Boards providing stories for Sunday Times

Dundalk Daily

I see a story in the Sunday Times today about porn/sex .ie domains. If Im not mistaking that very issue was discussed in deatil here on boards somewhere. Now journalist Enda Leahy would hardly be snooping around here looking for stories would he.

Article here

Rabies

The guy that owns the sites is a boards.ie member.

When the Dublin riots happened last year, some of the photoshop jobs on boards appeared in the tabloids.

Boards.ie is well know within media circles, I'm sure there are a few journalists here, Topgold would be one I know of. He is a lecturer and writes tech stuff for a broadsheet.

Nevyn

It was discussed here but it was also covered on Slash dot with a link to the sex.ie site.

Jip

And I also think it was covered by The Register before it was mentioned on this site.

monument

Whatever about Photoshop images, while you can copyright full works of text, you can’t really own or copyright ‘the story’.

Metro using a photo from an Irish blogger and flickr user is one of the few clearcut cases recently. And the outcome was in the end positive...

http://www.blurredkeys.com/2006/10/metro_irelands_.html
http://www.blurredkeys.com/2006/10/metro_duckgate_.html

Mad Finn

monument wrote:

Whatever about Photoshop images, while you can copyright full works of text, you can’t really own or copyright ‘the story’.

Ain't no copyright in news. There's typographical copyright;ie you can't use exactly the same words and word order used elsewhere to describe a story, but you can retell the main facts again in your own words risk free. As long as you're sure they are facts.

To cover your ass it's best to cite your sources (where appropriate) as well. eg 'Saw it on the internet...' is lacking a little in credibility. 'Saw it on boards.ie..' at least gives the reader to visit the site and judge for themselves how trustworthy it is likely to be.

monument

Mad Finn wrote:

There's typographical copyright;ie you can't use exactly the same words and word order used elsewhere to describe a story,

As I said, "while you can copyright full works of text".

Mad Finn wrote:

but you can retell the main facts again in your own words risk free. As long as you're sure they are facts.

As I said, "you can’t really own or copyright ‘the story’".

Dave!

I think it's a good thing, cos boards gives a good overview of the thoughts going through Irish people's heads. If politicians for example would read some of the threads on boards, then maybe they'd get a better understanding of public opinion.

lostexpectation

Rabies wrote:

The guy that owns the sites is a boards.ie member.

When the Dublin riots happened last year, some of the photoshop jobs on boards appeared in the tabloids.

those photoshoped thingies actually came from creative ireland boards not here.

mike65

DaveMcG wrote:

I think it's a good thing, cos boards gives a good overview of the thoughts going through Irish people's heads. If politicians for example would read some of the threads on boards, then maybe they'd get a better understanding of public opinion.

Well 15-30 years olds opinions anyway!

Mike.

Rabies

lostexpectation wrote:

those photoshoped thingies actually came from creative ireland boards not here.

Ok. Thought some of them originated from here. Ah well. Looks like we don't have anyone creative on boards

Mad Finn

monument wrote:

As I said, "while you can copyright full works of text".



As I said, "you can’t really own or copyright ‘the story’".

Er, yeah. I was actually agreeing with you.

mike65

Rabies a stack of those pix are nothing to do with creativeireland.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054895495

Mike.

Dave!

mike65 wrote:

Well 15-30 years olds opinions anyway!

Mike.

We can still vote!

flogen

DaveMcG wrote:

We can still vote!

mike65 wrote:

Well 15-30 years olds opinions anyway!

...

Anyway I think it would be a bad idea for politicians to take their leads from boards.ie; firstly we represent a small minority of Irish people, voters or not, and secondly the people who talk politics are generally unrepresentative of the wider audience (that is to say they're political junkies or else extremists on the left or right)... maybe they could just... I dunno... engage their electorate rather than turn up once every five years promising punch and pie?

mike65

Pie!? Mmmmmm.

Mike.

Dave!

flogen wrote:

...

Only around 10% of boardsies can't legally vote (if we assume that 100% are Irish, but they aren't, so I'd say another 5 or 10%, and that's being kinda generous).

flogen wrote:

Anyway I think it would be a bad idea for politicians to take their leads from boards.ie; firstly we represent a small minority of Irish people, voters or not, and secondly the people who talk politics are generally unrepresentative of the wider audience (that is to say they're political junkies or else extremists on the left or right)... maybe they could just... I dunno... engage their electorate rather than turn up once every five years promising punch and pie?

Weeeelllllllll....... I dunno, I think because of the wide range of forums on boards, the members give a decent cross-section of Irish society. A kind of microcosm, if ye like. So I'm not sure what you mean when you say we represent a small minority of Irish people. Perhaps you mean nerds! lol. But we're not all nerds...! I just so happen to be though.

As regards people who talk politics being extremists... I don't think that's really true. For example there was a thread about whether or not Bertie should resign as a result of the payments scandal (click), and the result was that about 63% said that he should. While the question is different, this poll on unison.ie's website shows a similar viewpoint. I believe the results of another opinion poll showed the same results (roughly 2 out of 3 that he was wrong). There was subsequent opinion polls asking if he should resign (as opposed to if he was wrong or not), and the results were 2 out of 3 didn't want him to resign, but that was later in the scandal, when all the facts emerged, and after we had seen FF's handling of it, and the opposition's failure to take advantage and show some strength. I'd imagine if the question asked in the boards poll was "was he wrong...?", the results would be the same, but it was just the question asked.

But that's fairly specific; if you look at the various threads, you can still see that generally the opinions expressed on boards are the opinions that are prevalent in Irish society.
See the Pádraig Nally thread in AH for example... The general tone from the majority of posters in it is that Nally did us a favour and Ward was scum. I'm not gonna do a public survey on this, but I would bet my lunch money that if someone did, the opinions of Joe and Molly on the street would be on the whole the same.

Perhaps a new thread should be started, "Boards as a microcosm of Irish society"

Forgot to mention, if it can be established that sites such as boards offer a good insight into the public psyche, then the internet is a far more efficient way of keeping in contact with your constituents!

Dundalk Daily

"the members give a decent cross-section of Irish society. A kind of microcosm, if ye like."

Dave I disagree to a certain extent with this but those on the lower end of the social class dont have access to a computer so as regards the cross section we are probably talking about ABC2 and upwards.

Dave!

Well anyone who lives close to a library has internet access if they want it, but yeah I do take your general point.

monument

Mad Finn wrote:

Er, yeah. I was actually agreeing with you.

Right, that explains that.

flogen

DaveMcG wrote:

Only around 10% of boardsies can't legally vote (if we assume that 100% are Irish, but they aren't, so I'd say another 5 or 10%, and that's being kinda generous).

Yes, according to the census question taken by 2,000 voters out of over 80,000 potential members, around 10% are under 18.
I'd make a wild guestimate and say that if everyone was asked that figure would at least double, but there's no point in making wild guestimates.

Weeeelllllllll....... I dunno, I think because of the wide range of forums on boards, the members give a decent cross-section of Irish society.

Firstly most of the boards here are not the place where things of a political nature are discussed and so could not be the basis of policy and secondly, while the choice has exploded in recent years it is still skewed in a more tech-aware fashion, naturally.

So I'm not sure what you mean when you say we represent a small minority of Irish people. Perhaps you mean nerds! lol. But we're not all nerds...! I just so happen to be though.

Nope, nothing to do with your or my nerdiness; we literally represent a small minority of the Irish population.
81,342 members of boards.ie, 4,234,925 people living in Ireland... that means that less than 20% of the Irish population uses boards.ie... that's assuming that a) they're all Irish/in Ireland and b) all of the accounts listed are active. We know that both of these things are untrue so I'd say the figure is probably far smaller. (and let's not forget that 85% of the users are male...)
Now consider the fact that the population of boards.ie is completely skewed, meaning that we are not even a fair sample of the Irish population... firstly, using the Census because it's all we have, half of the users are from Dublin... rural broadband and internet access is far lower than urban and so that's one explanation.. I'd say if the figures were broken down by county you'd see around 80% being in Galway, Limerick, Dublin and Cork tbh.
Also, over 60% of the users are either students or working in IT... far from representative of the country.
Finally over 85% of the sites population is unmarried... again, unrepresentative of the country.
Also Dundalk has a point; besides rural dwellers having poorer internet access, people with less money are in the same situation.

As regards people who talk politics being extremists... I don't think that's really true.

Firstly, I said there were either extremists or political junkies, I didn't say there were more or less of one or the other.
Secondly there are plenty of extremists on politics; I'm not talking Stormfront here, but people who have cemented views on one side or another and are unwilling to move on that.
Perhaps to expand a little, besides extremists there are plenty of partisans and plenty of ideologically stubborn people there.
What I'm saying is that it is often full of unreasonable people who are trying to make their case against all odds and when their ideas are disproven they just shout louder; that's another discussion though.

For example there was a thread about whether or not Bertie should resign as a result of the payments scandal (click), and the result was that about 63% said that he should. While the question is different, this poll on unison.ie's website shows a similar viewpoint. I believe the results of another opinion poll showed the same results (roughly 2 out of 3 that he was wrong). There was subsequent opinion polls asking if he should resign (as opposed to if he was wrong or not), and the results were 2 out of 3 didn't want him to resign, but that was later in the scandal, when all the facts emerged

WOW!!! Hang on... you may as well just compare two seperate topics to each other...
There's a big difference between being wrong and being required to resign... big, big difference.
As you pointed out, question to question boards.ie users were way out of whack with the public perception... there's no comparing those two examples at all.

I'd imagine if the question asked in the boards poll was "was he wrong...?", the results would be the same, but it was just the question asked.

Hard to say, but my guess would be that over 80% of people would have said he was wrong, but who knows?

But that's fairly specific; if you look at the various threads, you can still see that generally the opinions expressed on boards are the opinions that are prevalent in Irish society.

I never said that things aren't said here that aren't believed somewhere else, it's the scale on which they're supported/opposed that really matters though... politicians should represent the majority in the area they operate (and often in the whole country)... baseing a policy on something said by a handful of people here, who you have no knowledge of, would be moronic and probably professional suicide. That's not to say that there aren't some good ideas here, but for the most part they're not.

See the Pádraig Nally thread in AH for example... The general tone from the majority of posters in it is that Nally did us a favour and Ward was scum. I'm not gonna do a public survey on this, but I would bet my lunch money that if someone did, the opinions of Joe and Molly on the street would be on the whole the same.

I'm not going to get into specifics for obvious reasons but it's easy for people to say he was right without having to come up with a way to alter the law to ensure this doesn't happen again and at the same time real criminals don't get off... the law can't be emotional and frankly if the majority of people think it should then they're listening to too much Joe Duffy; case-in-point the statutory rape incident; people just assumed there children could be raped without any legal recourse all of a sudden; what planet are they on?

Forgot to mention, if it can be established that sites such as boards offer a good insight into the public psyche, then the internet is a far more efficient way of keeping in contact with your constituents!

I agree, as the likes of Blake and Cuffe have shown, but it's no replacement for real political dialogue... we lack enough of that and I'd hate to see if phoned in online; if my local TD came to me with ideas based on this site I'd say I'd generally be digusted.

DMC

I agree 100% with Flogen on the above.

flogen wrote:

if my local TD came to me with ideas based on this site I'd say I'd generally be digusted.

Especially if said TD took ideas from TCN or AH!

Boom boom!

/me gets coat.

Victor

flogen wrote:

Yes, according to the census question taken by 2,000 voters out of over 80,000 potential members, around 10% are under 18.
I'd make a wild guestimate and say that if everyone was asked that figure would at least double, but there's no point in making wild guestimates.

But the percentage would stay roughly the same.

flogen

Victor wrote:

But the percentage would stay roughly the same.

Potentially, yes, but I would say that the 2000 users most likely to have voted would be the ones using the site the longest with newer users (probably generally younger) not.
Of course there's no way to prove either side of the coin without having 80,000 votes...