Site is a graveyard - How can boards save itself? [Threadbanned users in 1st post]

What age are the Moderators?

I’m no expert but I suspect moderation relates to legal exposure.

It may be handy to assume that everyone can say anything they want at any stage without consequence, but I suspect the site is always exposed to the threat of legal action.

In the circumstances, it’s perhaps understandable that the unpaid moderators will err on the side of caution from time to time.

It's the age demographic. No new blood. The younger generations aren't going to be hanging out on boards.ie

It's going like the Catholic church; fazing out.

They should allow the moderators to marry. 😛

That's it exactly, have never talked about boards.ie with anyone younger than myself that has heard of it and I'm 30.

"Slowed a bit" is an understatement. There was a time when you could ask a question on any topic and you'd have a reply in minutes, After Hours front page was ever changing with new posts every few seconds. These days it's tumbleweed in most forums.

The site is gone to the dogs because of heavy handed modding. Its that simple. Ive a lifetime ban from the football forum ffs 🤣. The football mods are like the SS.

Also we're not allowed to discuss the most relevant topics of the day due to draconian site rules. Id agree its on its last legs. They only have themselves to blame.

Donaldson charged in NI. Reddit and social media blowing up. Yet a certain mod wants us to pretend the charges dont exist. Thats just one of many examples.

They really need to look at the laws around defamation and libel and educate themselves.

Boards is dead and buried. But in three days time it will rise again and appear to many.

Inconsistency and unfairness by moderators in who, if, when and how they apply sanctions, or not, as the mood suits them, would be my main criticism.

Also when there is a problem with a mod, the Cmods and Admins will usually circle the wagons, rather than overturn an unfair action by a mod.

(I'll probably get a warning for this).

I think that's pretty much it. How many people under the age of 25 are on the site? It's as clear as day if you look at a thread on Reddit and if there's an equivalent thread here that the demographics of the posters are totally different. The bottom line is that user base is aging out and there's no new blood taking their place. A lot of people would take one look at the craic in CA and run a mile.

People have been taking umbrage with the moderation on boards since the year dot. IMO boards seems to less moderated now than ever before. Certain fora like television and radio seem relatively lawless now compared to how they used to be. And other sub-forums where the moderation was always traditionally light touch are similarly dying on their arse. This shows to me the complete fallacy of blaming the slowdown of the site on moderation.

Boards is still lively enough for what it is, but the days of being able to spend hours on AH are a thing of the past. But are there many other big forums out there that are still booming in this day and age - there can't be many. There were other forums on the internet I would have frequented back in the day and the majority of them are currently alive in name only. Next to them boards is in rude heath.

I don't know if anything can be "done" as such. Times have changed and boards is a bit old fashioned. Everyone I know uses Reddit - I never hear boards mentioned in conversation, aside from people occasionally talking about how they used to post on it.

I'm a former Admin, Category Mod and Mod on this site. People have been complaining about Mods, since the day I joined this site. Some mods are excellent, some are good, some not so much and some are sh*t.

Admins do take note of such things and in my time as an Admin and before my time, some mods were demodded. Irish law is not kind to site owners in the way US law is, so Reddit will always allow stronger opinions and commentary than Boards can. As such, some mods need to be a bit more heavy handed on some threads. They're human, they sometimes get things wrong but Boards would have been dead from lawsuits at the height of its fame if it weren't for the mods. Most mods on this site really are excellent though and they do sometimes receive a lot of abuse.

As for recommendations, I once had to siteban two accounts because one was a shill for a weight loss clinic and the other was his second, sockpuppet account. He used both accounts to hold conversations with each other about the supposedly great experience one of the accounts had when using the weight loss clinic. Hundreds of posters were invested in this thread and these seemingly genuine experiences. That was really unfair to people looking for genuine recommendations.

boards was class pre Vanilla.. the changeover was a bullet.. slowly dying..

Only a matter of time before the thread is shut down after being moved here.

It's just the format and how people use the internet that is killing boards. There's no way of preserving it long term just prolonging the decline. People, including myself, are getting more and more used to either a 10 minute video on Youtube vs watching a movie, then it's watching a 30 sec TikTok vs a 10 minute Youtube video. The attention span and willingness to put in effort online is just getting less and less.

The tech fora are prime examples of that.

Once upon you could ask the most niche question and a detailed answer would appear in minutes

That's the thing - old school message boards are just way superior for actual discussion. The format lends itself to linear and ongoing discussion.

The likes of Reddit, as busy and all as it is, are painful to use and experience for that kind of thing. You'd never scroll through a Reddit thread in its entirety to see what people are saying - well I wouldn't any way. It just becomes a disjointed collection of random opinions.

It does lend itself to the constant repetition you'll see on Reddit. Threads start, they blow up for a while, die away, someone else starts a thread on the same subject shortly afterwards and the cycle repeats itself. There's no "memory" There's threads here that have ran for years and, at their best, are repositorys for poster's knowledge and advice etc that's built up over time. Reddit doesn't have this kind of archive. It's absolutely one thing going for it that boards has that Reddit doesn't.

Fully agree with the downvoting phenomenon turning things into an echo chamber. But, on the other hand, the equal prominence given to every post on a message board thread can often mean that the most overbearing and/or witless are given more oxygen than is due. Double edged sword I guess.

12

Why were you a chicken before?

Internet forums have suffered since social media took off.

Plus a lot of the demographic that was active in the first decade are mostly settled down now with kids taking up all their free time.