Boards is becoming a Ghost Town

Second Toughest in_the Freshers

Beasty wrote: »

And I provided ample evidence in the relevant Feedback thread contradicting this.

What thread was that? If its the one that was started before Christmas, and locked two and a half months ago, what was the outcome of that thread?

(I shouldn't feel apprehensive asking a question like this, but I do. And that probably says something more about the site, and the way it seems to be modded, than the odd few appeals being upheld)

KERSPLAT!

Second Toughest in_the Freshers wrote: »

What thread was that? If its the one that was started before Christmas, and locked two and a half months ago, what was the outcome of that thread?

(I shouldn't feel apprehensive asking a question like this, but I do. And that probably says something more about the site, and the way it seems to be modded, than the odd few appeals being upheld)

There doesn't have to be an outcome. Feedback was given, discussed and taken on board.

One point made was that DRPs are never overturned. Beasty posted, backed up with links, to the contrary.

Beasty

Second Toughest in_the Freshers wrote: »

What thread was that? If its the one that was started before Christmas, and locked two and a half months ago, what was the outcome of that thread?

(I shouldn't feel apprehensive asking a question like this, but I do. And that probably says something more about the site, and the way it seems to be modded, than the odd few appeals being upheld)

Thread is here

No specific follow up I'm aware of at this stage but I suspect there are currently one or two other things keeping the "powers that be" busy at present

Spanish Eyes

When you are banned for innocuous stuff, you get the hump and think WTF is that mod at? and flounce off in a huff.

All well and good to ban or lock a thread for legal reasons or is someone is spouting bad language or such. But honestly, some of the moderation here is off the wall.

Anyway, it will die soon.

There is too much moderation. Did I say that before? maybe I did. And I am not alone in thinking that.

Moderation in everything I say!

Ahorseofaman

intheclouds wrote: »

Ah lads, why cant we just go back to this - so much info on screen! No ads!

https://web.archive.org/web/20110505195603/http://www.boards.ie/

I use the cloud skin and have for about 10 years over a couple of accounts and thats what my home page still looks llike,Tried the topics look homepage and hated it and the new look site is awful.As soon as they close down the "legacy"
site I cant see myself using boards and I'd be on here for a couple of hours most days.I love Boards but the new look will destroy it imo.
For shame.

Spanish Eyes

Another thing, there are too many topics/fora/sub fora on here it is impossible sometimes to find anything of interest even if you have a topic in your head. Just try it sometime.

Spanish Eyes

Faith wrote: »

From my perspective, the forums I post in have gone from lovely and busy, to near ghost towns. Across the Food & Drink category, there have been ~50 posts in the last 24 hours. That's across 8 subforums. We used to have that many new posts per day in Cooking & Recipes alone!

I'd love to merge all of the Food & Drink forums into one big forum. Who cares if you're cooking, baking or drinking? It's all consumption, it's something we all do every day. With the new re-org, I couldn't find my own forums if I wasn't subscribed to them.

Agree totally, and the same WRT all fora. If one posts in the wrong sub forum it's moved. But who could be bothered checking where it's gone to! And where do you find it next day or whatever.

Anyway. It's not my problem.

kneemos

Spanish Eyes wrote: »

Another thing, there are too many topics/fora/sub fora on here it is impossible sometimes to find anything of interest even if you have a topic in your head. Just try it sometime.

A lot of them could be amalgamated,it would probably make them more interesting also.

Cookie_Monster

intheclouds wrote: »

Ah lads, why cant we just go back to this - so much info on screen! No ads!

https://web.archive.org/web/20110505195603/http://www.boards.ie/

threads, threads everywhere :). I remember it back in my day, before it was all paved over by whiteness and ads.

Faith

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.

Yes, things change and move forward. Yes, maybe there's a better way of doing things. Yes, some people will just get used to the changes and stop complaining. But every time they change something, they refuse to backtrack. If even 5% of active users leave the site after a significant redesign that they don't like, that adds up very quickly and very noticeably.

Ireland is small. There is a saturation point for a site like this. Most people who would be members, are members IMO. Nobody is looking at the cost/benefit analysis of the changes. If redesigning the site will cause an extra 1 person to register per day, but 2 currently active users will leave per day, then it's not working. It's better to hold their hands up and say "We f*cked up. We got too focused on the details and ignored the big picture. We're going to fix this" than just blindly and single-mindedly refuse to admit the mistakes and continue making things worse.

Faith

kneemos wrote: »

A lot of them could be amalgamated,it would probably make them more interesting also.

Absolutely. Even as a moderator, I don't visit some of the forums I moderate because I don't have a strong enough interest in, say, home brewing. But if all of the threads across those forums were in one place, I might read the occasional home brewing thread. Maybe I would have mastered home brewing by now! But I'm not interested enough to click in to the forum, and we have actually added a specific moderator for that forum to look after the place.

KERSPLAT!

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.

Yes, things change and move forward. Yes, maybe there's a better way of doing things. Yes, some people will just get used to the changes and stop complaining. But every time they change something, they refuse to backtrack. If even 5% of active users leave the site after a significant redesign that they don't like, that adds up very quickly and very noticeably.

Ireland is small. There is a saturation point for a site like this. Most people who would be members, are members IMO. Nobody is looking at the cost/benefit analysis of the changes. If redesigning the site will cause an extra 1 person to register per day, but 2 currently active users will leave per day, then it's not working. It's better to hold their hands up and say "We f*cked up. We got too focused on the details and ignored the big picture. We're going to fix this" than just blindly and single-mindedly refuse to admit the mistakes and continue making things worse.

So much this. As was pointed out before, so many posters, mods and cmods, in this thread and others, are providing constructive feedback but it doesn't seem like it will be taken on board. They'll plough on until it's too late.

Spanish Eyes

Thank you to Mods who made constructive criticism too. VERY BRAVE lol.

So many topics are actually hidden from plain view, that may be of interest to many when you think about it.

But hey, there we go.

Amalgamation of topics is the way to go. It is quite fragmented at the moment, and hidden in lots of ways.

IMO of course!

gandalf

KERSPLAT! wrote: »

So much this. As was pointed out before, so many posters, mods and cmods, in this thread and others, are providing constructive feedback but it doesn't seem like it will be taken on board. They'll plough on until it's too late.

That certainly seems to be what is happening. As I goaded on the New Site Feedback thread there hasn't been a lot of interaction from the Management in that last number of days. Dav may be on leave but there is another community manager afaik why aren't they providing feedback from the management. My suspicion is that they don't like what they are hearing but they have thought out no alternative.

I can categorically state that I will cease posting on boards if the new format in it's current guise is forced on us. I have a feeling I won't be alone. For me it would be a shame given I have been part of this community since day one but what boards appears to be mutating into is no longer Boards.ie.

Spanish Eyes

Just as a matter of interest, what is the new format? I don't see anything different YET!

I am on a desktop, but it's the same on tablet.

Should I be wary?? I don't want any shocks lol.

wyrn

Lads, I'm still on the green skin! I reckon once the responsive site is pushed on me, I'll probably drop off altogether.

The boards frontpage is the legacy site, I think (the previous update) and I hate it. If I want to find a certain forum, I click into a random link on the frontpage, and from there I get the old (green) layout and I know which menu I want. I also miss randomly reading a new topic / forum (to me) from a title that catches my eye on the front page. The new layout is way too padded, empty waste of space, so I never linger. I can only imagine how bad (to me and seemingly to a lot of users) the responsive homepage will be. I'm not a complete curmudgeon grumbling about change, I use the touch site on my phone and that's grand, no issues there.

I'm mainly a lurker here so my opinion probably doesn't carry much weight, but I've noticed myself that I'm drifting more towards Reddit and other forum sites. I can't put my finger on anything concrete that has driven me away.

I used to love browsing After Hours for some of the crazy topics. I'd have several of them tabbed open to read through but I'm increasingly finding less and less topics that interest me. I'm so apprehensive about the Great/Dumb Facebook chat, that one day a mod will sweep in and close it for too much chatting. I think this is sort of indicative of what has become of AH where so many topics are shut down or moved (I'm not including the racist, sexist etc... threads). I'm still sad that My Day was closed.

Other forums I frequent, I've started to abandon because I find some of the regular posters a bit too hardline on an issue. The posters may be right but their tone is just so off putting and quite judgemental. Don't get me wrong, I know there's judgemental posters, but it seems that in certain forums, it's taken to the next level.

Spanish Eyes

Fear of saying something out of line (moderation policy) is killing this place.

KERSPLAT!

Spanish Eyes wrote: »

Fear of saying something out of line (moderation policy) is killing this place.

I'll call this out for what it is, bull.

Spanish Eyes

KERSPLAT! wrote: »

I'll call this out for what it is, bull.

Your view. You are entitled to that.

smash

Spanish Eyes wrote: »

Fear of saying something out of line (moderation policy) is killing this place.

Not really. There's heavy moderation sometimes over silly stuff like chatting on threads but what you're talking about is different. Everyone gets heated some times and can say stupid things or be obnoxious. I've done it myself plenty of times. Being called out on it isn't a bad thing otherwise the site would end up like 4chan.

Toto Wolfcastle

KERSPLAT! wrote: »

I'll call this out for what it is, bull.

I don't agree that moderation is killing the place, but there are certainly mods who take moderation way way too seriously. There are mods who suck the fun out of the forum by enforcing the 'no off-topic posts' rule completely with no room for a bit of common sense. I don't think this is done out of badness, just eagerness. And if you're a new user who happens to post in one of these forums and the first reply you get is from a mod giving out to you in bold, why would you bother to come back? It also pushes existing users away. I post almost exclusively in one forum these days, but I used to at least read a lot of others that I don't go near now.

Faith

I'd agree that some mods can be a little over-zealous, and I certainly find some forums too rule-heavy. Personally speaking, forums with a strict no-swearing rule really grate my cheese. However, that's pretty much how boards has always been. I've been here for 13 years, or something like that, and as far back as I remember there were complaints about moderation. So I don't think that has changed, and thus it really can't be considered a reason for the recent, obvious decrease in traffic.

gandalf

Spanish Eyes wrote: »

Fear of saying something out of line (moderation policy) is killing this place.

I do not believe that's the issue at all.

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.

The mobile apps / site have also been botched. I still use the m.boards.ie on my mobile devices. Touch was ****e and this new site is a disaster on a mobile. For a site that is being flouted as responsive it is anything but. Mobile is the most important area to be looking at if there is a long term future for boards. From what I can see they are botching this as well. I am speculating that an outside "consultant" or "consultants" were brought in to advise and again I would speculate they have limited experience with communities like ours.

Imho one of the biggest strengths of boards is the fact it is moderated. Personally as an ex-mod I think the DRP process has weakened this. I would be oldskool and an advocate of the Judge Dredd line of moderating "I am the Law".

KERSPLAT!

Toto Wolfcastle wrote: »

I don't agree that moderation is killing the place, but there are certainly mods who take moderation way way too seriously. There are mods who suck the fun out of the forum by enforcing the 'no off-topic posts' rule completely with no room for a bit of common sense. I don't think this is done out of badness, just eagerness. And if you're a new user who happens to post in one of these forums and the first reply you get is from a mod giving out to you in bold, why would you bother to come back? It also pushes existing users away. I post almost exclusively in one forum these days, but I used to at least read a lot of others that I don't go near now.

Absolutely. I know that moderation isn't perfect. I'm sure there are some bad mods (looks in mirror >.>) but I don't believe that the issue is so big that it's having a detrimental effect on the site as was implied above.

Spanish Eyes

I'm obviously the only poster here who has been banned a few times. By one mod too. har har.

For What?

Long time member too. And never a bad word to say about anyone. WTF.

KERSPLAT!

Spanish Eyes wrote: »

I'm obviously the only poster here who has been banned a few times. By one mod too. har har.

For What?

Long time member too. And never a bad word to say about anyone. WTF.

This isn't the place to go through your posting or account history. If you feel you've been carded or banned unfairly there's a process to follow.

Spanish Eyes

KERSPLAT! wrote: »

This isn't the place to go through your posting or account history. If you feel you've been carded or banned unfairly there's a process to follow.

No worries at all.

Dyr

gandalf wrote: »

The re-organisation of the forums was botched. I still use the legacy skin which thankfully has the old top menu.

How would one go about this

Faith

Kind of funnily, considering we're complaining about lack of transparency these days, one of the earliest posts in Feedback is this from DeVore:

We are supposed to be a community where we can discuss things rationally amongst ourselves. No need for closed doors imho.

K-9

Calhoun wrote: »

Well I haven't gone into that thread in quite a bit but let's get defensive straight off the bat.

C-mods really do go in with the mindset of "can I reasonably over turn this card or ban", maybe reach some type of compromise if possible.

As a mod who was on the other side of it, yes, sometimes calls go against mods.