and long before it.

KomradeBishop

Penny Tration wrote: »

In fairness, they did give mod warnings to stay on topic, and some people were doing some pure cringey flirting.

Who cares if it's just the participants in the thread though? There was the occasional interesting discussion/point in it.

No wonder people say the sense of community is disappearing, if threads get closed because they're 'chatty'.

Penny Tration

KomradeBishop wrote: »

Who cares if it's just the participants in the thread though? There was the occasional interesting discussion/point in it.

No wonder people say the sense of community is disappearing, if threads get closed because they're 'chatty'.

Well the mods obviously care?

I don't understand closing it for being chatty, but flirting is always stamped down by mods, and going off topic for page after page alienates anyone who hasn't yet posted.

KomradeBishop

The thread was more active than it'd been in a very long time, and drawing in way more posters, so there was nobody to alienate really - closing a thread certainly alienates people from posting in it mind...

I don't disagree with stamping down on flirting, but closing a thread isn't the way to do that - and it's not like the thread became based on that or anything - and it was still revolving around the general topic of online dating, so I don't really think it went off topic; and going off topic on tangents isn't necessarily bad either.

smash

I don't agree with the closure of that thread. Lots of people contributed and it was a bit of fun as well as informative. Telling people to join the online dating forum is a bit silly because there a large number of posters who contributed who are in relationships and they were talking about previous experience. They're not going to join a dating forum!

Insect Overlord

I started reading that thread this morning and found it an excellent mix of posters' experiences and opinions, with just the right balance of flirty/chatty posts. Far better to let them post happily instead of having bitterness/arguments, especially in a topic where people were dealing with stereotypes and (often enough) uninformed opinions. Posters were self-regulating, from what I saw, so the mod intervention is just drawing an unnecessary headache on the AH mod team. Weird, really.

Dyr

dudara wrote: »

I'm not aware myself why, but have you PM'd Ken or one of the other mods to ask why?

Y'see that's your problem right there

Like every administrative system there's a tendency for the process to become a bureaucracy that only protects and benefits the administrator. Why should the guy get to field that question in private on a one to one basis?

Felix Jones is God

It's been reopened again

Ken.

Bambi wrote: »

Y'see that's your problem right there

Like every administrative system there's a tendency for the process to become a bureaucracy that only protects and benefits the administrator. Why should the guy get to field that question in private on a one to one basis?

So he can see the error of his ways and reopen the thread.

K-9

Felix Jones is God wrote: »

It's been reopened again

Giving us a bad image they are.

KomradeBishop

An File wrote: »

I started reading that thread this morning and found it an excellent mix of posters' experiences and opinions, with just the right balance of flirty/chatty posts. Far better to let them post happily instead of having bitterness/arguments, especially in a topic where people were dealing with stereotypes and (often enough) uninformed opinions. Posters were self-regulating, from what I saw, so the mod intervention is just drawing an unnecessary headache on the AH mod team. Weird, really.

Yea actually, self-regulating is a very good way to put it.

That's certainly the impression I got of After Hours, from years ago - in the past, the comparatively lax moderation, may have often led to a low signal-to-noise ratio for many types of discussions, but it would lead to nonsense and/or criticism-worthy-stuff being freely called out for what it was most of the time, by posters, in a way that made discussions mostly self-regulating - albeit more chaotic (not always a bad thing, chaos often = fun).

Some of the worst of this had to be clamped down on over time - e.g. openly sexist comments and such - as not all of it was self-regulating, but maybe some 'mission creep' occurred here, causing more stuff to be clamped down on than necessary - and maybe this has contributed to things becoming out of balance.

Certainly, the massive rise of some types of undesirable attitudes/posts after GamerGate and stuff like that, all over the Internet, probably led to an acceleration of this (not unnecessary either, don't want people to be alienated due to a large rise in online bigotry) - but maybe it's worth testing a change in the balance between moderation vs self-regulation, towards self-regulation again.

I wouldn't mind putting up with a minor increase in bigoted posters/posts, self-regulated by other posters, if it benefited the forum in other ways - and the balance between moderation vs self-regulation, could always be tipped the other way again in the future, if it becomes a problem.

_Kaiser_

Part of the issue on this site is that there are people (uses and mods alike) who take it FAR too seriously in my opinion.

It's a forum site... the whole idea is to promote and generate discussion and like any decent discussion it will stray into different areas and asides as it flows. That's what you in fact want to happen as it encourages a sense of community.

The whole overzealous nonsense of "stick to the topic" annoys and puts people off both the forum and the site. It's condescending and unnecessary in most cases. Then you have the "standard of posting" stuff from others with "notions" of what they consider acceptable - again some people need to step away from the keyboard and remember that it's only a website at the end of the day. Add to this then that what's considered "off-topic" or "quality" varies hugely across the site and even among the mods of each forum.

As long as people aren't being insulted, ganged-up on or abused a significant dose of cop-on would go a long way to improving the current situation.. and in fact reduce the headaches for everyone I think.

Beasty

My own experience of this site is largely based on what happens in the Sports forums and particularly in Cycling, although I have kept a watching brief across the rest of the site since I joined

Looking specifically at Cycling I actually think the forum has continued to grow throughout my time on the site, although I do think in recent months the "seasonal pickup" has probably left us at a similar level to other years

In some of the more popular Sports forums I suspect activity in the past few months has not been quite at the same levels as recent years, although I have little doubt they attract significantly more activity than when I joined 7 years ago. I'm guessing it's a similar story in other categories with what is possibly more of a reversal of recent growth than necessarily a long term decline. Obviously as has been pointed out many times in this thread there is certainly a view that the category re-org and new layout are contributing to this

However I also think there's another external factor at play here. I think the recession gave a lot of us a lot more spare time and that helped contribute to the growth of the site. Now I'm getting the feeling a lot of people are busier in real life with a bit more real work to do, meaning their time on sites such as Boards may be reducing. I equally suspect it may settle down as posters adjust their posting habits. Yes that may mean a short term decline but I would certainly not rule out a return to growth which will always be driven by attracting new users rather than getting existing users to post more.

Bottom line is this is a business that does need to grow and initiatives to help draw in new users are actually going to benefit us all by strengthening the case for the current owners to continue supporting this business.

_Tombstone_

Myrddin wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

Theirs nothing wrong with a bare link and snippet, look at Digg, it's a huge site or ycombinator - only has a title, huge site. Hammering people in AH for not adding something to a Thread is fine given the nature of the place but it should never have spread outta there. Never.

Bigelows Inflatable Space Station(s) set for 2020
Chinas new bitchin' Hubble
We are going back to the Moon Thread
Archinaut

Sometimes I just post links or not^^, it shouldn't have mattered.

Faith wrote: »

The thing that really frustrates me is the concrete thinking in Boards HQ. It's like they can't possibly look at a situation in more than one way. For months (years?) we've had posters complaining about new layouts, and all HQ ever respond with is "Well, yeah, but this is how we're doing it". They've poured so much money into this redesign that they're terrified to admit they were wrong, so they're plowing ahead with it despite vocal, reasoned opposition.

Years.

gandalf wrote: »

The issues imho are as follows.

The problem is that for a content based site search does not work properly, it hasn't worked properly in ages. Now I tend to use Google to search boards myself but to have a content based site without a viable search is unforgivable.

There are too many forums. A cleanup and amalgamation is seriously needed.

The re-organisation of the forums was botched. I still use the legacy skin which thankfully has the old top menu. The latest one before the new site was a disaster and has been a major contributor to the drain of users/traffic.

Search has been complained about for 4/5 years and never anything done, heres probably the 15 feedback thread from 6 months back where someone asked about adding google search to the site, I threw up link showing it looks like you can...for little or no cost. The office never replied.

I wonder what it costs to have Clicktale running here, something that adds very little going by this review. Works better if site running it has no https going by the review.

"ClickTale captures every mouse move, click, scroll and keystroke that a visitor makes inside a webpage, and then sends this information back to the ClickTale servers in highly compressed packages. You can find a list of data items that ClickTale records in this article.
The ClickTale servers take a snapshot of the webpage as experienced by the visitor, and combine it with the visitor actions to recreate the original browsing session."

"For example there is a cookie sniffer. But to make this work you need to turn of SSL. Which is a Very Bad Idea. The whole point of encrypting cookies and sessions is to stop other people intercepting that. It is almost that Clicktale comes from an alternate reality where the normal rules of web security and development practices don’t apply."

Esel wrote: »

Do the admin have any clout in the business side of Boards though?

Can the Admins not go nuclear NOW on something mentioned many times in this Thread - All the unneeded Forums?

I might be mistaken but I think it was Khannie that did a great Job at the time in Tech before he stood down.

Yes/No??? Simple enough job to amalgamate them surely?

Wibbs wrote: »

However companies get to a point where the money and risk becomes a tipping point and then the "professional corporate" types come in. It's designed that way. And who does the designing? They need a purpose to justify themselves after all(and I'm no hippie BTW). That's what we're seeing here. From what I can recall Boards got a new CEO or CFO or CSO or some muy importante collection of three letters a couple of years back. Again IIRC there was some one off "introduction" and after that silence. I know he's a he, beyond that I know jack. Hell, he might be gone and they're now a she, or a thatched cottage in Mayo called Phillip. Who knows. There's your disconnect right there. I could say that's no reflection on the chap, but sorry, yeah it is. If your job is sustaining a community - which if anyone needs reminding is why Talk to and Adverts even exist - frankly your silence means you're not helping.

In say 2006 I knew who the people running the place were and those people were engaged in the place. Today? Today we're getting the dribbled down secondhand missives from on high. Missives that are increasingly at odds and daft(no pun) with the community they're tasked in fostering.

This recent rollout at I'm quite sure great expense in manpower and money is the perfect and wasteful example of the above. The category rejig another, though lesser example.

BTW and to be very bloody clear here, our Dav - and I think I'm long enough here to see him as our Dav - can come in for some stick and is often the focus of our various grievances. As the Community manager he's in that biz hierarchy and that's a small but PITA part of his role. And he takes his role seriously. FWIW I can tell you that if you cut Dav he would bleed Boards blood. Blue corpuscles with two goggly eyes. Now you're bleeding. He really would. Honestly, though sometimes this fascist here thinks him a wet liberal yahoo and have disagreed with the man on a couple of occasions, the guy works like a bloody trojan for this community and has been here doing so from the very start.

Their's been alot of Boards.ie User accounts over the last few years unless I'm raving, didn't some "designer" get introduced in one of them aswell...his Account was closed then fairly quick and same with a few developer Accounts...looks like staff moving on fairly quick for some reason but maybe I'm wrong.

Dav gone fairly quiet last few years.

KomradeBishop wrote: »

Yea similar 'Management' is what came close to killing Slashdot a couple of times, once they were sold on between different companies - recently though, they seem to have gotten their shít together - but their community is far smaller now as well.

Maybe worth Boards management reaching out to Slashdot - if there'd even be a reply - and try and learn a few lessons from them, because the mistakes being made here, are eerily similar to the Slashdot Beta disaster (pushing a new UI that the community hated, and which was eventually completely abandoned), and the 'management'-style hard-headedness that site took in pushing its changes through.

They ruined it...use to be one of my fav sites....the comments section now - the horror! Ruined!

Permabear wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Wibbs wrote: »

Going on current evidence no, he doesn't have "good ideas". Reads like the usual business puff piece to me. And reading it it seems he's the one pushing for the recent changes and his "ideas" come across as more puff. EG from the article;

"Boards.ie is also quite hard to find your way around; something that Coughlan acknowledges and wants to improve."

Eh no. No it's not and for future reference a good maxim to follow; Almost never listen to an industry journalist about anything. These are the sort of muppets that it seems Boards management were listening to. However in the rush to Do Something About This(™). They have decreased ease of access and the numbers dropping and dying forums prove this. As does the recent overwhelming negative reaction to the redesign. Well done. *slow handclap*.

I know this may come as a shock to those who get the horn for Meetings(™), but y'know the users that have built the site from the ground up and were there at the very crest of the Boards wave had no issue finding their way around. "Improvements" come along and they do? This really isn't rocket science, but apparently it is. But hey, seeing to be doing something is good too I suppose.

Nail on head. Especially last line. Your posts are huge haha.

Links234 wrote: »

I've mentioned earlier about how the sense of community is being killed off, and there's definitely something to be said for the place being 'managed' into the ground, but something that strikes me is, what's happened to all the boards beers? It used to be the case that there would be quite regular meetups and all that, organized by each different community on boards, but that's all but disappeared it seems. What's the story there? Have they been discouraged, or are people just not that interested any more?

Their was a meet up in Astronomy awhile back but nearly no one turned up I'm told, another one over in Aviation but no interest there either, so I'd go with people not interested.

Lurkio wrote: »

It would be interesting to compare the busiest forums at certain times of year 4-5 years ago, vs now.

Here's a thread from 2 years ago for you to bump, don't hold your breath on getting a reply though...it was bumped a few times for update but office never replied.



Boards Digest Email was cancelled at start of year due to time it took to make it and lack of clicks (what lunatic clicks email links nowadays?)

We'd love to hear if you have any other ideas of how to keep everyone informed about what's going on with the site

I suggested a Forum for whats happening around the place, theirs lots you could do really, not destroying the site in the first place and their'd be no need for it at all is another one...still waiting on a reply.

IRLConor

For what it's worth, during the time I was working for Boards.ie there were several threads saying "Forum X is dying" or "There aren't as many posters around any more". The data showed the opposite. It's really difficult to judge what's actually happening as a regular user.

I don't know whether Boards.ie is growing or shrinking these days, but I would caution people against assuming that it's doing anything in particular. What might seem obvious to you might actually be a false impression. Or you might be right. But you won't really know, so be wary about drawing conclusions.

Edward Hopper

IRLConor wrote: »

For what it's worth, during the time I was working for Boards.ie there were several threads saying "Forum X is dying" or "There aren't as many posters around any more". The data showed the opposite. It's really difficult to judge what's actually happening as a regular user.

I don't know whether Boards.ie is growing or shrinking these days, but I would caution people against assuming that it's doing anything in particular. What might seem obvious to you might actually be a false impression. Or you might be right. But you won't really know, so be wary about drawing conclusions.

Well shrinking would be a good guess, no false impression, boards obviously is in Sh*t Street, and the abortion of a new site is going to finish the job and kill it. I hope I'm wrong though because I like it, and would hate to see it die.

IRLConor

Edward Hopper wrote: »

Well shrinking would be a good guess, no false impression

Edward Hopper

IRLConor wrote: »

You make a very pictorial point.

_Tombstone_

IRLConor wrote: »

For what it's worth, during the time I was working for Boards.ie there were several threads saying "Forum X is dying" or "There aren't as many posters around any more". The data showed the opposite. It's really difficult to judge what's actually happening as a regular user.

I don't know whether Boards.ie is growing or shrinking these days, but I would caution people against assuming that it's doing anything in particular. What might seem obvious to you might actually be a false impression. Or you might be right. But you won't really know, so be wary about drawing conclusions.

I was thinking this for a long while, when they just keep on pushing all the awfulness (and some awful mods) maybe it's not actually hitting the figures but it's noticeable big time now...but figures are secret so we'll just use alexa where globally Boards is down another 200 in the last month or so and down 1 to 33 in ireland.

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/boards.ie

Christ even Bargain Alerts isin't worth looking at anymore...

smash

IRLConor wrote: »

I would caution people against assuming that it's doing anything in particular. What might seem obvious to you might actually be a false impression. Or you might be right. But you won't really know, so be wary about drawing conclusions.

Maybe it's just me... but Conor, what I've just quoted comes across as almost threatening in manner. It's a bit odd to read.

IRLConor

_Tombstone_ wrote: »

I was thinking this for a long while, when they just keep on pushing all the awfulness (and some awful mods) maybe it's not actually hitting the figures but it's noticeable big time now...but figures are secret so we'll just use alexa where globally Boards is down another 200 in the last month or so and down 1 to 33 in ireland.

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/boards.ie

Christ even Bargain Alerts isin't worth looking at anymore...

Alexa is a load of bollox and always has been. It was off by miles when I could see both it and the true sets of figures.

It used to be based entirely on users who used the Alexa toolbar. They claim they have other methods of tracking users now, but unless Boards.ie has included a snippet of tracking JavaScript specially for Alexa it's unlikely that their numbers are anything better than a wild guess.

IRLConor

smash wrote: »

Maybe it's just me... but Conor, what I've just quoted comes across as almost threatening in manner. It's a bit odd to read.

I'm sorry if you took it that way. It's not intended to be threatening to you or anyone else.

Though I am a little bit frustrated at people assuming that their opinions & guesses are true representations of the facts. Maybe that's what's coming across in my writing and you're misinterpreting it as threatening.