2005 and beyond...

DeVore

Ok, just to put you guys in the picture.

The admins meet over the xmas for our annual (or biannual!) meal and chat about the future of Boards.

There is a HUGE amount in the pipeline right now. Quite a bit of fundamental change and the splitting of Hosted forums from Category forums is just the tip of that. We are restructuring a few things and some fair serious changes will come out of that. The creation of Category Mods as additional eyes and ears for the mods is another part of that.

The admins decided a few broad things but the details will come once we have talked our plans through with the Mods to see what they think. We generally dont do much without running it passed their collective eyes (ok, cloud does but like, he doesnt usually even inform the other admins )

Some basic decisions were made which are:

1. We are broadly happy with how Boards works. The changes will be to ensure it continues to work this way in the future.

2. We cannot withstand the growth we had last year again this year. If our level of growth even just repeated itself this year we'd have the busiest site in the country. Twice as busy as Ryanair.com. We havent a chance of surviving that as we are, we can hear the creaks already and by 2006 we'll collapse under our own weight.

3. We dont want to change the basics, we need to find money from somewhere but we will not charge for the services we provide (and have provided historically). IE: we refute the Pay-To-Talk model (ala somethingawful) as being anathema to Boards history and culture. (that said dont be surprised if the Legal Highs forum is created as a subscriber only forum to protect us legally, thats a special case though).

4. The admins are not able to keep up with the demands on our time, we've literally reached the limits of what 5 guys can do in our spare time. This is leading to longer and longer response times to Mod requests and user support. Also its leading to requests being handled on the basis of "I have time to do A right now but not time to do B so while B is a higher priority, I'll do A now to get it out of the way". Hence the odd order of things getting sorted as Muck pointed out (at least I *think* it was Muck!)

5. We need to decide what we want Boards to be in the future or it will drift aimlessly. Thats going to bug a few people because any direction we take, some people will object to it. Thats life unfortunately


So, in the next 6-8 weeks some fairly serious changes will occur and I'll keep you abreast of them here. Hopefully it will make Boards *more* like the place we all love but it needs careful handling and some trust on all sides that change will be for the better.

I know this post says lots but tells you very little but honestly I want to be able to adopt any ideas the Mods come up with and theres little point requesting their input if I've already announced a plan now is there!

I think you'll find the new admin changes to be good and our cash generation plans are all non-invasive and voluntary. We are still just as opposed to popups, mail address selling and commercial sponsorship as ever and I *can* tell you now that you wont see any of that sort of nonsense. "The Broadband Forum , brought to you by Eircom" isnt an option

DeV.

aidan_walsh

/me trembles with excitement...

CuLT

Cheers to another interesting year

Third_Echelon

This all sounds very interesting indeed, especially point number 5... :cool:

WizZard

Right, I'm subscribing come next pay cheque! Sounds great, I (and most here) couldn't do without it

mike65

Radical suggestion a) charge everyone to join (but not much)
b) close boards to new members until "its all sorted out" c) win lotto.

Mike.

BuffyBot

Should be an interesting ride

smoke.me.a.kipper

cheers to a brilliant future.

damien

Micropayments.

If you made a few euro per member per year it's be a nice bit of cash, especially with the only costs being hardware.

steveland?

DeVore wrote:

(that said dont be surprised if the Legal Highs forum is created as a subscriber only forum to protect us legally, thats a special case though).

/me looks for job and cash...

davej

Some basic decisions were made which are: <snip>

Hmmm. This seems more like a list of problems as opposed to a list of decisions.

It's obvious that one of the major solutions to many of these problems is to generate more money.

Something along the lines of the slashdot idea of paying not to see advertisments has presumably been considered?

What about selling boards merchandise? (mugs / tshirts and the like).

Maybe implement some sort of formal system for logging problems.

Find some more admins who are willing to help out on a volunteer basis. You could "advertise" the position and then choose 2 or 3 suitable people

davej

DMC

davej wrote:

Hmmm. This seems more like a list of problems as opposed to a list of decisions.

I think DeVore has just decided where the problems are, and they are going to be addressed. Decisions will be made on those points.

For which, I shall tubthump!

Tom Dunne

Sounds great guys, I look forward to Boards becoming even better.

davej wrote:

What about selling boards merchandise? (mugs / tshirts and the like)

I actually think this is a good idea and good advertising for Boards.ie.

spongebob

Finally

You need to split the mods into trusted/useful and the others . You MUST have at least 30-50 possibles in that category .

1. It gives those who CAN something useful to do , you know who can do what fundraise etc. .
2. It gves those who MAY be able to something to aspire to.
3. They can be gven admin 'lite' functions on occasions as deemed appropriate
4. They can be given ther own ádminmod forum as a sort of council of state , even if all they do is hoover up the gossip they can at least distill it reliably .
5. It also creates an approprately sized centre for a beast like Boards.

/me fears that much of the current creaking is 5 admins runnng around firefighting and too many mods scratching themselves uselessly , especially in here.

SantaHoe

I recall they had something like that going before... boards merchandice that is.
How about keeping track of individual users total bandwidth use since signup, and keep it in the top corner of the page along with how much that has cost... might encourage people to cough up, but I'm not sure how easy/possible this would be to implement.

Lafortezza

More power-mods, like amp/pam for games, gandalf for the soc boards, etc. They can cut the time the admins have to deal with spammers/muppets/knobjockeys.
Maybe install a few more mods, people you actually know and trust, ask them "will you mod the XYZ boards, its a bit busy at the moment, just need to keep it tidy and muppet free."

Crack down a hell of a lot harder on annoying muppets. Discuss them in the mod forum, ban them if they are annoying to the majority of the boards decision-makers. Boards has grown so much in the last year, and will grow steadily for the foreseeable future, you need to keep the signal-to-noise ratio high so unpopular as it is, fúcktards need to be kept out.

Money: Is people texting funds possible. Lots of young people on the site, most don't have credit cards, but all of them have mobiles. A voluntary text-payment, even if it was a couple of euro per year from numerous users would make a difference.

More random bullshít as I come up with it

SantaHoe

I like that texting idea tbh, I'd do it.
Would probably cost a bit to set it up though?

Mimikyu

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Ancient1

lafortezza wrote:

A voluntary text-payment, even if it was a couple of euro per year from numerous users would make a difference.

Txt sounds good - if it's workable, it's quick, easy and convenient.
Or start off with a monthly fundraiser - all contributors can be entered into a draw to win __________? An extra star?

Big Ears

ya text idea does sound good .

SantaHoe

Ancient1 wrote:

Or start off with a monthly fundraiser - all contributors can be entered into a draw to win __________? An extra star?

An animated Crazy Frog avatar with sound.

Ancient1

There you go - problem solved.

Who in their right mind wouldn't want an animated crazy frog with sound?

Jaeger

Texting is one way to go, so long as it's not as up-in-yer-face as the frog.

A big boards bash is out of the question? Pay a fiver in somewhere....cost gets complicated in there, you'd want one of the accountants around here to take a look at that.

dangerman

suggestions:

ads in between posts?

as in between post #5 and #6 of a thread there would be space for google ads.

Say 1 ad per page of posts - as long as they are clearly marked, different colour they are not a nuisance. ads that show up like that in different locations are I think more likely to get click-thrus because their location would change so they are more visible. (Also more annoying too of course.) it also ads weight to the subscribe to boards to get rid of the ads idea, thats an interesting one, its how milkandcookies.net operates.

The Gawker Media blogs do it for example, you have a couple of posts, then an ad, and then posts continue.

I don't want to be flamed for this, and I know how awful some people will consider these ideas, but i'm always thinking of the impact of this kind of thing on sites, so i'd like to hear more about it. And an ad supported boards is a lot better than a boards that collapses.

billy the squid

Boards...Bigger than Jesus

oh and just an idea for those who would not be able to shell out €50 in one lump sum, why not set up a standing order for €5 a month from your bank account to boards.ie's account.

details below

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=2238527&postcount=2

also handy if you don't have a credit card or paypal account.

Mimikyu

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BuffyBot

Find some more admins who are willing to help out on a volunteer basis. You could "advertise" the position and then choose 2 or 3 suitable people

Perhaps the admins need to look at what they're currently doing and delegate some of the "lesser" stuff to some people they trust - i.e someone to deal with name changes, someone to deal with complaints.."uber-mods" sort of somewhere between mods and admins. I'm sure some of the long term folks that the admins know wouldn't mind helping out.

My 2c (on top of the €50 )

dangerman

Solitaryman666 wrote:

This post has been deleted.

I don't think what devore said contradicts my idea. Does it?

Why is it a terrible idea? As you scroll down, there would just be a bigger than normal gap between two posts and there would sit a google ad.

I really don't think it's as awful as people might imagine it would be.

To test it, I did up a quick mockup, is it really that bad?

http://tcal.net/images/boardsad.jpg

I think it looks fine, and if it meant better/continued existance of boards, id be very happy to put up with it.

WizZard

I see how it works, and I'm not *totally* opposed to it. But there will be a few who are!

alleepally

How about an auction of some sort to raise funds. Since the idea of having big "sponsored by" banner ads is not to be considered then a once off auction of some items 'sponsored by' individuals and/or companies might be considered?

KevIRL

dangerman wrote:

suggestions:

ads in between posts?

as in between post #5 and #6 of a thread there would be space for google ads.

Say 1 ad per page of posts - as long as they are clearly marked, different colour they are not a nuisance. ads that show up like that in different locations are I think more likely to get click-thrus because their location would change so they are more visible. (Also more annoying too of course.) it also ads weight to the subscribe to boards to get rid of the ads idea, thats an interesting one, its how milkandcookies.net operates.

The Gawker Media blogs do it for example, you have a couple of posts, then an ad, and then posts continue.

I don't want to be flamed for this, and I know how awful some people will consider these ideas, but i'm always thinking of the impact of this kind of thing on sites, so i'd like to hear more about it. And an ad supported boards is a lot better than a boards that collapses.

Very good idea, and to link it with an earlier suggestion - Set it up so subscribers do not see the ads. So if the ads really p!ss you off, then subscribe - more money for the coffers!