How has Boards.ie Changed over the years?

OldMrBrennan83

This post has been deleted.

lawlolawl

Patww79 wrote: »

Twitter is whatever you use it for.

Twitter is life. Twitter is love. Twitter is joy.

Twitter.

It's a thing.

Debtocracy

In general the internet lacks empathy or understands why people getting into difficulty is the norm:

Struggling to find parking – Walk to work in rain, I cycle 80 miles to work and my legs are as red as a fire engine.

Struggling on dole – pull yourself together and get a job, there’s 500,000 vacancies in the pub beside me. When I was young I worked nine part-time jobs cleaning **** from the sewers and picking rocks from clay.

Struggling on jobbridge – Good, youth of today know nothing with their fancy PhDs, what employer in their right mind would pay these idiots.

Struggling to save for mortgage – How are you spending so much a week, I use bailing twine for shoelaces and save hundreds.

Struggling with negative equity – Great, that’s what you get for being greedy and an idiot. Goldman Sachs didn’t see the crash coming but I bought a house in 1999 cause I sensed a credit crunch coming.

Struggling with kids – No one forced you to have them so why are you complaining to me.

The interesting thing is that the internet is far more honest with regard to human nature than face-to-face interactions. Under the cloak of anonymity, our true narcissistic, sadistic, competitive selves finally get a release.

OldMrBrennan83

This post has been deleted.

Lyaiera

Debtocracy wrote: »

The interesting thing is that the internet is far more honest with regard to human nature than face-to-face interactions. Under the cloak of anonymity, our true narcissistic, sadistic, competitive selves finally get a release.

This represents the problem, but doesn't explain the core issue. People who are vicious and hateful, and rant and rave, and give out about special snowflakes, and believe in conspiracies, and who couldn't find their arse with a mirror know if they expressed their real views it would get them ostracised anywhere else but online. The same goes for the Tumblrites (but there's feck all of them on boards despite what anyone says.) So they go online and find similar cranks and gang up and vent all they want on anyone stupid enough to engage with them (me on occasion.)

They see these people agreeing with them online, and then they begin to wonder why no-one else does in real life, beyond a small group of self-reinforcing fighters? They come to the conclusion that it's actually a big conspiracy. Everyone's been got to and everyone is afraid of saying what they really think for fear of *something.* This *something* is all that's wrong with the world, (and at the moment this is political correctness, identity politics, and feminism,(all good old tropes.)) They see the other cranks who use the same anonymity for spouting spurious, and often prejudiced bollocks and decide they're the only ones who can speak truth, and stand up to the nefarious plots that are trying to control honourable, decent citizens.

The best recent example of this was the equal marriage referendum. There were ****tonnes of posts about how SSM was going to be easily defeated. All the polls were wrong because honest, decent people were afraid to speak their mind because the Homesexual Mafia would kneecap them. These people were, "The Silent Majority."

Then of course the referendum came around, and the idea that Gay Agenda could actually force people to vote against their will in the polling booth was even a step too far for the nutcases. That meant with the SSM win they had to move on to different targets in this vast cultural conspiracy. Occasionally they'll make a few swipes at gay people to remind them that someone, somewhere hates them.

Maireadio

Outlaw Pete wrote: »

I post on the Digital Spy forums a lot and its still as busy as ever. Get the balance right here, make the changes that clearly need to be made with regards to many of the issues raised in the 'Ghost Town' thread and I don't see why Boards can't be as busy as it once was.

I used to post on Digital Spy years ago. I joined in 2007 and it was hopping. It took a nose dive around 2009 and has never really recovered.

I can see you are subtly talking about the stuff you complained about in the 'Ghosttown' thread. The site started losing users far later than when you claim it started happening. You said it was 2011 it started and that account closures picked up about then. Well, back then, people had to specifically request to close their accounts so even a handful of account closures by high profile users would seem a lot. It wasn't a matter of just closing your account willy nilly. The account closure tool came in in late 2011/early 2012. And even then, site traffic didn't appear to be down in any appreciable way. Most people who closed account opened new ones, so the amount of closed accounts isn't even a good indicator. It's only really in the last couple of years that the site seems to be shedding users in great numbers.

What you are alluding is not the reason for the decline in popularity of the site. You really need to let this go.

Darkglasses

K-9 wrote: »

Yep, special snowflake seems to be the new one, and I've used it a couple of times myself, it's getting old already.

The vitriol since Trump and the refugee crisis seems much higher. Quantity seems more important than quality in the busy forums. That isn't "in my day stuff" either, it was always there but with Twitter and Facebook it seems much higher than 4 or 5 years ago.

Studies have shown politic debate on Twitter is very one sided with little interaction with opposing views, you don't have the same crossover as in general day to day stuff and it's influencing debate online including here.

PC Brigade is another one. This thing of fabricating artificial stereotypes to blame all your problems on is so pathetic and so common. Sick of reading it.

TrustedApple

I am not the only one who thinks PC stuff is shocking people need to edgy and say what they won't again.

This season of South Park showed it by taking the pics out of the pc people.

We need to go back to the late 90s early 00 where people didn't care about saying stuff and went out of there way and over the top.

Like another would be WWE used to be nuts and didn't care what they did. Now it's PG PC friendly and killed it.

Penny Tration

I still really like boards, but I think it's gotten even more politically correct than before.

Anyone who knows me and my posts can tell I'm pretty liberal when it comes to issues around sexuality, dole claimants, refugees, gender identity and so on. I'd be pretty "pc" I suppose, because I don't give a damn about what someone else chooses to do once it's not hurting other people.


However, even I find the place suffocatingly PC at times. There are plenty of posters who choose AH as a platform to launch nasty attacks on trans people and refugees, no doubt about it.

But if you happen to have any opinion that doesn't meet the politically correct viewpoint, no matter how eloquent you are in expressing it, you're immediately drowned out by people calling you phobic/bigoted/racist.


I remember Wibbs posted something months back that wasn't insulting trans people, but wasn't agreeing with all the stuff posted either, and he was dived on by a few people. Similarly, I'd be afraid to post in a refugee thread saying I think we need tighter restrictions because I'd probably be dived on too.


Seems to me now (a liberal, pretty open-minded person) that AH in particular has become unbearably PC.


I agree with not allowing insulting posts, but simply politely expressing an opinion that differs from the PC view shouldn't be met with 100+ ranty responses.

Lyaiera

"The Campaign for Family Values and an Edgelord World"

It's so crazy it just might work!

Maireadio

Darkglasses wrote: »

PC Brigade is another one. This thing of fabricating artificial stereotypes to blame all your problems on is so pathetic and so common. Sick of reading it.

"Shouting down/Shutting down opposing viewpoints" is also overused phraseology. Some shutting down and shouting down does occur of course but a lot of the time people use when somebody else is just presenting an opposing view in a calm manner or when somebody rightfully criticises an odious statement.

Maireadio

Maireadio wrote: »

"Shouting down/Shutting down opposing viewpoints" is also overused phraseology. Some shutting down and shouting down does occur of course but a lot of the time people use when somebody else is just presenting an opposing view in a calm manner or when somebody rightfully criticises an odious statement.

No they don't!:mad:

Steve

I called out the OP of a thread as a troll (not here, elsewhere) and, despite 10 years of contributing to boards, got an an infraction for it. I was later proved right and they were site banned.

They are free to re-reg, I have to carry the scar.

It's not boards, it's 'generation snowflake'.. I really despair at what offends people these days.

Sweetemotion

Penny Tration wrote: »

I remember Wibbs posted something months back that wasn't insulting trans people, but wasn't agreeing with all the stuff posted either, and he was dived on by a few people. Similarly.

By a few people? Its a clique of around 10 other posters. In every single thread on after hours, thanking each others posts and seeing who is the mostest of mostest liberal.

Calling everybody else racist and bigots and by their own very definitions are racists and bigots themselves...

The mind boggles.

Maireadio

Penny Tration wrote: »

I remember Wibbs posted something months back that wasn't insulting trans people, but wasn't agreeing with all the stuff posted either, and he was dived on by a few people.

Which thread was that?

Penny Tration

Maireadio wrote: »

Which thread was that?

Couldn't tell you off the top of my head, sorry. Maybe he'll remember and link it

Steve

Steve wrote: »

I called out the OP of a thread as a troll (not here, elsewhere) and, despite 10 years of contributing to boards, got an an infraction for it. I was later proved right and they were site banned.

They are free to re-reg, I have to carry the scar.

It's not boards, it's 'generation snowflake'.. I really despair at what offends people these days.

That's a different problem in itself though. You're a Mod, so you're probably used to posting things like "Don't feed the Trolls" or "If you have an issue with a post, report it but don't call someone a troll"


Us lesser mortals (that's not a dig BTW, fair play to contributing to the site) have to deal with that all the time.
There's a flat ban on entertaining trolls on boards but sometimes, like you say, calling it out quickly is the way to go.

I guess there needs to be a rule for all somewhere, and you've fallen foul of that rule, just like non-Mods have, and maybe that's a good thing in a way.

What about the rule of talking back to a mod questioning their decision on a post, or even, questioning a banning in the first instance and slogging it out via PM until a resolution is found instead of the whole appeals process which, sorry now, but is LOADED in favour of Mods/Admins.
Again, no dig at you, i don't know you from Adam, I just see you're a mod so thought I'd ask.

Steve

Deleted User wrote: »

That's a different problem in itself though. You're a Mod, so you're probably used to posting things like "Don't feed the Trolls" or "If you have an issue with a post, report it but don't call someone a troll"


Us lesser mortals (that's not a dig BTW, fair play to contributing to the site) have to deal with that all the time.
There's a flat ban on entertaining trolls on boards but sometimes, like you say, calling it out quickly is the way to go.

I guess there needs to be a rule for all somewhere, and you've fallen foul of that rule, just like non-Mods have, and maybe that's a good thing in a way.

What about the rule of talking back to a mod questioning their decision on a post, or even, questioning a banning in the first instance and slogging it out via PM until a resolution is found instead of the whole appeals process which, sorry now, but is LOADED in favour of Mods/Admins.
Again, no dig at you, i don't know you from Adam, I just see you're a mod so thought I'd ask.

It's loaded in favour of mods / cmods / admins for a reason. We put in a crap load of hours to run the site and do our best to protect the 'snowflakes' from being *I dunno anymore.. emotionally compromised??'

It's also loaded in favour of 'staff' because despite closed accounts and attempts to hide, years of hands-on experience can pretty accurately identify who someone previously was (including you) and for that reason, when I call someone out as a troll or re-reg, it means more than when you do it. No offence intended, just saying the way it works.

Sweetemotion

Lyaiera wrote: »

This represents the problem, but doesn't explain the core issue. People who are vicious and hateful, and rant and rave, and give out about special snowflakes, and believe in conspiracies, and who couldn't find their arse with a mirror know if they expressed their real views it would get them ostracised anywhere else but online. The same goes for the Tumblrites (but there's feck all of them on boards despite what anyone says.) So they go online and find similar cranks and gang up and vent all they want on anyone stupid enough to engage with them (me on occasion.)

They see these people agreeing with them online, and then they begin to wonder why no-one else does in real life, beyond a small group of self-reinforcing fighters? They come to the conclusion that it's actually a big conspiracy. Everyone's been got to and everyone is afraid of saying what they really think for fear of *something.* This *something* is all that's wrong with the world, (and at the moment this is political correctness, identity politics, and feminism,(all good old tropes.)) They see the other cranks who use the same anonymity for spouting spurious, and often prejudiced bollocks and decide they're the only ones who can speak truth, and stand up to the nefarious plots that are trying to control honourable, decent citizens.

The best recent example of this was the equal marriage referendum. There were ****tonnes of posts about how SSM was going to be easily defeated. All the polls were wrong because honest, decent people were afraid to speak their mind because the Homesexual Mafia would kneecap them. These people were, "The Silent Majority."

Then of course the referendum came around, and the idea that Gay Agenda could actually force people to vote against their will in the polling booth was even a step too far for the nutcases. That meant with the SSM win they had to move on to different targets in this vast cultural conspiracy. Occasionally they'll make a few swipes at gay people to remind them that someone, somewhere hates them.

You are nuts...:eek:

Most people don't care, about colour, race or gender.

But go ahead play the victim.

dublinman1990

In nearly five years that I have used boards; there has definitely a good few threads that have been closed down because of things posters are probably known from certain opinions of posters or moderators to be stupid.

I frequent the Cable & Digital TV forums regularly. The amount of times that I have seen threads in broadcasting & Satellite sub-forums because it contains some words like 'dreamboxes' or 'vpns'. They get closed down quite regularly and very quickly. I know that there are rules from the outside world that the things I mentioned above are known to be illegal. I have no idea why people continue to post stuff like that when they would instinctively have a good chance that their thread would be closed immediately. The posters who would post them would probably never observe the rules of these forums properly.

Now I don't read every forum on boards as such but the amount of times that I would read things about anything regarding SF & the IRA in politics & AH is nauseating because there is too much talk of that crowd going on in a place like boards. I know that they are people out there trying to gain support for them. But it feels like people have for study for a exam on SF before they register themselves getting a place on an online political forum which boards has in it's possession. It is just becoming fcuking ridiculous in this day & age just has to stop.

I hear that stuff on thejournal.ie regularly as well with any political stories that comes on the site. I never post comments on this site; I just read them to try & get a different perspective on their opinions. The political ****e coming out of these political fanboys of any affiliation is insufferable. This ****e has spread to the like of boards as well. The amount of times it stifles debate is becoming too much to handle for myself and for others who read these sites regularly.

Other forums that I have an interest in like Television, Films, Infrastructure, Motorsport & Rugby, are thankfully still active and posters there have much more ease in the way that they communicate to one another. Their lightheartedness is what I enjoy out of them on boards. It stuff like that that keeps me more positive while I frequent them regularly.

K-9

Darkglasses wrote: »

PC Brigade is another one. This thing of fabricating artificial stereotypes to blame all your problems on is so pathetic and so common. Sick of reading it.

Ah I tend to roll my eyes and skip past the PC brigade, it's passe at this stage.

The import of Americanisms like cuck or SJW's seems to be the new pc brigade. Where does it come from? Reddit?

But that's getting old hat now, needs some originality. Generation snowflake is the new thinly veiled insult!

Steve

I miss our benevolent dictatorship.

the evasion_kid

Sweetemotion wrote: »

By a few people? Its a clique of around 10 other posters. In every single thread on after hours, thanking each others posts and seeing who is the mostest of mostest liberal.

Calling everybody else racist and bigots and by their own very definitions are racists and bigots themselves...

The mind boggles.

That clique you speak of remind me of chicks in a nest when the parent arrives back with food,squawking at any one with a differing opinion,then the cyber patting on the backs begins when they end up in their own echo chamber...

Greenmachine

No more BMX bikes to every member with 1,000 posts.

K-9

Deleted User wrote: »

That's a different problem in itself though. You're a Mod, so you're probably used to posting things like "Don't feed the Trolls" or "If you have an issue with a post, report it but don't call someone a troll"


Us lesser mortals (that's not a dig BTW, fair play to contributing to the site) have to deal with that all the time.
There's a flat ban on entertaining trolls on boards but sometimes, like you say, calling it out quickly is the way to go.

I guess there needs to be a rule for all somewhere, and you've fallen foul of that rule, just like non-Mods have, and maybe that's a good thing in a way.

What about the rule of talking back to a mod questioning their decision on a post, or even, questioning a banning in the first instance and slogging it out via PM until a resolution is found instead of the whole appeals process which, sorry now, but is LOADED in favour of Mods/Admins.
Again, no dig at you, i don't know you from Adam, I just see you're a mod so thought I'd ask.

Mods often do slog it out in pm and reach compromises more often than you think. A fair few cases that go to DRP get worked out that way and there is no need for C-mod involvement.

Needs both parties willing to compromise though. If after 3 or 4 pm's it's going nowhere it is best to throw it up the line as both parties are only wasting their time.

If somebody is halfway willing to see why they got a card I'd try and work something out if possible.

Having said that as time has gone on I'm less likely to issue cards and try and nip things in the bud by on thread warnings, less modding strictly to the charter. Cards or bans are usually only if somebody really isn't listening.

Everybody should know not to call somebody a troll though steve! Don't think I've carded for it in ages but I could be wrong, I'd tend to go on thread warning. Often depends on the forum, some forums don't tolerate it for good reasons.

Sweetemotion

the evasion_kid wrote: »

That clique you speak of remind me of chicks in a nest when the parent arrives back with food,squawking at any one with a differing opinion,then the cyber patting on the backs begins when they end up in their own echo chamber...

I was told last night by one of these squawking white knights, that he was surprised that I lasted this long on boards without being banned.

I have not got one card or infraction on my time here.

Mods can get a bad deal but to me they are fair.

Steve

K-9 wrote: »

Everybody should know not to call somebody a troll though steve!

I knew full well I was wrong to do it, sometimes you have to call a duck a duck tho.

In the 'old' days it would have been applauded.

gandalf

Has boards changed for me since I joined. Absolutely. I have been here since before boards was boards. This site started life as a gaming community and the community aspect is what has been lost totally at this stage.

There are many reasons for this. It has gotten an awful lot bigger and that does dilute down a community. I have made lifelong friends because of boards, people I never would have given the light of day if it wasn't for this site. However those friends are in the majority from at least 10 years ago.

The quality of threads has declined. Now this may be because of the larger number of users of the site or maybe because people are now posting on devices that do not lend themselves for posting lengthy responses.

As cited already the close account function doesn't help. It gives the impression that the site is in decline if you read a thread that has been stared by a closed account (like this one funnily enough!).

I have noted with interest that the moderation is a bugbear for a lot of people. I would contest that the moderation has actually helped extend boards lifespan a lot. On the whole the quality of moderation on boards is good, those who volunteer their time care about what they do and in a lot of cases are passionate about the topics they moderate. The problem is the inconsistencies and unfortunately they do exist. When inconsistencies happen it tends to drive away the posters who provide the quality content on the site.

The influence of the corporate side has been an extremely damaging factor in the decline of boards and the recent attempt at the "responsive" site and the gearbest fiasco are examples of a top level management who really don't have a clue what to do with boards.ie going forward.

Boards.ie has been on the whole a positive influence on my life but I do feel that my time on the site is coming to a conclusion. I won't be activating the close account feature because I really don't believe in it but I do feel one day I'll come onto the internet and not bother to type in www.boards.ie anymore.

K-9

Steve wrote: »

I knew full well I was wrong to do it, sometimes you have to call a duck a duck tho.

In the 'old' days it would have been applauded.

And in most cases those who call them out are right! The best ones are when somebody catches somebody out for spouting contradictory shyte on another thread a couple of days earlier.

Trolls do get away with a fair bit as well. But there definitely are cases where it is thrown just to lazily discredit somebody.

I've also noticed a fair few reported posts in the last while just because somebody didn't like a post. Found myself saying "well argue the fcuking post then" a few times.

Outlaw Pete

Maireadio wrote: »

I can see you are subtly talking about the stuff you complained about in the 'Ghosttown' thread. The site started losing users far later than when you claim it started happening. You said it was 2011 it started and that account closures picked up about then. Well, back then, people had to specifically request to close their accounts so even a handful of account closures by high profile users would seem a lot. It wasn't a matter of just closing your account willy nilly. The account closure tool came in in late 2011/early 2012. And even then, site traffic didn't appear to be down in any appreciable way. Most people who closed account opened new ones, so the amount of closed accounts isn't even a good indicator. It's only really in the last couple of years that the site seems to be shedding users in great numbers.

What the hell are you on about? You posted similar nonsense in the FB thread. What I simply said was that 2011 was the year when I personally began to notice that Boards was *starting* to hemorrhage regular users. I didn't say 2011 was the year that largest amount left or anything close to it, but it most certainly was the first year that it became noticeable that it was happening. In fact, I posted in FB at the time requesting a that a thread be started to discuss it. The line at the time was 'Users always leave, nothing new there' but that was just head in the sand stuff quite frankly and as we know it went on to snowball over the next few years, so please don't tell me what I experienced didn't happen as in 2011 I must have received a dozen or more PMs from users saying they had it with the site and shortly after went on to close their accounts.

K-9

I don't know, my guess would be the level of growth lessened from about 011 on, but more new members joined than left. That seems to have changed the last year or 2 for various reasons. The DDOS attacks definitely didn't help as well as the various changes with touch and the categories. I still don't understand why region gets its own heading while everything else involves a couple of clicks. And yes, moderation is an issue too.

Maireadio

Outlaw Pete wrote: »

What the hell are you on about? You posted similar nonsense in the FB thread. What I simply said was that 2011 was the year when I personally began to notice that Boards was *starting* to hemorrhage regular users. I didn't say 2011 was the year that largest amount left or anything close to it, but it most certainly was the first year that it became noticeable that it was happening. In fact, I posted in FB at the time requesting a that a thread be started to discuss it. The line at the time was 'Users always leave, nothing new there' but that was just head in the sand stuff quite frankly and as we know it went on to snowball over the next few years, so please don't tell me what I experienced didn't happen as in 2011 I must have received a dozen or more PMs from users saying they had it with the site and shortly after went on to close their accounts.

The noticeable drop off is in the last couple of years, in fact more recent than that; more like 18 months. So, we're talking 2014 onwards. It was not 2011, or even 2012. People could close their accounts from late 2011 but most seemed to create new accounts so going by closed accounts isn't reliable.

You have a bee in your bonnet still about problems you had with the site then and are determined to link that to declining popularity of the site when there are much more convincing reasons, the new site layout being front of the queue along with the DDOS attack. Just because you want your hypothesis to be the reason doesn't make it the reason. Get over it, man.

Two Tone

I don't agree with the "you can't post any non PC opinions" thing - of course you can. People do it all the time here. Yes, at times you can't (and I think Boards should ease up in that regard - any view should be fair game in my opinion once it's backed up and phrased in a non inflammatory way) but it's bullshít to state you can never ever do so.

Recently someone said that you cannot say anything negative on Boards about travellers... on a thread with posts and posts of negative stuff about travellers (thread is still open). :pac:

It's also amusing when people who post to Boards a few times a day every day give out about its decline.

The thing that annoys me and others here is the way there are certain posters who clearly just want to wind people up (it's not just their opinions, which are often deliberately devoid of logic anyway) and then they succeed in causing someone to snap at them, and it's the latter person who gets admonished rather than the person doing the stirring. Or else a generic "everyone calm down" gets posted by the mod rather than the wind-up artist getting turfed out.

diomed

Ignore poster: Is there an "ignore poster" feature where you can choose to not see all posts from someone. They have it on Betfair and it works a treat.
It would have been very useful when discussing the 1916 celebrations.

Multiquote. This a very annoying. Some people go down a thread finding things with which they disagree, then put up a post with about a dozen multiquotes pointing out that everyone else is wrong. Stop them.

Steve

diomed wrote: »

Ignore poster: Is there an "ignore poster" feature where you can choose to not see all posts from someone. They have it on Betfair and it works a treat.
It would have been very useful when discussing the 1916 celebrations.

Multiquote. This a very annoying. Some people go down a thread finding things with which they disagree, then put up a post with about a dozen multiquotes pointing out that everyone else is wrong. Stop them.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/faq.php?faq=bie_faq_whatelse#faq_bie_faq_whatelse_ignore

Bebo stunnah

Stables as far as the eye can see - for all the high horses Boards users seem to have.

Definitly weren't as many back when I signed up.

Outlaw Pete

Maireadio wrote: »

The noticeable drop off is in the last couple of years, in fact more recent than that; more like 18 months. So, we're talking 2014 onwards. It was not 2011, or even 2012. People could close their accounts from late 2011 but most seemed to create new accounts so going by closed accounts isn't reliable.

Look, I'm not sure who you are but it's becoming increasing obvious from your badgering on this issue, both here and in the FB thread, that you quite clearly have an undeclared dog in the race. In any case, what you are doing is arguing black is white. In FB I already linked you to a user who started a thread in 2011 because of what they saw as an increase in seasoned users closing their accounts. Here's another 2011 post highlighting it also. As said, I myself posted in FB at the time highlighting that regular users were closing their accounts and the reasons for it should be discussed and so this is clearly not some revisionist history from me given that I can link you to posts where I expressed the same opinion at that very time . Yes, the last two years have been the most Ghost Town esque for sure, I am not denying that, but I suspect you will continue to imply that I am nonetheless. All I am saying is that 2011 was the first year that it became clear to myself, and to others, that some disgruntled regular users were choosing to stop posting on the forum and/or requesting that their accounts be closed. I tried to talk many of them out of it via PM in fact. Now you can believe that or not, suit yourself, but it happens to be the truth.

You have a bee in your bonnet still about problems you had with the site then and are determined to link that to declining popularity of the site ..

Ah here, now I see what you're at. That 'bee' you are referring to was a very specific moderation decision which has been resolved as far as I am concerned and I have not once ever claimed that any other user other than myself closed their account over it. In fact, I went out of my way in FB recently to highlight the fact that the other two primary users involved are still very much active on Boards. So, it is not I that is attempting to make some sort of connection here, it is you and for what reason I am unsure. So maybe you should take your own advice and 'get over it'.

..when there are much more convincing reasons, the new site layout being front of the queue along with the DDOS attack.

I gave my opinion on this in the FB thread also and I think while some people for sure where/are frustrated with the whole DDOS attacks and the new layout, they are not the reason that Boards users started to vacate the building in the numbers which they ultimately did. No chance. That truly is head in the sand stuff. Almost every time I hear criticisms IRL from people that used to use Boards, but no longer do, without exception it is moderation and the overall attitude of the site's regulars that prevails as being the main reasons why they no longer want to post here.

Maireadio

Pete, a couple of posts in a feedback thread and a few posts here is not badgering. I obviously know lots about all that stuff though I never participated in the threads myself. I read them with interest though and remember the whole debacle well. So yes, I know a lot about it.

I'm not going to go back and forth with you about this; nobody cares about it. Nor read your essays on the subject. But you had a massive bee in your bonnet about the whole thing and clearly still do and I believe you are using the more recent decline in usage of boards.ie to attempt to prove that you were right back then. It's really sad. And transparent. I'm sorry that you are annoyed that someone remembers the whole debacle. Maybe you were hoping that you could hoodwink new users.

Apparently even being able to ask someone to close your account for you was pretty new in 2011. There would always have been people who wanted their account closed. If the new site layout isn't a big part of the problem, why didn't the noticeable exodus start sooner?

That's all I have to say about it. Have at it replying to this post.

beauf

I'm with Pete.

For myself. I think the redesign was and is terrible, it put the navigation of the site back years.
On many forums, the moderation is very bias, and the posting very one sided (aided by the moderation). As a result I just don't bother with many areas of the site.
Also lots of sub forums are just dead. Posting in them gets no response. In general, no longer a goto site for information, or discussion.

Wibbs

Maireadio wrote: »

That's all I have to say about it. Have at it replying to this post.

And then you go and close your bloody account? FFS. This "feature" has really helped fook the site. When an account, "you" are so throwaway on a whim, then the perception changes about the overall value of an account and your part in the community. There are already two of those damned closed accounts are on this very thread and new thread with it.

TBH my opinion of those who constantly close accounts is low. They come across as neurotics to me.

beauf wrote: »

For myself. I think the redesign was and is terrible, it put the navigation of the site back years.

Aye, it's of the purest shíte and the abomination is the first thing new users and passersby see. However it seems the "office" aren't for turning on it. Oh the open and voluminous What the actual fook!! by users to the new look and feel has given the "legacy" look a temporary reprieve, but it says much when they rolled out such an unfinished POS and didn't think it would cause a problem. It doesn't even have proper moderation tools. Yep. That's how absent forward thinking was and IMH still is.

Outlaw Pete

One improvement that I did like on the legacy site over recent years was the auto-complete, where you could just easily type a few letters of forum's name, or a user's name for that matter, and up came the link to them. Even on a mobile (in Desktop mode) it was easily accessible. That feature however doesn't seem to be available on the 'responsive site', currently at least.

Lovely Bloke

Wibbs wrote: »

And then you go and close your bloody account? FFS. This "feature" has really helped fook the site. When an account, "you" are so throwaway on a whim, then the perception changes about the overall value of an account and your part in the community. There are already two of those damned closed accounts are on this very thread and new thread with it.

TBH my opinion of those who constantly close accounts is low. They come across as neurotics to me.

Aye, it's of the purest shíte and the abomination is the first thing new users and passersby see. However it seems the "office" aren't for turning on it. Oh the open and voluminous What the actual fook!! by users to the new look and feel has given the "legacy" look a temporary reprieve, but it says much when they rolled out such an unfinished POS and didn't think it would cause a problem. It doesn't even have proper moderation tools. Yep. That's how absent forward thinking was and IMH still is.

Wibbs, you keep going on about the "community" and people's part in it. If the heirarchy want to keep a community feel to the place then they are going a very funny way about it, and it's not about closed accounts, not by a long chalk.

The community started to go into terminal decline when a decision was made to monetise the userbase, monetise the content they create and give little back to them, apart from contempt and forums for shills.

You seem to have it in your head that people close their accounts for one single, or perhaps two or three, specific reasons that you have decided are not compatible with your boardsview.

What is actually killing this site is that the Community Manager has decided that right-wing thinking and ideas are dangerous.

That filters down, and becomes a feedback loop. You have a guy at the top who has pretty much final say on who becomes a mod or who doesn't - he will, often without realising it, appoint people who have the same mindset as him, and they will then do the same - the current procedure for mod appointments exacerbates this - eventually what you get is a bias in the running of the forum.

I've seen it on other forums too, football ones, political ones, music ones, the overlaying "feel" of the place starts to reflect the people tasked with running the place - when they inevitably need a dig out, it's only natural for them to appoint like-minded people. And that's happened here. It's taken a long time, but it's happened. I don't know how you yourself have survived it.

Look, it doesn't matter about the farming forum, or the hobby radio forum or thw watches and timepiecesforum. AH is the face of this website (much as those at the top hate to admit it, and stick blocks in the road to boot) and the moderation here, and the prevailing mood, is what the perception of this website to the wider world actually is.

There is little to no toleration for anything right of Marx it seems at times.

beauf

It's likely to be a combination of reasons over time.

I dunno why you are both getting so entrenched and argumentative about it.

thegreatgonzo

Wibbs wrote: »

And then you go and close your bloody account? FFS. This "feature" has really helped fook the site.

I never noticed it before. Could you not always close your account? Or is it people who are closing their account and then signing up with a different name? How is that different from reregs? I'm very confused

gandalf

thegreatgonzo wrote: »

I never noticed it before. Could you not always close your account? Or is it people who are closing their account and then signing up with a different name? How is that different from reregs? I'm very confused

It was brought in apparently because of legal advice. Before that if someone wanted to leave they did or in extreme cases they asked the admin to scramble their password so they couldn't access their account.

What Wibbs is referring to is the toys out of the pram moment where they cancel their account in the heat of the moment and yes I would count them as a rereg. However these guys wouldn't be the malicious reregs who cause a majority of the moderation problems on the site.

Wibbs

Baldy Conscience wrote: »

Wibbs, you keep going on about the "community" and people's part in it. If the heirarchy want to keep a community feel to the place then they are going a very funny way about it, and it's not about closed accounts, not by a long chalk.

Closed account feature really doesn't help though. You can see that surely BC? It sends a really bad vibe out when you read a thread - and it doesn't even have to be an old thread - and see "Closed Account" all over the place.

The community started to go into terminal decline when a decision was made to monetise the userbase, monetise the content they create and give little back to them, apart from contempt and forums for shills.

The elephant in the room is that you can't monetise discussion sites very easily. Unless they're literally a server in a spare room, they are a loss leader for a larger company. Reddit makes no money. Paying for expensive site overhauls is pissing money away IMH.

You seem to have it in your head that people close their accounts for one single, or perhaps two or three, specific reasons that you have decided are not compatible with your boardsview.

Of course there are different reasons, but let's face it usually it's a childish rage quit, or a "this doesn't matter, I'll create a new one in the morning". There are some on their fifth or sixth account at this stage and they don't change themselves so it's obvious. Can't get my head around it myself.

What is actually killing this site is that the Community Manager has decided that right-wing thinking and ideas are dangerous.

That filters down, and becomes a feedback loop. You have a guy at the top who has pretty much final say on who becomes a mod or who doesn't - he will, often without realising it, appoint people who have the same mindset as him, and they will then do the same - the current procedure for mod appointments exacerbates this - eventually what you get is a bias in the running of the forum.

I've seen it on other forums too, football ones, political ones, music ones, the overlaying "feel" of the place starts to reflect the people tasked with running the place - when they inevitably need a dig out, it's only natural for them to appoint like-minded people. And that's happened here. It's taken a long time, but it's happened. I don't know how you yourself have survived it.

Look, it doesn't matter about the farming forum, or the hobby radio forum or thw watches and timepiecesforum. AH is the face of this website (much as those at the top hate to admit it, and stick blocks in the road to boot) and the moderation here, and the prevailing mood, is what the perception of this website to the wider world actually is.

There is little to no toleration for anything right of Marx it seems at times.

While I chuckled at the naiveté of the Community Manager's post going about how right wing opinion has become dangerous in our otherwise caring and sharing hippie nirvana western world I'm really not seeing much in the way of "censorship" that is constantly referenced BC. I'm really not. Oh sure you get the usual clique of offence takers and the usual clique of offence mongers baiting each other(or is that bating ), but generally speaking you can say pretty much anything "right wing" so long as you don't go full retard with actual racism, or "being a dick". Your average American tumblr student "liberal" reading After Hours on an average day would have more triggers than a Texan gun show. Lefties and liberals are usually more laughed at than lauded. Hell I do enough of the laughing at their notions myself.

Generally speaking yes, there are far more mods of the high traffic forums that would be "Liberals" with a couple that would be full Facebook Rainbow warriors(™) and yes the "office" certainly has a bias towards that worldview. Hell Dav has admitted it in plain sight, so this will influence appointing mods alright. Still, the general Boards demographic is younger and more likely to the left of centre, as is Irish society in general. We as a culture tend not to like the extremist views and view holders and tend to laugh at them(even in good oul catholic Ireland the overly religious were seen as toadies, craw thumpers and daily communicants). That goes for the right and left. Trump supporters are seen as stupid as liberals getting hysterical over Trump. Personally I see anyone using terms like "cuck" or "rape culture" as equally retarded arguments.

thegreatgonzo wrote:

I never noticed it before. Could you not always close your account?

No tGG. I think the software always allowed admins to close an account on request, but the general user or mod couldn't do it themselves(and admins would rarely do it IIRC). You'd just stop posting, or you'd rereg under a new name with the old account still open. I can't remember when the close account button came in, but I would think around 2012?

RDM_83 again

Penny Tration wrote: »

I still really like boards, but I think it's gotten even more politically correct than before.

However, even I find the place suffocatingly PC at times. There are plenty of posters who choose AH as a platform to launch nasty attacks on trans people and refugees, no doubt about it.

But if you happen to have any opinion that doesn't meet the politically correct viewpoint, no matter how eloquent you are in expressing it, you're immediately drowned out by people calling you phobic/bigoted/racist.
-
Seems to me now (a liberal, pretty open-minded person) that AH in particular has become unbearably PC.


I agree with not allowing insulting posts, but simply politely expressing an opinion that differs from the PC view shouldn't be met with 100+ ranty responses.

When a poster like yourself (no offense meant!) starts saying this there is definitely a problem thats not imagined.

IMO the site hierarchy is at odds with the sites user base. I'd believe that most people here mainly being Irish are fairly centerist generally with certain issues they will swing left or right on.
The hierarchy imagines however that everybody to the right/more conservative than them is part of a problematic minority of posters, this just isn't true - look at poll about multiculturalism in Europe with hundreds of votes more viewing it as a negative.

They don't want to listen though, this is the response to one of the longest threads on feedback lately, the view that there is biases in moderation (conscious or unconscious) are not even engaged with, instead we get a lot of talk about differences between forums a point I knew would be made because it allows a diversion from the issue many people raised on the thread about biases within forums

e.g this was a previous post of mine on the thread

This seems to be dodging a lot of the feedback, I haven't read that many complaints about consistency of moderation between different forums, rather a lot of users have raised consistency internally within a forum.

what happens thread gets closed with this which completely ignores one of the main issues raised

However, there is something specific we need to address and it's the number 1 criticism - Moderation. We cannot and will not ever have "standardised" moderation on this site - it couldn't possibly work with a chaotic system like this site (that's chaotic as in Theory not as in uncontrolled madness). Every forum is different - it's supposed to be. What's a rule breach in one is not in others and so on. There are thousands of members and only a handful of mods in comparison; people claiming mods are this and that because they missed some reports or because they're not omniscient or omnipresent are living in some sort of fantasy land if they think that these ratios of hundreds of posters to a small team of mods mean that things won't occasionally be missed. Look at how they're treated here as a result? Everything under a microscope, everything torn apart, everything questioned all because they just wanted to help out on a discussion forum. Immediate and frankly ridiculous claims of bias because of political leanings or what sports team they support or whether or not they're a "liberal" or "conservative" etc? Who'd be bothered? If you think that a moderator's decision is somehow a personal attack then please try to remember that whilst you might think that your interactions are some sort of deeply personal "one on one show-down," on one of the busy forums like AH or Soccer, you are just another one of hundreds who have requested attention to something or other.

In short the site doesn't want to listen and considers that those that don't share ALL their views are a problem rather than a part of the userbase.

The_Mac

It's bonkers how hard-left liberal this place is these days. can't say anything slightly right ring without being attacked.

OldMrBrennan83

This post has been deleted.

hatrickpatrick

Boards isn't as much fun as it used to be, primarily because childish and light hearted humour has been squeezed out of the site in favour of protecting the ever-offended. The administration / mods have essentially tried to impose a level of sophistication on a community which began and grew as a thoroughly unsophisticated one. In other words, not as much "craic" is allowed anymore because "this thread is getting out of hand, I think we'll leave it there".

Back in the day, threads went on until people got bored of posting in them, and if a thread descended into rowdy banter, so be it. For whatever reason, over the years, this has been less and less tolerated.