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Boards is becoming a Ghost Town
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Warning.. long somewhat rambling response ahead!
It's no fun to go away for a break and come back to a huge thread bashing the work your doing, but that's part of the gig Many of you are pointing out that it's been whatever length of time and no one from the office has answered - again, fair comment, but not something I was able to address as I was away for a week and I've had to spend this one catching up. Yes, there are 2 Community Managers, but Niamh has as big, if not bigger list of responsibilities than me and so this side of the job usually falls to me to take care of - kinda makes sense I think cause I've been here the longest and have a better appreciation of the lay of the land. But I guess we should probably make our delineation of work a bit more obvious to the rest of the site.
It's clear that you genuinely care Dav, but with all respect the comments and feedback that have been offered here are nothing you should take personally, but rather view as the constructive and genuine attempts of users to voice their opinion on the way the site has been going - and I'm sorry but yes, generally that feedback seems to disappear in a vacuum.
It shouldn't be the case that if you want to take some time off that the entire community engagement and liaison role you do grinds to a halt while you're away - especially not at a time when the site is suffering a multitude of issues whether they be technical with the Cloudflare stuff, or perception such as the Beta/Responsive site and the problems/feedback around it.
Whether it be Niamh or someone else, someone should step into the gap.. just as would be the case in any other business where someone takes some AL....various business-related headings...
I don't think anyone is under any illusion that trying to balance a user-driven site llke this against the commercial needs of a business is difficult and that there are many legal and compliance factors that come into play.
Some of the problems you refer to though are (I believe) at least partly due to the fact that the ownership/management structure seems convoluted and the rather murky feedback options - I mean:Boards.ie Ltd is majority owned by the same parent company that owns two other companies that were a part of the Distilled Media Group. There's the company that runs Daft/Adverts/Done Deal and the company that run TheJournal and its collection of sites.
.. maybe it's me but that sounds like something out of Billions or any of those US shows where they're trying to trace money through endless shell companiesCategory Reorganisation
We asked for your input and help, this is the result. It was 100% community driven and I merely put the whole thing together and steered it. We've had subsequent clean ups of some topics, again, 100% community driven. There were of course some who thought it was a bad idea, but an overwhelming majority of you either thought it was ok, or were at the very least happy enough to not feel the need to comment. So I'm not entirely sure what it is I'm supposed to do here folks.
The category reorganisation, and the subsequent "temporary" menu it resulted in was the first sign for me anyway that things were going wrong. It was clear that this change was happening regardless of the opinions expressed at the time and given this and the frustration many posters feel on this topic, I wouldn't be so quick to assume that "meh, they didn't complain so we must be good!". It's just as likely that many just doesn't see the point and THAT is perhaps the biggest and most damaging result from this, and indeed the beta/responsive site that was put out (back to that later)"The office just won't listen!"
It disappoints me that no one seems to be willing to give us any credit for the last 18 years of doing things based on community feedback and every time we propose some changes, no matter how big and small, we get insults, hostility and hyperbole. It makes this process take a lot longer and gets everyone bent out of shape.
Again I'd ask that you/whoever not take it so personally. No-one doubts the work you do or the effort that goes into these things... it's the direction that has people concerned, especially in light of previous experiences when other changes have been made and feedback offered - in short the response usually has been "yea well we're doing it because we have to get off VBB/its not feasible to maintain two sites/we think its what the non-members want" etc.So please folks, we don't doubt your passion for wanting the best for Boards.ie, but I'm just asking that you to give us the benefit of the doubt and remember that we're just as passionate about it as you are. I know there's a lot of pressure for "instant" fixes to things, but that's just not possible when we need to have time to see how people react to things - if we had any feasible means of testing some of the stuff we want to work on anywhere but the live environment, we'd do it, but that's just not an option for things like UI/UX work. I don't know why you think there's some sort of "us and them" between the office and the site's membership, but if that's because of how I've communicated things, then I'm putting my hands up and offering an unreserved apology because this site means more to me than my family. We don't always think clearly when we're talking about the things we love, I guess I'm as guilty of that as anyone, but I do my damnedest to be clear.
But, and there's always a but, the office ultimately has to make the decisions that keep this site here for the next 18 years and beyond. We make these decisions with our analytics numbers, our intuition and of course, our community. But our community is not, for example, a web development team or a team of lawyers, so we have to do the work and get feedback from the relevant parties - designs by committee as anyone will tell you don't work, but we do try for "design by consensus" which allows us to get at least most of the people happy most of the time. Taking the responsive site as our latest example. You don't like it - that's both abundantly clear and perfectly fine - we're bringing parts of it back to the drawing board. But we needed some time to see how it was received by not only our logged in active members, but the visitors too. However, if we read through the thread about it, you'll see the office is "forcing you" to use it (we're not, we asked you to try it if you wanted and the legacy site hasn't gone anywhere) or that we're somehow doing it just for advertising revenue (there are less ads on every page of the responsive site than the legacy site by the way). If you think the levels of vitriol being thrown at us and me personally about the design of a website are somehow acceptable then we have a very different point of view about life. If you think that we're just going to ignore it and plough on regardless then I'd like to know why you think we'd want to operate that way because it makes as much sense as a chocolate teapot.
Again no-one doubts your commitment and sincerity, and I don't think many would expect "instant" fixes when something goes wrong, but whoever is driving these changes away from what the core of Boards is - a Irish-based/themed discussion forum - towards.. honestly, I'm not even sure what the endgame is, should also be reading this thread and throwing their 2c in.
The beta/responsive site has frankly been a disaster from both an implementation and engagement standpoint, to say nothing of all the technical problems. I don't pretend to be privy to the background of course, but some serious questions need to be asked as to why the whole thing was allowed to unfold as it has in the last few weeks.
There's been some great and constructive feedback offered.. listen to it, and more so, show that you're listening by adapting "the plan" accordingly. Without user support this site will ultimately fail and I don't think anyone wants that, but ploughing on regardless will not end well for anyone involved."Moderation is rubbish!"
I don't support this statement at all.
Me neither to be honest. There are a few who take it FAR too seriously and the "editorial slant" of some forums is an issue (called out previously by others around the echo chamber tendency etc), but on the whole I think the site runs pretty well from a Moderation perspective which is a credit to those who give up their time to do it."We never see the staff on the site"
Well, we don't! (present company excepted). I've seen Niamh post occasionally but other than that, that's about it. Of course I'm not aware who's paid and not at the admin level so maybe that's just my ignorance but how about an AMA/profile of some of the people involved so the users can get to know them a bit better... good PR too 
Again though, I think I speak for all when I say thanks for taking the time to respond this evening but I would hope that the points raised in this thread reverberate around Boards HQ for a long time yet!0 -
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FYP[Deleted User] wrote: »If I have this correctly any thread that includes flinging virtual bodily fluids or has the potential for cliquey-ness is bad but everything else is good.
tl/dr The considered responses to Dav's latest post here should be obvious proof of the depth of feeling and investment that users of Boards have.
Boards could not get feedback like this even if they paid.
It's like a car manufacturer denying that one of their models spontaneously combusts, despite a huge number of reports of same from users/customers.
Will those same customers stick with the marque after being snow-jobbed?
There is no liability in the current Boards scenario, but there certainly is probability.
Do it once; do it right. Function › form, almost always. This is not an 'almost' situation.
It's like a half-assed leap card introduction, where the confused user either can't find the bus/tram stop, or can't see which direction to go, or the ticket machine rejects their card.
Result: less traffic.
Bad analogy, because public transport is close to a monopoly. Websites are not.
Dav, you mentioned community / 18 years. Consider the current position of the Roman Catholic church. That church is not the hierarchy, with their various coloured hats. It is the people who come. Check out the demographic next Sunday.
Family › community, 99.9% of the time. Blood › water. No Water Charges!
Skin (Cloud) in the game? That is grand, if the game is still on. It's not the fight in the dog - it's the equine dentist's opinion. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, unless you want to go south.
I hope against hope that the smoke will clear, and when/if it does we will all be still here.
Family - Roger Chapman - great shaky voice. Anyway. Strange...Not your ornery onager
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Say what now? Need a plumber for your water-cooled TV? On the east coast?
Ha. No, I'm just saying, if you want to post in, say, the Wicklow forum, you'd just go to Regional --> Wicklow. Why would Regional need its own heading above any other category?
And shouldn't the thinking that Regional needs its own heading to be more easily accessible maybe highlight that all the other categories need to be more accessible too rather than being hidden under Topics?0 -
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