Is TCD Boards cliquey?

Pugwash

Well?

I've talked to a few people who are aware about the site but are realy put off by the fact that the same crowd repetitively post and form the dominant volume of activity.

Any takers?

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI

Yes, very cliquey. Defo. Though I'm sure some would try and deny it.

Time Magazine

Far less so than the Phil .

Well it's more friendly than cliquey. If you're really shit at talking/living you'll be made fun of in a fight to death of nerdiness. But if you're reasonable enough you'll get on grand. Like look at hils and shay_562, they both get on grand and they're relatively newbies. Ditto europerson.

Ah we're grand really. I suppose we talk about who didn't shag who at the Trinity Ball (this is the internet, it's usually who didn't shag who) a bit more than we should, but you can pick it up.




Basicaly Hils and Ronan didn't get it on .

John

Yes it's cliquey but it's hardly our fault if no one else can make that huge manly step to actually post a message. The instrument's forum is just as cliquey but you still get new blood a lot of the time.

Crash

Its cliquey yes - why? because the people who post here atm are by and large the same people who started out the forum? is it cliquey? yes. Is it friendly? yes. a clique does not necessarily mean exclusion - a number of new posters here who are not stupid and are reasonably sound have become regular users of the forum and quite happily. If those people find it cliquey, i think you should tell them to post here, and see how they find it - to be honest I have little interest in moderating this forum as strict as other college forums as i think it would kill it completely, and remove all the fun from it. its a college forum after all and the only way to clear a clique would be to do that.

Pet

It's certainly not cliquey to the point of exclusion. Unless some utter sap comes on and types like a 14 year old girl, we're pretty welcoming to new arrivals.

Awayindahils

Angry Banana wrote:

Basicaly Hils and Ronan didn't get it on .

I am going to hurt you.


as for cliquey, it is insanely cliquey. i was already on boards when i started to post here and for the first month or so most of the old people are stand offish. infact, i'm involved in one of the cliquest societies in college as is shay_525, and i would say that this is worse, far worse. also as a result fo boards beers, people get to know each other in person, and as such a group of friends builds up the centre of the forum. this is a very small forum. its not like after hours where eveeryone posts, infact its like any other society or club in college, a group of friends ensure that it keeps going.

but this does has some negative side effects, and yes it does appear very insular and it shouldn't. But tell the people to persit, it pays off.


*disclaimer...no one actually saw enda girlfriend at the trinity ball

Nietzschean

Awayindahils wrote:

I am going to hurt you.

Nawww shot down?


its cliquey or whatever cause most of the conversations that go on around here are somewhat related to what we know about each other in real life.......

Running Bing

Is it cliquey? fock yeah. Its like on of those inbred hillbilly towns you see in the movies. One particlualr example I can think of is a few months ago when someone posted asking about healthy food. The topic escalated into a debate about the best kebab in dublin:D The person posted voicing there distress at the situation and they got a barrage of insults and telling offs. I think a lot of people are put off by the fact that many threads veer off topic like this onto things most people dont have a clue about.

wheresthebeef

everything is a clique to people who aren't involved in it.
The Irish Blood Transfusion Service is cliquey to me - stupid UK residence.

Ilac

Yeah, exactly, every group is a clique when you're outside it...
I wonder what an unclique forum would be like... It would probably have to be Day 1 of the forum and everyone would have to be strangers...

Nietzschean

day 1 on here was alot like that

John

Everyone complaining about this forum being a clique shut up and leave!

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI

No ;_;

shay_562

shay_525

-_- If you were still in the country I'd threaten you, but as it is it seems kinda redundant.

Topic: Yeah, it's totally cliquey here. My second post here was answered with two rants, a moderator bitchslap and a topic-locking. If you're in any way sensitive, the barrage of insults and in-jokes will turn you away. Of course, the leads to a situation where our only posters are the people who give and recieve random insults, which leads to a clique-ier atmostphere. Hmm.

Crash

CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE CLIQUE.




clique.

DrIndy

click

fookchooknooris

clinique

Pet

shay_562 wrote:

-_- If you were still in the country I'd threaten you, but as it is it seems kinda redundant.

Topic: Yeah, it's totally cliquey here. My second post here was answered with two rants, a moderator bitchslap and a topic-locking. If you're in any way sensitive, the barrage of insults and in-jokes will turn you away. Of course, the leads to a situation where our only posters are the people who give and recieve random insults, which leads to a clique-ier atmostphere. Hmm.

I like the barrage of insults though, it's rather amusing.

Edit: 3000th post. Yikes, that's a lot.

Second edit: shay543, from looking through your posts (and don't mind that I do), it seems that you were given quite a harsh (and fairly undeserved) induction for being a fresher, and a BESS fresher at that. (thread can be viewed here, and by the way, fade (who even KEVIN hated) was completely in the wrong there, seeing as it was awayindahils who started the thread, but whatever).

This baptism of fire may scare people away, but it also protects us from invading hordes of text-speaking, dube-wearing saps who'd clog up the board with hackish talk and what they're going to wear to college tomorrow. In between all the chit-chat, there's a ****load of useful information, a lot of which has been collated into a sticky at the top of the forum for anyone who needs it. And I've learned more about college (and its strange inner workings and traditions) by reading threads here than I have from any booklet or SU campaign (not that I'm an SU-hater, and please let's not go down THAT road again..).

****, how many times did I edit this post? Must have been about 10. Goddamn geology.

Nietzschean

fade is a sound bloke.....and emm, Shay was the one way off base in that thread, very poor example. Himself and Ed were slagging each other in what was a humours exchange. Shay poked his nose in giving abuse to Fade so got what was coming imo. a first post giving abuse to other posters is hardly normal....

Shay wrote:

See? If I'd let the thread die then we wouldn't have had this riveting exchange of infantile jokes (see, he spelled out "gay" with letters....geddit?), and I for one would feel cheated. Incidentally, fade, you're aware that you're in the TCD section of the boards, right? Just checking.

If its Cliquey to give someone abuse for making that as their first post then i'm happy the place is such tbh.

...and actually funnyily enough, you can't really call that cliquey, considering at the time fade/ed were new too....

Running Bing

Pet wrote:

In between all the chit-chat, there's a ****load of useful information..... And I've learned more about college (and its strange inner workings and traditions) by reading threads here than I have from any booklet or SU campaign (not that I'm an SU-hater, and please let's not go down THAT road again..).

Hit the nail on the head there pet. It really is a very informative and useful forum even if half the time I dont know what the **** you guys are on about:D

Ill also add that ive never asked a question here that hasnt been answered, and I think wether new or not its pretty much the same for everyone.

Black_Couch

Has already been said, but yes TCD boards is Cliquey because the most regular users know each other in person.

John

But most of us wouldn't know each other if it wasn't for boards. Out of all the users here I knew two people (Roro and Kevin) but got to know many people (some of whom I recognised from around campus like Joe and Dec). It's not like we were all huddling in a bunch smoking behind the bike shed and decided to take over here.

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI

Yes, but there does seem that impression, that there is a TCD Boards 'party-line', and if you dare to express an opinion that doesn't follow it, you're opening yourself up to a **** load of wrath...i.e. you have to make a decision, do I want to be 'accepted' by the 'clique' or do I want to express my actual opinions...

Nietzschean

haha, people off here i knew before boards? of the regular posters, only Dónal i'd say...

Nietzschean

no one is stopping anyone from expressing their opinions, though obviously enough if they differ from others they might question them...I argue with more or less everyone on here, i'm not sure how that fits with your theory like...

Pet

I also got to know lots of people in real life through here too. It's not like we're random internet weirdos, we've all met each other at some stage and get along just as well in person (well, mostly).

Yes, but there does seem that impression, that there is a TCD Boards 'party-line', and if you dare to express an opinion that doesn't follow it, you're opening yourself up to a **** load of wrath...i.e. you have to make a decision, do I want to be 'accepted' by the 'clique' or do I want to express my actual opinions...

Express your opinions, and, once they're not completely asinine or unfounded, you'll gain "acceptance". Although really, it won't make much difference, everyone takes the piss out of everyone here.

fookchooknooris

Truth be told there are few people I met via boards.ie i'd rather have never known existed.

cuckoo

John2 wrote:

It's not like we were all huddling in a bunch smoking behind the bike shed and decided to take over here.

That was the inner clique that had that meeting.

Yeah, there's clique-y aspects to this board, but this is the big wide internet. This isn't funded from the registration fee, this isn't a Be Nice, There For You SU effort, this isn't a religious organisation, and that isn't the personal issues board. It's like a group of ppl sitting around a table in the pub talking nonsence, tcd related nonsense most of the time. There's always space at the table for more chairs to be pulled up and new ppl to join in, but if people come over and spit in our drinks we're not exactly going to roll out a red carpet.

That said, if someone new does start posting here they will be greeted with Agent Smith's insisting 'post in the who's who, damit', so there is an initiation of sorts.

There is one aspect of the board clique that i'd like to see stopped, that's the casual habit we have of referring to regular posters by their given names rather than their boards' handle. That can be very confusing for someone who hasn't been around here for a while - honourable exception being John2, as it's pretty obvious who he be when referred to as John.

fookchooknooris

i say all new people that post be forced to changed their usernames to either their first names followed by a digit or a bird.

I'd be Kevin7 or Pelican.

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI

Indeed, nothing wrong with calling people by their real names

Internet names are all rather silly tbh

fookchooknooris

I dub thee Mark4 or Raven

John

What would my bird be? (apart from Tara)

Pet

Hopefully not a pigeon. God I hate pigeons.

europerson

Can I get special dispensation and be a mammal such as an alpaca?

John

No, I reckon you're a Black Cap or an Arctic Tern

arbeitsscheuer

I reckon this place is a helluva lot less cliquey than some ppl think.

It's certainly less cliquey than the UCD boards, but that's all I'll say on the matter... And there are some with UCD forum connections *ahem* who would probably agree wit me on that score...

shay_562

I like the barrage of insults though, it's rather amusing.

True, but only from the inside; from the outside, it can be more than a little intimidating.

In between all the chit-chat, there's a ****load of useful information, a lot of which has been collated into a sticky at the top of the forum for anyone who needs it. And I've learned more about college (and its strange inner workings and traditions) by reading threads here than I have from any booklet or SU campaign (not that I'm an SU-hater, and please let's not go down THAT road again..).

Same here - one of my favourite things about boards is the random nuggets of tcd trivia you can pick up from it.

Shay poked his nose in giving abuse to Fade so got what was coming imo. a first post giving abuse to other posters is hardly normal....

In my defense, 1) it wasn't my first post, and 2) he was being a **** far earlier than I was, slagging the original poster, insulting the society, and being plain stupid - I think my favourite part of the rant that followed was that he didn't even seem to notice why exactly I was slagging him; saying "I don't attend anything that feels the need to use an acronym to describe itself" on the T. C. D. boards strikes me as being stupid. Of course, that thread is a prime example of why boards can be intimidating. Fade launches a wildly inaccurate and personal attack on a new poster and is promptly congratulated by the mods, simply on the basis that they know him better (in real life, I'm presuming, since he's hardly a regular here).

Topic: I might be disagreeing with the party line here (we have one of those? How come no one told me?), but I think the clique-ishness is a) a bit too heavy at times, and b) is generally speaking A Bad Thing. I'm not saying that it doesn't happen on every internet board, or that there isn't some merit or logic behind it in a "keep trolls and ****wits away" sense, but given that a signifigant number seem to be either kept at a distance or avoiding boards altogether, statistically speaking we're losing some number of decent posters there simply because not everyone likes getting personal abuse over the internet on a nightly basis.

fookchooknooris

john2 penguin for sure (humboldt)

John

fookchooknooris wrote:

john2 penguin for sure (humboldt)

I like!

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI

Always thought him more of an Adele...

John

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI wrote:

Always thought him more of an Adele...

Tough call between the two.

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

cuckoo wrote:

There is one aspect of the board clique that i'd like to see stopped, that's the casual habit we have of referring to regular posters by their given names rather than their boards' handle.

or to make matters more opaque, Myth referring to me as 'Bob', my old SU-board name handle...

Andrew 83

cuckoo wrote:

honourable exception being John2, as it's pretty obvious who he be when referred to as John.

So it's confusing when I'm called Andrew is it?

I think the boards are grand enough. I know a reasonable number of the people here (ok quite a number) but by no means everyone. It's only natural that people will get to know each other a bit off the boards and seeing as it's set in college with everyone daily being in the same place, it's again only natural that there'll be meet ups for drink etc now and again. It's far from as weird as randomers who've never met each other just constantly doing it.

I'd say if anyone posts a few times and doesn't get bored and forget about the place, there's nothing stopping them from getting involved.

Nietzschean

cuckoo wrote:

There is one aspect of the board clique that i'd like to see stopped, that's the casual habit we have of referring to regular posters by their given names rather than their boards' handle. That can be very confusing for someone who hasn't been around here for a while - honourable exception being John2, as it's pretty obvious who he be when referred to as John.

Meh people's real names tend to be easier to spell, and shorter too e.g.
Susan/Cuckoo(don't ask me why but i can never spell cuckoo on the first attempt..)
Crash000/Neil
Awayindasomethingorother/Hilary
fookchucknorris/kev
Nietzschean,SkyLynx,Triceradon,etc../Ian
John2/John
Andrew83/Andrew
blankcanvas,sleepingbeauty...etc...
Agent_Smith/Joe
etc...

Seeing a trend?(Pet < shorter than ronan so i still call him pet...)

and any n00b can go check the who's who thread to reference a name if they really need to......

Edwardius

shay_562 wrote:

In my defense, 1) it wasn't my first post, and 2) he was being a **** far earlier than I was, slagging the original poster, insulting the society, and being plain stupid - I think my favourite part of the rant that followed was that he didn't even seem to notice why exactly I was slagging him; saying "I don't attend anything that feels the need to use an acronym to describe itself" on the T. C. D. boards strikes me as being stupid. Of course, that thread is a prime example of why boards can be intimidating. Fade launches a wildly inaccurate and personal attack on a new poster and is promptly congratulated by the mods, simply on the basis that they know him better (in real life, I'm presuming, since he's hardly a regular here).

Topic: I might be disagreeing with the party line here (we have one of those? How come no one told me?), but I think the clique-ishness is a) a bit too heavy at times, and b) is generally speaking A Bad Thing. I'm not saying that it doesn't happen on every internet board, or that there isn't some merit or logic behind it in a "keep trolls and ****wits away" sense, but given that a signifigant number seem to be either kept at a distance or avoiding boards altogether, statistically speaking we're losing some number of decent posters there simply because not everyone likes getting personal abuse over the internet on a nightly basis.

Odd you should even remotely remember such a thing. "Fade" hasn't been on since before christmas. You can talk to him on wednesday afternoon if you like, we're finished exams then. I'm sure he'll only be too pleased to apologise to you profusely. Especially since we'll all be wired on the buckfast. The bottom line is that abuse is funny.

Jonny Arson

SebtheBum wrote:

I reckon this place is a helluva lot less cliquey than some ppl think.

It's certainly less cliquey than the UCD boards, but that's all I'll say on the matter... And there are some with UCD forum connections *ahem* who would probably agree wit me on that score...

I would say the UCD forum is a little cliquey with certain posters but overall it's a very friendly forum. Newbies aren't ignored and are usually treated the same as somebody with 2,000 posts. Yeah I'll admit there are a few people who just quote and reply to the same people all the time with ''OMFZG you r so funneh LOLOL!1!'', it's annoying but they're a minority. I'd actually prefer that lark to a forum where regular posters ignore or/and are generally obnoxious to new posters.

I personally think the TCD forum is great forum too despite my lack of posts on it (I read here occasionally) I do think it appears more more cliquey solely on the basis of a less amount of regular posters and naturally they'll know each other better online and in person.... however I haven't seen anything to suggest that people are overly cliquey with each other and ''exclude'' other posters

Crash

/me deletes Zanes post


what, he's not in the clique...

shay_562

Odd you should even remotely remember such a thing.

I was talking about it with Hils just last week, we were talking about the sudden increase in JF Bess people recently, and how boards can occasionally be just a little tough to break into. Believe me, it hasn't been eating away at me, and I wouldn't want or expect an apology - I've both given and recieved worse abuse over the net. I'm sure fade's lovely in real life and whatnot.

Topic: ...eh, I got nothing. Topics are fun, I'm sure.