Boards in the Independant

memphis

Yes indeed, a great read!

So, we'll have a mass invasion of Newbies now for awhile eh?

DeVore

And thats different to normal... how?!

The Silicon Republic interview at least explains the genesis fully (I hate it when papers cut it back to just me because they tend not to want to complicate the story by introducing other names). Some of the text wasnt very clear, I'm not predicting tighter integration between the TV and the XBox, I'm fairly confident that that integration is about as tight as it gets.
Other then that Mr Stewart seems to have mangled what I said less then any other journalist before him

DeV.

Crash

Tom, out of interest, did the photographer punch you in the eye before taking the picture? :P

Beruthiel

lol
I was afraid to ask if he'd been out the night before or something....

Moriarty

I was going to ask if he gave up sleeping for the new year, but I just plain forgot.

Thanks for reminding me crash \o\

parasite

looks like a sleepless derek mooney tbh
byeeee

David Stewart

DeVore wrote:

Other then that Mr Stewart seems to have mangled what I said less then any other journalist before him

DeV.

That's very kind of you to say so. I'm always worried that somewhere in the chain, the speaker's intention will bet mangled. I record the interviews I do, but then I transcribe them. Then I edit them to fit the space the editor has given me and send it in. The sub-editor then edits my work again to fit the actual space that's available (I always submit more than I'm asked for in case there's a need to fill a gap). I remember one of the earliest pieces I wrote for E-Thursday was completely distorted because a mistake was made when the Indo typesetters left out a zero when they were resetting the article.

Anyway, I'm glad you all enjoyed it.

David

The Sweeper

Sorry to rain on the parade, but I didn't think it was that great. A lot of the text was unclear, the ideas were muddled and the wording was clumsy.

I think boards.ie is a pretty slick outfit, from its design and information management to the way it's moderated. I can't wait for the day when a talented journalist who isn't obsessed with the internet nerd end of things actually shows an interest.

mycroft

Grand photo Tom, and if this whole interweb thing doesn't work out for you,
george romero may have a small part for you in this, judging from that photo you won't even have to spend a second in makeup.

Cloud

It's good that this coverage coincides with our 7th birthday tomorrow; hard to believe that that little WWWBoard I created on 12th February 1998 has come to this. Hope you've all enjoyed the ride: we've had some bumps but overall it's been exciting and smooth enough.

Thanks for the article David, I liked it (but then again I like all publicity for boards.ie!) - and glad that yours truly got a mention too. However - in the next one of these things - can we get some kudos for our other admins? The nameless ones whose work has been overlooked thus far by the media at large.

The Sweeper

Perhaps I'm just picky.

If I was writing an article about Tom Murphy's recent net visionary win, and by association boards.ie, I'd look at it from the following angles:

The practical elements:

Boards is an online bulletin board - so what's one of those, are they common, are there many of them on the internet, are there big and small ones, where does boards.ie feature in the scale of things in terms of traffic and number of users?

On which note, how many registered users does boards.ie have? Where are these people located? Is there a demographic for age and sex of users? Who's the oldest user that you have? How do you think people find out about boards.ie?

How many boards are on boards.ie? What subjects do they cover? What are the most popular boards? How do you manage the information, on both a technical front and in terms of content administration? Admins - what are they? What do they do? Moderators - what are they? How are they chosen?

How many hours a day does boards take out of the lives of the admins to keep it ticking over? What's the biggest problem you face in terms of maintaining a fully functioning bulletin board?

Where do you see boards.ie going from here? Is there a point at which it may outgrow your ability to maintain it on the "voluntary" basis that it's maintained on now?

The content element:

So what sort of things get discussed on a bulletin board? This may be a hugely general question, but in response I'd like to see references to Ireland Offline, but also the education boards, the music boards, the sport boards, and the general entertainment available on the recreational boards. On top of that, there are forums for politics and debate, and a personal issues board where people can share things they’re worried about or experiences they’ve been through. All of this information is important to show people the reality of boards, draw them in, make them interested in what it is.

The genealogy and culture of boards and where it fits in society

Something that the media seems to miss every time is the fact that boards.ie is a thriving culture full of – wait for it – NORMAL PEOPLE. Its users are not all morbidly obese comic collecting friendless hopeless agoraphobic mathematically gifted socially awkward emotionally stunted teenaged boys. This is the very reason that it’s such a successful forum – it’s real people discussing real issues. It’s just as valid a venue for engaging exchanges as the letters page of the Irish Times, or Marian Finucane on the radio, or talkshows on television – and you get a broader range of opinions and a greater wealth of experience in response to a post on boards.ie than you would in the other arenas I’ve mentioned.

I find it difficult to believe that there’s still a perception of the internet as “the new-fangled interweb thingie, sure that’s full of paedophiles and nerds, it won’t last”. People need to understand that, as a research tool, the internet outstrips any other source of information. Boards.ie is representative of Ireland and has become an emissary for the country. You can already see the “Hi, I’m from [insert foreign place], and I’m coming to Ireland in June – what sort of stuff should I definitely not miss?” threads. This is where boards.ie fits in our society, this is the impact it can have.

And on that basis – what should we worry about? This is where the idea of the libel laws needing to change should come in. Should Ireland as a society be delighted to have boards.ie out there on the internet, flying the flag for the auld sod? Do we want the boards.ie community speaking for us? Who administers the admins and moderates the moderators? At what point does a private online community become a public concern? And what do you, Mister Tom Murphy, if that IS your real name, intend to do about it?



That’s all the sort of stuff I’d like to see in a feature about Tom Murphy and boards.ie. But I don’t believe it’ll happen until a journalist appears who’s played a part in the community for a while – otherwise they just never seem to get the questions right, because they don’t understand the forum.

DeVore

Well the piece was about the IIA award I got, it kinda turned into a piece on Boards because I rabbited on about it so much but nominally it was supposed to be about what I think is coming down the pipe for the internet in the future. :^/

I have tried to be clear at all times that Boards is not just a joint admin project but a joint project with the mods and the regulars here also etc.


I always look like I have a black eye from a fight I was in as a kid. It only really shows up when I'm tired and I'm very tired at the moment. (the fact that I won the poker tournament the night before and didnt get to bed until 3am may have had something to do with that!)

DeV.

DeVore

Fergus Cassidy of the Sunday Tribune has been lurking here and chatting to me on and off about the social impact of Boards. He has a good grasp on it but remember, editors what easily digestable fluff pieces, not hard hitting journalism or thought provoking insight into our new Knowledge Society. Just an observation.

I agree with MAJD, I was trying to get at that when I said the Internet will become like electricity, you'll just *presume* its there. Much as people have come to presume Boards will be here and our recent outage showed that we've all come to rely on it more then perhaps we'd thought!

Like John said, its been an interesting if occasionally bumpy ride. The next evolution of the site is going to be REALLY interesting over the next 18 months. I think MAJD has a good view of what this site might mean to our society and beyond in the next 5 years.

DeV.

mike65

Minesajackdaniels wrote:

If I was writing an article about Tom Murphy's recent net visionary win, and by association boards.ie, I'd look at it from the following angles...

....That’s all the sort of stuff I’d like to see in a feature about Tom Murphy and boards.ie. But I don’t believe it’ll happen until a journalist appears who’s played a part in the community for a while – otherwise they just never seem to get the questions right, because they don’t understand the forum.

Well exactly, the thing is you know there must be a few jornos (in fact I know Karlin Lillington has posted here) who are browsers if not members and surely it must have occured to them boards is worth an article if only to illustrate the growth of the "netizen" phenomenon.

Mike.

ps I forgot about Fergus "Ethos" Cassidy...

Imposter

mike65 wrote:

... it must have occured to them boards is worth an article if only to illustrate the growth of the "netizen" phenomenon.

Step 1: Tell everyone about this newfangled way of getting news and info among other things
Step 2: Lose a load of readers who realise that "hey this boards thing is better value than my newspaper".

Gizzard

Cloud wrote:

It's good that this coverage coincides with our 7th birthday tomorrow; hard to believe that that little WWWBoard I created on 12th February 1998 has come to this. Hope you've all enjoyed the ride: we've had some bumps but overall it's been exciting and smooth enough.

Thanks for the article David, I liked it (but then again I like all publicity for boards.ie!) - and glad that yours truly got a mention too. However - in the next one of these things - can we get some kudos for our other admins? The nameless ones whose work has been overlooked thus far by the media at large.

thought Tom created it

David Stewart

Tom did say that that Boards was very much a joint project with a lot of input for the commmunity at large. However, the conversation with Tom when written up in full came to amost 2000 words. I had 600 or so for the Q&A piece in the paper and about 800 for the online piece. That meant I had to be absolutely ruthless in paring it down. As it was, the Q&A piece I sent in was cut further by the subs. I did try to balance it a bit by emphasising the community spirit of Boards.ie in the final paragraph of the online piece.

I should also point out that the piece was nominally about Tom and his vision of the Internet. It's just that in this case, his vision coincides very much with reality. Not many people can say that.

And I should also say that it's not so much the editors who want easily digestible fluff pieces.Rather it's the readers. Remember e-Thursday is a technology section aimed at the business community. If I were writing for a tech magazine or if I were writing a longer feature I'd be taking a much more in depth approach.

David

The Sweeper

Aye David - and that's fair enough. Sorry if it came off that I was having a go at you in particular, it wasn't intentional, I know you have word counts to meet and you don't have control over what the subs cut or rearrange.

It's just that I don't feel the Irish technology media have a proper space for "recreational" technology - it's mostly business technology. I don't live in Ireland any more, but I can remember how it used to be with Irish Computer, Computerscope, electric news, the technology pages in the Indo and the Times, the mag in the Tribune - and the rest - and how huge amounts of what's published is fed by the PR agencies issuing press releases on provisioning deals worth X-million won by solutions companies. We were crowing about being the technological hub of Europe five years ago and we still don't have widely-accessible ADSL for the home user.

I feel like boards.ie doesn't get credit for what it is because Irish people don't understand what you can do with the internet, because most of the fun stuff is frankly off limits when you're on 56K dialup.

ecksor

Minesajackdaniels wrote:

On which note, how many registered users does boards.ie have? Where are these people located? Is there a demographic for age and sex of users? Who's the oldest user that you have? How do you think people find out about boards.ie?

Our demographic information isn't at all precise, but I recall being in a well known computer hardware shop last year and overhearing one of the sales people advise a customer to try the For Sale section on boards as a good place to look for an item they were looking for. I was quite chuffed at that.

How many hours a day does boards take out of the lives of the admins to keep it ticking over? What's the biggest problem you face in terms of maintaining a fully functioning bulletin board?

These questions are very closely related for me. I usually spent a minimum of 2 hours per day reading and responding to problems and queries on boards. Consequently the biggest problem is time, since I do a lot of other things besides boards. I used to be able to spend time implementing features and hacks for users or fixing bugs, but I haven't had a chance to do that in a long time. Consequently the quality of what I have to offer the site has gone down dramatically in the last year or so.

Is there a point at which it may outgrow your ability to maintain it on the "voluntary" basis that it's maintained on now?

This has already happened in some ways ...

Something that the media seems to miss every time is the fact that boards.ie is a thriving culture full of – wait for it – NORMAL PEOPLE. Its users are not all morbidly obese comic collecting friendless hopeless agoraphobic mathematically gifted socially awkward emotionally stunted teenaged boys.

Yes! However, the most vocal "core" or established groups are often linked via nerdish roots and the 5 admins are very definitely nerds (different types of nerds, but nerds nonetheless), so I can see where the image comes from. However, it is slightly irritating when someone who should know better comes along and proclaims that they know what stereotype all the members conform to, when 5 minutes of actual thinking would demonstrate that that stereotype is incorrect.

And on that basis – what should we worry about? This is where the idea of the libel laws needing to change should come in. Should Ireland as a society be delighted to have boards.ie out there on the internet, flying the flag for the auld sod? Do we want the boards.ie community speaking for us? Who administers the admins and moderates the moderators? At what point does a private online community become a public concern? And what do you, Mister Tom Murphy, if that IS your real name, intend to do about it?

What do you think we should do about it? This place only represents people as much as they feel that it represents them. If everyone stops using it then it won't represent Ireland, or anyone, at all. This isn't something that the admins can really do anything about. Sure, we have the power to ruin it, but we don't so much have the power to make it successful at doing this as we have the power to facilitate our users in making it successful at this.

seamus

ecksor wrote:

Our demographic information isn't at all precise, but I recall being in a well known computer hardware shop last year and overhearing one of the sales people advise a customer to try the For Sale section on boards as a good place to look for an item they were looking for. I was quite chuffed at that.

Funny that, I was in a very well know PC store last year buying RAM. I casually mentioned to the checkout guy that SDRAM seemed very expensive now, and that I could do well selling off the Half Gig I had spare at home, to which he replied, "Yeah, you could try the For Sale board on boards.ie. You'll sell anything there.".

Cloud

I had an interesting thought about boards.ie's members. There's > 32000 accounts. That's nearly 1% of the population.

More realistically, let's say that half of those 32k are real people based in Ireland. I'd say that each person has a typical social network of a couple of hundred people (friends, business associates, classmates), so it's safe to say that if you're Irish, you know at least one person who is a member of boards.ie. Doesn't matter who or where you are in Ireland, one of your friends is on boards.ie.

As you know, I've been working on the social networking add-on for vBulletin (the Friends link under your name on the left there); once I start adding in things like shortest paths, then we'll start having fun

Moriarty

seamus wrote:

Funny that, I was in a very well know PC store last year buying RAM. I casually mentioned to the checkout guy that SDRAM seemed very expensive now, and that I could do well selling off the Half Gig I had spare at home, to which he replied, "Yeah, you could try the For Sale board on boards.ie. You'll sell anything there.".

That's strange, I worked in a well known PC store last year and remember suggesting to a guy that the for sale forum on boards.ie may be a good place for him to sell his half gig of sdram.

Cloud

ROFL - there you go!

Moriarty

Sorry, I may have been telling a slight fib in my last post.


I'm such a little bastard.

mike65

Cloud wrote:

I had an interesting thought about boards.ie's members. There's > 32000 accounts. That's nearly 1% of the population.

17673 are bubbles, no?

Mike.

Cloud

Moriarty wrote:

Sorry, I may have been telling a slight fib in my last post.


I'm such a little bastard.

I guessed Damn you for telling the truth at last...

po0k

Cloud wrote:

As you know, I've been working on the social networking add-on for vBulletin (the Friends link under your name on the left there); once I start adding in things like shortest paths, then we'll start having fun

You crazy semmantic-web-visionary-types, always with the meta-data and FOAF seminars with the free sandwiches and finger-food....long may it continue :)

David Stewart

Minesajackdaniels wrote:

Aye David - and that's fair enough. Sorry if it came off that I was having a go at you in particular, it wasn't intentional, I know you have word counts to meet and you don't have control over what the subs cut or rearrange.

Understood. And let me say that I always welcome feedback. My favourite editor is Nick Mulcahy of Business Plus because while other editors would say 'Great stuff' and then edit it, Nick would send my stuff back saying 'It needs fixing' and explaining why.

Minesjackdaniels wrote:

It's just that I don't feel the Irish technology media have a proper space for "recreational" technology - it's mostly business technology. I don't live in Ireland any more, but I can remember how it used to be with Irish Computer, Computerscope, electric news, the technology pages in the Indo and the Times, the mag in the Tribune - and the rest - and how huge amounts of what's published is fed by the PR agencies issuing press releases on provisioning deals worth X-million won by solutions companies.

It's all about advertising and its the big guys who supply the enterprise space that have the big budgets that go to the technology mags. The 'recreational technology' people have budgets but tend to spread it among the mainstream media and mags like PCLive!

Minesjackdaniels wrote:

I feel like boards.ie doesn't get credit for what it is because Irish people don't understand what you can do with the internet, because most of the fun stuff is frankly off limits when you're on 56K dialup.

I think you're right. I think there might be a bigger story here.

David

amp

Moriarty wrote:

Sorry, I may have been telling a slight fib in my last post.


I'm such a little bastard.

I'm fairly sure there's a boards person in that well known pc store. For the life of me I can't remember who. I like it though, it reminds me of Fight Club.

Nice article and I think Majd is being a little unfair given the target audience of the Indo. Most 30 year olds remember the beginings of the internet but it's only todays teenagers that have grown up when the internet was fully established. And while I'm guessing here at demographics I'd say that most teenagers don't buy the indo (or any broadsheet).

There's still a barrier for some people which blocks their access to boards (something that we can sometimes take for granted) and that's the ability to post at all. It requires basic knowledge of how to operate a computer and a browser which, sadly, is not in the mainstream just yet. It's a generational thing.

I wish boards would hurry up and go mainstream as I plan to use it as a springboard to launch my singing, movie and daytime tv careers while I've still got my good looks.

Gordon

Boards' yearly newspaper article eh? Good stuff!

Just want to point out that boards's demographic does not just include the however-many thousand users (many of which will contain lurkers), but there must be a large amount of readers also that are not registered.

Also, boards.ie must have a surprising amount of International users, I think stats have been pulled by ecksor or "God" somewhere detailing the US and UK as the largest non-Ireland viewers.* Would love to see exact stats on this (and to see if there are any other boards.ie viewers in Greece!)

And I'm very glad to see Tom sticking the boot into the libel liability thing. Tom, your "happy" hair seems to be getting grey there, I know how you feel man!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BOARDS!!1234

*figures tainted due to company internet nerdy geeky stuff