Boards is becoming a Ghost Town

kneemos

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.

AH has plainly fallen off a cliff,no data required.
Don't frequent others that often to say.

K-9

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.

Eh, that would be a touch on the sensitive side smash!

Edward Hopper

IRLConor wrote: »

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.

So if everything in the garden is rosy it makes the new site even more unfathomable. Would you inflict the new site on a thriving concern?

It's in the sh*t and virtually everyone who likes /uses the site can see it, statistics really aren't needed.

smash

K-9 wrote: »

Eh, that would be a touch on the sensitive side smash!

Not being sensitive. It was just a weird post. Why tell people to be cautious and wary? That's the kind of thing said in a DOB thread.

IRLConor

kneemos wrote: »

AH has plainly fallen off a cliff,no data required.
Don't frequent others that often to say.

AH had been steadily dropping as a percentage of overall Boards.ie traffic for years, but growing in absolute terms. I haven't been able to see the data since late 2011 but the preceding decade+ had that trend.

AH has always been a strange beast though, so it's hard to say what's happening to it. Personally, I always saw it as more vulnerable to replacement by other forms of social media due to a lack of topic focus but that's an opinion rather than anything based on hard evidence.

K-9

smash wrote: »

Not being sensitive. It was just a weird post. Why tell people to be cautious and wary? That's the kind of thing said in a DOB thread.

If telling somebody to maybe wait for facts before forming conclusive opinions is threatening I fear Ireland may be in for a Trump like figures in Irish politics very soon, what's Bill Cullen doing these days?

smash

IRLConor wrote: »

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.

Why be frustrated when you have no vested interest in boards apart from being a user these days?

In saying that, as a user you should be able to clearly see the drop off in posts as its glaringly obvious.

smash

K-9 wrote: »

If telling somebody to maybe wait for facts before forming conclusive opinions is threatening I fear Ireland may be in for a Trump like figures in Irish politics very soon, what's Bill Cullen doing these days?

Don't kid yourself. You know we'll never get the figures, or at least the true figures.

IRLConor

Edward Hopper wrote: »

Would you inflict the new site on a thriving concern?

Nobody wants the kind of front-end design I would do. This is why I don't do that for a living.

Edward Hopper wrote: »

statistics really aren't needed.

There is evidence and there is making things up based on opinions. I know which I trust more.

kneemos

IRLConor wrote: »

AH had been steadily dropping as a percentage of overall Boards.ie traffic for years, but growing in absolute terms. I haven't been able to see the data since late 2011 but the preceding decade+ had that trend.

AH has always been a strange beast though, so it's hard to say what's happening to it. Personally, I always saw it as more vulnerable to replacement by other forms of social media due to a lack of topic focus but that's an opinion rather than anything based on hard evidence.

Well I can confirm now it's dying a death.

Edward Hopper

IRLConor wrote: »

There is evidence and there is making things up based on opinions. I know which I trust more.

By your own admission you no longer have the former. But please do tell us how it used to be. It's as relevant as opinion I'm sure.

smash

IRLConor wrote: »

There is evidence and there is making things up based on opinions. I know which I trust more.

It's extremely easy to use statistics to twist an agenda. I'm more inclined to take the face value of my personal experience as a poster where I've noticed the drop off.

Busted Flat.

WarZ wrote: »

Is it just me or is boards.ie becoming extraordinarily quiet? It's something I've started to notice and its making me go elsewhere (Reddit is incredibly busy in comparison). I'm not sure if its because the quality of posting is taking such a dive or if its because of over zealous moderation. Perhaps both. I think a balance needs to be struck; posting needs to be better but at the same time a lot of mods in the forum have over exerted their influence to the extent where we've lost so many great posters. The site is becoming too nany-esque however I'm aware the site was suffering from a huge problem with trolls and racists. I'm just wondering what are the thoughts of the admins on this issue?

Seems like boards is dying out.

Like everything else in life the few who attain power it goes to their heads and self-destruct, like the Cycle against suicide the jumped up marshals who spend their time abusing supporters who volunteer their time and money to support a very just cause.

riffmongous

It's not all doom and gloom, the MMA forum traffic must be up a few thousand percent thanks to Conor McGregor and the Luas strike has kept C&T ticking over :pac:

K-9

smash wrote: »

Don't kid yourself. You know we'll never get the figures, or at least the true figures.

It's hard to know, AH seems quieter, politics cafe busy, some others are thriving, rugby league, cycling, farming and forestry, other forums too I'm sure. Politics general is much quieter and plenty of others. What's the common denominator? God knows.

It feels quieter to me but there's far more competition and social media has changes things, the outage, other things suggested here. Boards has been wrote off plenty of times so we'll see. Some of the changes suggested here would. help, I've no doubt about that.

Wibbs

_Tombstone_ wrote: »

Your posts are huge haha.

I think we can all agree on this point at least. :pac:

Edward Hopper

K-9 wrote: »

It's hard to know, AH seems quieter, politics cafe busy, some others are thriving, rugby league, cycling, farming and forestry, other forums too I'm sure. Politics general is much quieter and plenty of others. What's the common denominator? God knows.

It feels quieter to me but there's far more competition and social media has changes things, the outage, other things suggested here. Boards has been wrote off plenty of times so we'll see. Some of the changes suggested here would. help, I've no doubt about that.

I love Rugby league but it's gone from a base of one regular poster to three! Not the success story to change boards fortunes (probably a sh*t moderator in the past!)

K-9

smash wrote: »

It's extremely easy to use statistics to twist an agenda. I'm more inclined to take the face value of my personal experience as a poster where I've noticed the drop off.

That comes across as a bit threatening smash, I'm offended!

Wibbs

On the slowdown/growth/stasis point? It's pretty clear there has been some slowdown. Dav being his usual open almost to a fault yahoo noted it. Secondly; the pushing of the "Wow, look at our stats" has been much quieter in the last few years. Thirdly; this current redesign of the site and the previous category rejig would be unlikely if the stats were growing or even remaining constant. The apparent external idea that Boards was hard to navigate and needed fixing would not be in play in say 2009. The response would have been more like "eh wut? We're growing by eleventy thousand signups per week. GTFO".

TBH the scale of any slowdown, or indeed not, is not the issue for me. I mean Boards was smaller than it is today when I joined up in 05 and it was a fantastic place to hang out and was on the up. The issue for me - and an issue that hard stats won't help - is the feeling that Boards is slowing down, that it may be losing relevance, that what community there really was is fading. That feeling is more widespread of late and that's the real concern and one you won't find, nor see the importance of on a statistics report, or balance sheet.

Beasty

MMA is definitely up

A former mod managed to bring Rugby League to life (almost anyway;))

Rugby Union is still growing

Soccer is probably in a slight decline, possibly influenced by a reduction in tension between the supporters of the 2 most popular clubs. It will be interesting to see how Ireland's participation in the Euro Championships affects things

Cricket has been surprisingly popular when Ireland are playing in international competition

The recent World Championships resulted in the 3rd longest Snooker & Pool thread in the history of the forum

Alas Parkour and Free Running has not quite hit the ground running.....

IRLConor

smash wrote: »

Not being sensitive. It was just a weird post. Why tell people to be cautious and wary? That's the kind of thing said in a DOB thread.

Maybe it's some sort of cultural difference between us then. When I say "cautious" and "wary" I'm saying "don't trust your intuition, it could very well be wrong". I'm not warning you against any external danger, just pointing out that neither you nor I have the appropriate facts to hand and that based on my past experience there was often a wide divergence between perceptions and reality.

smash wrote: »

Why be frustrated when you have no vested interest in boards apart from being a user these days?

I find it frustrating because this is the same discussion that's been happening for years on Boards.ie in many different guises. People make assumptions about how the site is run (either socially or technically) and assume that because their opinions are "obvious" to them, then they must be true.

smash wrote: »

In saying that, as a user you should be able to clearly see the drop off in posts as its glaringly obvious.

The forums I frequent appear (to me) to have approximately the same traffic as they've had for years. I also know from past experience that one's intuition as a user is pretty much worthless so I wouldn't dare to make assertions about the number of posts without actually going and counting them.

smash wrote: »

I'm more inclined to take the face value of my personal experience

Hmm, maybe this is a cultural difference between you and I then. To me, data trumps anecdotes. Maybe I've just been a software developer for too long.

IRLConor

Edward Hopper wrote: »

By your own admission you no longer have the former. But please do tell us how it used to be. It's as relevant as opinion I'm sure.

I'm pretty sure that I haven't been claiming to tell people what is currently true.

I've merely pointed out that the narrative spun by several people in this thread is just that. A story. It might be true (I hope not) or it might be false.

gandalf

kneemos wrote: »

AH has plainly fallen off a cliff,no data required.
Don't frequent others that often to say.

Politics has been gutted as well apart from that cesspit of the cafe. From my perspective boards has been in decline for a while now.

As regarding Conors frustration at people speculating on what's going on, well tough that's what happens in the absence of transparency and openness.

riffmongous

Hey if you look at the latest posts on the home screen, 12 out if 25 threads on the first page are threads with posts numbering in the thousands, with more on the next page. Probably just a coincidence but these huge threads can make forums feel quieter than they really are imo

smash

IRLConor wrote: »

I also know from past experience that one's intuition as a user is pretty much worthless so I wouldn't dare to make assertions about the number of posts without actually going and counting them.

There's been at least 2 posts made regarding posts in AH which would be or at least used to be considered the busiest forum. One post showed there was 4/5 threads on AH with updates in a 5 hour period.

IRLConor wrote: »

Hmm, maybe this is a cultural difference between you and I then. To me, data trumps anecdotes. Maybe I've just been a software developer for too long.

Ive seen stats being fiddled to suite agendas. Some from some of the top websites in Ireland.

IRLConor

gandalf wrote: »

As regarding Conors frustration at people speculating on what's going on, well tough that's what happens in the absence of transparency and openness.

Sadly, in a world where things are paid for by ads the kind of data needed for a reasonable discussion on this topic are usually commercially sensitive and hence can't be made public.

IRLConor

riffmongous wrote: »

Probably just a coincidence but these huge threads can make forums feel quieter than they really are imo

They're also massive pain in the hole from a technical point of view.

kneemos

riffmongous wrote: »

Hey if you look at the latest posts on the home screen, 12 out if 25 threads on the first page are threads with posts numbering in the thousands, with more on the next page. Probably just a coincidence but these huge threads can make forums feel quieter than they really are imo

Large threads come to the front when no new ones are being created.Not really a good thing to see loads of big threads.

smash

kneemos wrote: »

Large threads come to the front when no new ones are being created.Not really a good thing to see loads of big threads.

Can't deal with mega threads any more. Ask a question and you'll get "we've already covered this if you bothered to read the thread!" Well coincidentally I haven't read the last 7,000 posts and that why I asked the fcuking question...

K-9

gandalf wrote: »

Politics has been gutted as well apart from that cesspit of the cafe. From my perspective boards has been in decline for a while now.

As regarding Conors frustration at people speculating on what's going on, well tough that's what happens in the absence of transparency and openness.

That cesspit happens to be very busy, same as AH. The sneering at others is great craic, somebody with reverse discrimination about higher standards earlier, as if that's a bad thing!