Irish Times Article on Boards.ie

Nemesis

Was great to see the interview with Tom about boards.ie in the Irish Times this morning.
Might get a surge of people coming to have a look today!.
Nem

LorenaG

Yup. It all looks very interesting - going to have a good nose round now!

Hobart

Yea. Nice bit of PR Dev.








Now I'm off to flame the Gardening Forum

Wook

any chance to post the article

elexes

ye any chance of somone posting it up r am i going to have to have to buy the bloody thing .

LizardKing

Remove this if it is against copyright ... otherwise heres the article

**********************************************
Boards.ie knows how to get people talking
By Karlin Lillington


Irish online community bulletin board website is proving a popular destination for those who want to sell a car, debate the state of the nation's broadband system or have their say on the pub smoking ban, writes Karlin Lillington

Boards.ie, the online community bulletin board website, has achieved on a shoe-string what several big, venture capital-backed commercial projects have tried and failed to do: create a vibrant and popular online discussion community.

The three-year-old website, where members can hop into discussions on everything from the pub smoking ban to pet care, gardening to computer hardware, philosophy to gay relationships, just reached its one-millionth post - and even its founder, known online only as the gruff and feisty DeVore, isn't sure why.

"We're pretty rude to people sometimes. We run it as, 'if you don't like this, then just feck off'. We call it Big Boys' Rules - people have to be fairly civil and we ban people who aren't. But if people didn't like it, they wouldn't be flocking to the site," he says.

And flock they do. According to DeVore - who in his alter ego is Tom Murphy, a self-proclaimed computer games geek who runs a Dublin Web design company - Boards.ie has around 6,000 active members (membership is free), many of whom have posted well over a thousand posts.

The site is now one of the largest in the State, with more than 2.5 million page reads every month. Members join at a fairly consistent rate of about 25 a day, and participate in more than 300 individual discussion forums. You can buy or sell a computer or a car, get advice on the Linux operating system, debate the state of the nation's broadband internet system, all from your keyboard and screen.

"Each of our boards has its own flavour. Each brings its own culture because of the crowd that goes along with it," says DeVore.

Some 300 people are on the site at any given moment and they log on at times that directly reflect the Irish working day. The first rush comes at around 9 a.m., followed by a surge at 11.30 a.m., presumably as people go on a break.

Lunchtime is busy, and then comes another surge at 3.30 p.m., again at 5.30 p.m. before people head home, and then, at 7 p.m., as the home crowd goes online. There's a "weird peak" at 12.30 a.m., "when all the online gamers stop playing and check the discussion boards before going to bed", says DeVore.

The busiest day of the week? "Tuesday lunchtime," he says, but he doesn't really know why.

In its relatively short life, Boards.ie has been the subject of tirades, gushing praise, bitter fights, and a Trinity College Masters degree. DeVore is the community's "benevolent dictator", who, with a handful of systems administrators - the all-powerful Jedi Knights who dispense summary justice in the Boards.ie universe - oversees the site.

They in turn are supported by their standing army of some 200 forum moderators, who watch the discussion "threads", or conversation topics, to make sure posters remain within reasonable bounds - although as DeVore happily admits, the admins get to decide what is reasonable, and throw people off on a regular basis.

The disgruntled exiles are welcome to post in their own special forum on Boards - called "prison". Very few do, although some vent their spleen and a couple more meekly ask to be reinstated. DeVore has been threatened - including some death threats - by people thrown off Boards.ie, but he says most threats are pretty innocuous, and there are few problems overall.

"For the amount of people we have, we have very little trouble. The door policy is just that you have to be civil. At the same time, we're not a crèche. We let people vent their anger," he says.

The more rambunctious crowds tend to congregate on the political discussions areas, and places like the soccer forum, DeVore notes. "No one has a row or a flamewar on the gardening forum," he says with a grin.

But setting aside the few members that do get overly unruly, the Boards.ie community is all about debate, argument and discussion. DeVore and the admins are passionate about encouraging real discussion.

"As a society, we don't discuss topics anymore. We get fed soundbites by politicians and the media." The closest the Republic has come to a real discussion forum in the past has been, "God love 'em - the Late Late Show," says DeVore.

But Boards.ie has made a difference - as even its fiercest critics have to admit. After the site gave a home to the discussion forum for a tiny new lobby group campaigning for affordable home broadband internet connections called Ireland Offline, the group gained immediate visibility, attracted members, drew thousands to its forum, and now has become a notable lobby group that no broadband stakeholder - from the Government to regulatory agencies to network providers - can afford to ignore.

Boards.ie recently introduced a special "commercial interaction" forum, where companies can have their own discussion boards with Boards.ie members.

At the moment, participants include computer parts and Web-hosting companies that - if tentative at first - quickly found that they could get an enthusiastic market for their offerings by making customer service something highly visible rather than hidden away.

DeVore's latest idea - after visiting the ruins of Pompeii and seeing the debating chambers, in which all members of the ancient community were encouraged to thrash out matters of importance - is to create "a mature debating forum" on Boards.ie, with teams of people prominently associated with the sides of a given public issue. Each side will post and respond several times, with the winner declared by an equally prominent judging panel.

Run as a limited company with a board and shares - but virtually no income outside of what covers - sometimes - its operating costs, Boards grew out of a discussion forum for online gaming aficionados in the Republic.

Its success probably has to do with the fact that it was built from the bottom up, in response to what members wanted, he says, and is run by moderators who do it for the love of it, not for pay. "Boards don't really work on the back of planning things," says deVore.

"Stuff just happens. We don't really want to go tinkering with something that's working."

Karlin Lillington email: karlin@indigo.ie website: www.techno-culture.com weblog: http://weblog.techno-culture.com
****************************************************

Wook

kinda cool article , except who the hell is Devore !?

:cool:

GoneShootin

A nice read, I feel all speshul

p.pete

There's a gardening forum

No seriously, great article and good publicity:)

Cabaal

You who's this devore chap they keep mentioning

irishgeo

great article and its werid about tuesday lunch time being the busiest time of the week.

fisty

could have done with more swearing and blame laying though...

Havelock

The swine stole my "benevolent dictator" line. Other wise thought a really good interview. Nice and concice.

MiCr0

its online here for any one who's looking for it

GoneShootin

Originally posted by Havelock
The swine stole my "benevolent dictator" line.

I think not - HE himself used it back in 1999

DeVore

Aye, I'm afraid I have prior patent on that term

Um, hello to any n00b's and welcome to our humble (or not so frickin humble) abode!
Dont worry, the nausea and dizziness passes with time.

I was happy enough with the article apart from overstressing my role here and understressing the mods and other admins but I guess journalists always want a single face/person and I guess thats my job here hahah...

Gruff and fiesty?! I'm not fiesty! Fiesty is a womans word!!

DeV.

DeVore

On the other hand I *did* nick the phrase "Big Boys Rules" from Merc_Tilt (afair!)... from one of his journals... (cheers Merc!)

DeV.

Lukin Black

Way to go Boards!

Great to hear about some positivity regarding the web in the media instead of virus, chat room lurkers etc.

BuffyBot

Originally posted by DeVore
Fiesty is a womans word!!

Oh, such fight from a wee lass

damnyanks

Pffft Boards :rolleyes:

What sorta nob is gonna post over 1,000 posts here ?

Losers

damnyanks

P.S


Nothing was said about the subscribers package!

Mercury_Tilt

This post has been deleted.

Chaos-Engine

was reading the times in work and i say this HUGE picture of Tom.... lol
Nice 1
Good article all round. But only 3 years old. I thought that it was older(5?)

WhiteWashMan

hmm, i would have expected my name to pop us one of the trusted and most handsome members of boards.ie

fisty

pretty boys get all the boys.

Barry Aldwell

Last time I checked 2003-1998=5 years

ecksor

Boards in it's current form is just over 3 years old. The boards it descended from (cloud boards) started in early 1998 I think.

doctor evil

I thought DeVore was a woman :eek: shame on me

Silvera

Well done DeVore and Boards.ie

....or is that one-and-the-same ?

anyway, thumbs up all round !!!

Silvera

Well done DeVore and Boards.ie

....or is that one-and-the-same ?

anyway, thumbs up all round !!!



Silvera.

Barry Aldwell

Originally posted by doctor evil
I thought DeVore was a woman :eek: shame on me

No, Devore isn't a woman. We're not sure about Amp, though.

mike65

Originally posted by LizardKing

Boards.ie knows how to get people talking
By Karlin Lillington

....although some vent their spleen and a couple more meekly ask to be reinstated. DeVore has been threatened - including some death threats - by people thrown off Boards.ie, but he says most threats are pretty innocuous, and there are few problems overall.

Stormfront...? :ninja: Or someone from NUI Galway!

Mike.

BKtje

/me starts a 3 cheers for Boards, DeVore (nice house/flat btw) and all the other admins/owners (like cloud, ecksor etc).

Hip hip hurray
For this is a bloody good site for this is a bloody good site for this is a bloody good SITEEEEEEEE.....

AND SO SAY ALL OF US

Funky

woooooooooooooh good job!

simu

That was a cool article, kinda weird when "online life" meets "real world life" though!

weemcd

boards saves me from being bored! hurrah

spooky donkey

ah sure who reads the times anyway!

I heard some raido station recomend boards.ie a while back as well its geting some good publicity.

Boards will grow it seems, not a bad thing really!

Winters

Originally posted by Barry Aldwell
We're not sure about Amp, though.

We just dont go there.

Have the article, good one i have to say. Habe it now at home, framed on my wall with a shrine around it

/me leads the Boardsies Cheerleaders out for another round of drinks.

weemcd

were all kinda famous!!!

DeVore

Boards is actually 3 years old in its current state. It started life as a mailing list on IOL, then moved to the Quake.ie site (in 1998) and thence to Clouds desk in NUIG and then on to its own server in America.

Eventually we brought it back to Ireland and with the aid of the community have bought our own hardware and are located in Hosting365...

We have been operating as "www.boards.ie" for 3 years and thats the real start date. However since we had a few hundred users from before we gave them all start dates of 1998 so that they wouldnt complain

DeV.

Victor

Originally posted by DeVore
started life as a mailing list on IOL

Which one, Quake?

Crash

heh, yeah, boards is fscking famous!

even saw it advertised on the big screen at slane loike

GuanYin

Originally posted by simu
That was a cool article, kinda weird when "online life" meets "real world life" though!

You don't wanna go to a Boards Beers then.....

TacT

You'll find Dadakopf does not exist IRL
Nice article but seriously, what sort of losers find enough time to get over 1,000 posts :eek:

pld team boards.ie :cool:

Ruaidhri

The site is now one of the largest in the State, with more than 2.5 million page reads every month. Members join at a fairly consistent rate of about 25 a day, and participate in more than 300 individual discussion forums.

Jebus! i never actually realised that boards so was damn big!
well i suppose a congrats is in order!

ecksor

Boards is bigger than jesus.com !!

po0k

Originally posted by crash_000
even saw it advertised on the big screen at slane loike

Who was the smart-ass stage-hand who h4x0r3d that one up?

Originally posted by mike65
Or someone from NUI Galway!

I deny any and all accusations.
That is not my saliva affixing those 41c stamps to the "Waco" postcards.
DeV is not the focus of ritual effigy burnings.
All is well. Go back to bed.

BuffyBot

Originally posted by ecksor
Boards is bigger than jesus.com !!

Famous last words, famous last words

Cloud

Actually the IOL games mailing list was still going strong at the same time as the initial WWWBoard started on IGN's quake.ie (since the IGN and IOL were effectively running rival Quake servers), and though it may have died out as a result of the eventual popularity of that board, I'd put the origins of boards.ie to that first IGN WWWBoard (1998), then on to Cloud Boards (1999), and eventually boards.ie (2000). The first WWWBoard post I made seems to have disappeared, but it all started around 14 February 1998.

DeV's first post - "Hmm I like this WWWBoard thingie " - prophetic!

/me clears up history yet again!

Thanks,

John.
--

Panda

good to see some recognition for this wunderba site!
Ye should write yer memoirs quick while the fire is stoked!
kaa*ching*

......maybe not.....
heres to many more years of the same!

What kind of jump in new users has there been since the article was in the paper?

elexes

i rember that mailing list ... broke just b4 i went to spain in 2nd year and sent out 476 e-mails ... up at 4am deleating all of them connected at 9600bps .. that was annoying .. but its good to see boards.ie on a national newspaper . when will u be on sky news doing that teck section dev ?

i did expect to see the subscribers package mentioned also .