Its time to address the "there are too many boards" waaah.

DeVore

Ok, I've just ignored this before but now I've formulated an answer and a resolution to it.

1. Boards.ie changes all the time. Thats why its interesting.

2. Ever since we had just the one board people have objected to growth. So, when we had 5 boards if people then had said "right, thats enough" then most of you wouldnt be reading this.

3. Many of the new people are "muppets" but more and more of them are dead sound people. I've made a lot of mates through Boards and a lot of them joined in the last two years.

4. Ok, this is my main point.
Why does it bother you?

I mean, ok, now there are regional boards. Thats a lot of new boards. That means lots of new posts. Lots of new mods and a space on the top navigation. But so what?

I mean do you think there are too many websites on the internet as well?

Yes boards.ie has "lost" that "close family" feeling a little because there are now more then a few hundred of us and maybe thats good and maybe its bad but I honestly think that if we stayed the same size, we'd just wither and die.

Besides, thats not what we have planned (a plan I've outlined time and again... to make a community that is self-sustaining and still growing).

I understand that information overload is a problem. So we created the "Subscribed Forums" software. This way you can pretend that those other new boards dont exist if you want to!

Change is inevitable and in my opinion welcome. 4 years ago boards was a bunch of mates who played online games. Now its a BIG load of people some of whom are mates and some are unknown to each other. 4 years from now I dont know what it will be but Yahoo was started as one guys list of favourites


DeV.

RopeDrink

Look Dev - I've been nit picking the idea of "Severe" growth for some time now (You may have noticed) but at the end of the day I have to live with the fact that this is NOT my website, and I have no control over how it decides to live.

Fair enough, I can bleat and moan and rant and get all ****ish, but I still accept that whatever happens, it isn't due to what I or anyone else says (Although I/we HOPE that our feedback gets noted and considered) and whatever the **** happens you can be DAMN sure that I, and the other people I too have gotten to know over my two years here, will more than likely stick by Boards regardless.

I don't like the "Severe" growth, i.e too many boards ala football clubs (The latest), Counties and languages etc etc yet like you said, this place would have been long gone if ye hadn't grown a little, and if the place didn't have the presence of muppets etc etc etc

I am not happy with quite a lot of things on Boards, but then again I don't remember many people stating it was perfect and everyones still here.

Remember that.

Shinji

Okay, fair points Dev, BUT:


While I know you've been nurturing the Devore The Happy Hippy image of late, is this really the same guy who recently held forth on the topic of "muppets: what's to be done"?

The organic, peace-man method of growth is a nice idea and all, but when you've got thousands of people chatting with and flaming at each other on a board system, don't the horrible words "community management" loom large somewhere through the ganja smoke, penetrating even the small purple john lennon sunglasses?

I think the issue, fundamentally, isn't that we have too many people; it's that the ratio of boards: posts: posters sometimes goes a long way out of whack. Look at the County boards for what I'm talking about - 32 boards without enough traffic to make up a single board between them. Sometimes boards are spun off before there's any demand for them; sometimes boards aren't formed despite repeated requests (example being the recent fuzzy "uuh thats a bit adult maaan" response to the gay community board request), and sometimes boards like Films/TV have their cup overflowething (I know it's not a word) for ages before anything happens and they're divided.

I'm not sure some kind of overall policy on how boards are created, closed, split and merged is the answer; but I don't think a "hey it'll be cool man" is necessarily the correct response either! The answer, as ever, lies somewhere in the middle...

Still, at least this thread proves that you're mellowing with age. I can quite categorically state that any post from Tom Murphy as little as 12 months ago starting with the words "It's time to address..." would NOT have boiled down to "hey chill out dudes, it'll be cool"

DeVore

Sometimes I shout and sometimes I muse....

Ok, Shinji (and others) heres the question though...

You say "32 boards without traffic to fill 1!" <paraphased>
But... so what... what skin is it off your behind if there are 32 unused boards... we'll clean them up and mark it down to experience if it doesnt work.
If it does work... then yay! \o/

btw, I've always been of the opinion "just chill man it'll be cool" its just that I get very Very VERY angry when people wreck my (or someone elses) buzz. Dood.

DeV.

ps: I dont inhale. Ever.

Lump

I'm with Dev on this one, so what if there is 200000 boards, no-one is asking you to read them all, only the ones you are interested in. Like I'm not going to be reading any regional boards other then Kilkenny and Dublin, or maybe if I'm going to travel somewehre I might post to them, as for the other boards, I just skip over ones I have no interest in. I say if having all these boards isn't killing the server, then keep them open, the more areas boards.ie open the doors to, then the more members there will be, and the larger the community will grow. Fair enough this will be partially muppet based, buy muppets normally get bored and cop on. and if not they are dealt with.



My 2 C anyway.


John

Kix

I'm not one of those complaining but I do feel that the huge number of boards these days means that you inevitably miss a lot of stuff thats going on. When I joined I don't remember feeling so "lost in the crowd".

Anyhow, not a complaint. Things change and if that's what has to happen, that's what has to happen. I just prefered a bit it before.

K

Cloud

I think you'll find that I said it should be survival of the fittest when I added the regional boards, and merge the rest.

I fully agree with the "too many" boards issue, the first board to be recycled is Smallville -> Sci-Fi / Fantasy.

Next up is Open Web Talk -> Webmaster.

Any more suggestions on boards to be done away with, post here.

Venom

I agree with Kix in thats its not the new fourm's that Iv a problem with but more the amount of time it now takes to track down the various new post's in area's that interest me.

The whole TV/Film and SFI/Fantasy are a pain to keep track of and thing's just seem to be getting to confusing and out of hand.

Hobbes

I think we should set up a board to discuss this.

Can I be mod?

DeVore

Venom, have you subscribed to the forums you are interested in?

If so there is a list of them under the "Boards.ie" drop down menu and you can see the last ten posts in the alternate front page (link on top of the Last Ten posts).

If this is the case, sure then keeping track of the posts you are interested in is no harder then before? in fact it should be easier...

Anyway, hopefully we'll be doing a bit more work on this area too.

DeV.

Kraken

new boards have been created but so have ways in which you can keep track of forums that interest you. I point you to the top left part of the menu the boards.ie link, and to the bottom of foums the subscribe to this forum link. I have a fairly wide interest i look at lots of the boards but i have lessened the ones i look at to a few. Ill check virgin posts etc.

Put it this way the more forums the easier it is to attract people to the site and thats probably the aim of them anyway. I think some people need to think outside their own little box for a change, if you dont like all the forums then dont look at them all.

may or may not make sence to anyone but me but i thought it sounded good at the time.

GreenHell

Ummm, couldn't you just give a new boards like a month or so to try and get off its feet and if it doesn't re merge it?

STaN

I used to run a gaming board a while back, it was nothing big but we had about 40-50 posters.

There were 10 or so boards at the time but overtime the whole thing felt too stretched so the whole merging thing happened. Similar boards with relatable themes were merged.

It worked well, i only closed them recently and had twice the post count i have now <offtopic>and so thats why ive been more active on the boards.</offtopic>

You may want to consider some of these mergers & moves:

-College Work & College Play > College Life
-All the languages boards > Languages*
-Soldat & Battletech & Webgames & OPflash > Web Games
-Adding a subcategory in technology
--Programming
---Programming
---PHP
-Adding a subcategory in Society
--Culture
---Irish Pubs
---Languages*

Possibly Axing the following:
-Couriers
-Bubbles (or renaming it to 'Get it of your chest' or something spammy like that)

This is how i see it but im not DeVore. And its also not ment to be seen as an attack on the mods of those boards, but i do think that it would slimline the boards and add a little more balace between douzens of boards but only a handful of readers.... Sure the exisiting mods can all co-mod any mergers so u can still have yer star :eek:

Btw... id like to ADD COMMUNITY: Battlefield
Public: Yes
Where?: Games
Why?: There is only a demo and 10000+ people are playing it all the time, it really is going to be a huge multiplayer community!
Website: www.battlefield1942.com

WhiteWashMan

thomas, check your pm's please my good man

amp

I like how big boards is. It helps create all sorts of different sub-communities. Also it means you can explore and find lost treasures and get into adventures and sail the seven seas and arrrr there be LAND HO!!

Ahem, well that's just my pieces of eight anyway.

Trojan

I don't really care tbh.

Actually, better idea - I think all user accounts created after 1998 should be banned and we all go back to posting on the quake board (is it still the biggest?).

Al.

leeroybrown

I think the fact that Boards has so many forums is great. So what if theres four million nine hundred and fifty three thousand two hundred and four different forums I don't have time to read. I'm not worried about.

Maybe the sheer volume of forums is moving the focus of the posting from the 4/5 main boards but that'll recover in no time at all. The number of interests catered for is what makes Boards so interesting to new members. They can post about some wierd TV program they like or their favourite PC game without seeming out of their depth.

Boards has already reached critical mass where the number of members is sufficient to stop it from ever dieing. All it needs to do now is make the next step.