Does Boards.ie Have Any Power?

Rhiannon14

*admires boards' power stick*

Sleepy

Well, thinking about it, it was just a matter of time before Boards.ie decided to flex it's muscles and see how strong it was.

Duiske

I'm not sure if boadsies could get organised enough to change much, but a couple of threads recently have had the power to make a couple of large companies to get the finger out.

The 3 Broadband thread forced 3 to offer boardsies a way out of their contracts, and everyone knows what happened with the Netopia Router thread.

Jigsaw

Boards is an enjoyable way to pass some time.

It has no power.

It is a bloody message board website ffs.

If I left my house now with the requisite intent I could kill many people. A website cannot. I am therefore more powerful than Boards, and I am by no means powerful.

Wisesmurf

Jigsaw wrote: »

Boards is an enjoyable way to pass some time.

It has no power.

It is a bloody message board website ffs.

If I left my house now with the requisite intent I could kill many people. A website cannot. I am therefore more powerful than Boards, and I am by no means powerful.

Your definition of power is off the mark son.

Bush for instance has less physical power to strangle a man than a turtle-neck jumper has. But the man has actual power.

Jigsaw

Wisesmurf wrote: »

Your definition of power is off the mark son.

Bush for instance has less physical power to strangle a man than a turtle-neck jumper has. But the man has actual power.

Fair point. Doesn't mean Boards has any power either though.

And to the best of my knowledge I am not your son.

Hobbes

Only these guys would have a chance of getting people on boards to work together (the cowboys, not eds ).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk7yqlTMvp8

Archeron

If all the active users joined that Niall Mellon township trust scheme in South Africa, it could result in the construction of a brand new city!
Boardsopolis.

Nevyn

ziggy wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Yeah that happens a few times a year it is called the boards beers.
Whens the next one ?
15th Dec,

There is not just the SSF but there is also the B Team which will be rolling out in the new year to give charities/schools/ communities a once of helping hand, this will be done by boards posters giving of their skills and time.

Also a lot of people did get themselves registered to vote in the last election due to the help and info in the politics forum, esp those who has been knocked of the register.

So yeah boards.ie can make a difference if we the posters choose to make a difference.

roy123456789

From Eircom comcore Stats ;

OTHER INTERESTING FACTS
* Boards.ie is the most visited discussion / chat site by Irish users in September 2007
* Unique visits to discussion / chat sites have increased 16% in the last year
* 1 in 4 Irish users visited a discussion / chat site during September

So it looks as though it could have some power of persuasion if it got behind a cause....... Health Service anyone?

bytesize

Boards wouldnt have much, if any power, at all. If you trail through the members section you can see that the site only has those numbers cos the admins won't do what most other good fora do. That's delete inactive members who fail to log in after a certain period of time. Look at all the users under 100 or even 50 posts that haven't logged in in 6+months. Or all the banned for life users whose accounts clerly wont be used again. And the accounts that have been registered that have 0 - 10 posts that were never used again. If the admins cleaned up the members list I could almost guarantee the member count would be cut in at least half. Maybe up to a third or even a quarter of what it is now.

It would also open up for those usernames to be used again by people who may want them but can't have them cos they are registered but being unused.

Anyway, the members who are active do good things like SSF so it's not all a lost cause

seamus

Well, like any kind of movement, the key to gaining membership is to start small and get behind things which people are rather passionate about and which nobody can really argue against. It takes work though. Once you've built your base, you need to continue adding in more crusades and policies - slowly draw in people with other interests while trying to maintain that initial support base.

For example, you could start on a single-issue platform - free healthcare for all children under five (if we already have this, pretend we don't ). There are hundreds of thousands of parents out there who would support this and few people who could give you a good argument as to why it's a bad idea.
So you have your initial support base. Now tack on another goal, let's say phased abolition of VRT. Again, hot topic, many people who would support it and few who can give good arguments as to why it's a bad idea. From your initial support base, you'll get a few who don't like this new goal. But they still like the healthcare idea, so most of them won't jump ship. The VRT issue will pull in a lot of younger people, particularly males, who couldn't care less about child healthcare. Support base grows.

And so on. It's not easy though. Your support base is lazy and fickle. The entire movement needs to be managed by a small number of individuals who will do all the work and receive little credit from the support base. The process of how to attain your goals is irrelevant to the support base, it's the goals that are important, so trying to get agreement from them is pointless and futile. Those of the support base who do give their opinion, won't be able to agree on direction and it'll fall down. So you drive the process towards attaining the goals, all you need to do is convince your support base that you're making progress and that you're doing the work. They'll give you their signature and their support, just don't expect any work from them.

You also need to ensure that your policy portfolio is fresh. If your goals get achieved, why would people continue to support you? If your goals become stale (no progress) or irrelevant (superseded by something better) then people will lose interest.

So in essence yes, boards.ie can have some real power. It would just require a small amount of people doing all the work and not looking for specific consensus from the boards population, just a general one. You would also need to adjust your policies to take account of boards's demographics. You may get wide support for free, countrywide broadband (a frivilous policy), but very little support for double the standard State pension for PAYE workers (an important policy). If your demographic isn't passionate about your policies, they won't be passionate about you.

As others have pointed out - the Santa Strike Force uses this power in the perfect manner. You have a small number of individuals putting in the effort to compile the wishlists, collect the presents and distribute them. The support base are given a method of participation which suits them best - providing credit card online payments without leaving their seat.

Terry

roy123456789 wrote: »

From Eircom comcore Stats ;

OTHER INTERESTING FACTS
* Boards.ie is the most visited discussion / chat site by Irish users in September 2007
* Unique visits to discussion / chat sites have increased 16% in the last year
* 1 in 4 Irish users visited a discussion / chat site during September

So it looks as though it could have some power of persuasion if it got behind a cause....... Health Service anyone?

Health service?

Post #42 was made by someone with the username "bytesize".
As soon as Harney sees that, she'll just slither away.

Earthhorse

To get back to the OP's record a single idea, a lot of casual users would resent the idea of buying something just because it came from the site, even if it was for charity.

LordChessington wrote: »

So, when are we resurrecting Hitler?

thelordofcheese wrote: »

not soon enough!

What is it with the upper class and resurrecting Hitler?

randylonghorn

Earthhorse wrote: »

To get back to the OP's record a single idea, a lot of casual users would resent the idea of buying something just because it came from the site, even if it was for charity.

But it wouldn't be just because ... I don't know, I think a lot of people would support something like that which they felt they had some small bit of ownership of / involvement in.

2 stroke

Breasts have more power than Boards.

Earthhorse

randylonghorn wrote: »

But it wouldn't be just because ... I don't know, I think a lot of people would support something like that which they felt they had some small bit of ownership of / involvement in.

A lot would but my gut feeling is an awful lot more wouldn't. What I'm saying is, I don't think you'd get to number one. Probably not even into the top ten.

randylonghorn

Earthhorse wrote: »

A lot would but my gut feeling is an awful lot more wouldn't. What I'm saying is, I don't think you'd get to number one. Probably not even into the top ten.

Ah ... fair enough. Tbh, I wouldn't much care (tho' I do grasp that it is kind of central to the point of the thread! ) ... I just think it could be a bit of fun and a good way to raise money for something like SSF.

Bros123

Just saw the title of this thread "Does Boards have any power"
If it does PLEASE have a look at this thread i started on,in my opinion,one of the most important issues in the EU today.



http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=54469769&posted=1#post54469769

bug

I dunno. Interesting enough though.

If someone decides it does, could we start with the transport system please?

Thats a common thread between us all, everyone has to get somewhere at some stage.

I often wondered what the point of boards was.

Gas though, if the two blokes more or less responsible for it ran for election and advertised here, they would probably be more recognised than most.

thelordofcheese

Earthhorse wrote: »

What is it with the upper class and resurrecting Hitler?

What is it with the lower class and Not resurrecting Hitler?

dame

Forget the record singles idea.
There are far more worthy things we should try and influence.



There are children in Europe living in absolutely appalling conditions.

BULGARIA'S ABANDONED CHILDREN

Read this thread, use the link within it and watch the program, then do something about it.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055185441





Mods, can a petition be set up for boardsies to sign? This could then be forwarded to the Irish government, Bulgarian government and the European Parliament.

Bros123

Well said dame.
If you ever did anything on boards PLEASE GO TO THIS THREAD AND WATCH THE VIDEO AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
Email,ring and annoy our politicians and MEP,s any way you can to end it.

Being honest, we'd be more likely to deal with a problem like transport (which affects us everyday) than dealing bout children in Bulgaria.

It's terrible, but the truth.

Blowfish

I dunno, I think boards has almost a 'chaotic' power at times. There are a few organised things that do make a difference (SSF, Ireland Offline etc.), but most of the 'influence' I've seen come from boards has been it acting almost unintentionally. Things like the Netopia router thread, the 3 thread etc. are all examples where although nobody initially actually set out to make a difference, it ended up making one.

DeVore

We get about 20K unique humans a day coming here. The problem is that its nigh impossible to work out how many of those where here the day before so getting numbers for, say, a month is very hard.

Google uses Visits Per Month but counts the same person twice or more as a result.
1,674,507 Visits / Month
54,016.35 Visits / Day

As for power, it really depends on your definition. We have a great deal of power to introduce ideas into the public consciousness and also to get a topic into the media. Just about every major news outlet from newspapers to RTE wander around Boards every day.
Ireland Offline used us to recruit and expand , not to mention organise themselves, with quite serious effectiveness.

Power comes from lots of people. Finding people who agree with you're point of view (ala IOFFL) is the first step and we are the platform for taking that step. The rest is up to you.

DeV.

Terry

There is also the Dell offer to boards.ie members.
See Bargain Alerts for details.