Sin Boards back up.. but...

Ficheall · 09-07-2012 7:20pm #1

http://boards.sin.ie/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=25837

For those few of you who may be on NUIG's SinBoards, you might like to know that the SinBoards were opened again just over a week ago after being closed for 3 months, but the admin is now doing a thorough purging of members in the interests of combatting spam - next to go are those members who have not registered with an nuigalway.ie email address.
As one could forgive a sane person for using their nuig address as little as possible, you may find that now would be a good time to change your email address there, before your account is closed.

edit: cf: ethernet's post - you will need a usable nuigalway a/c.

Fionn MacCool · 09-07-2012 11:40pm

I think I had my @nuigalway address for only a couple of days before setting it up to forward to my grown-up's inbox.

What can I say, freshers week was mental.

Sycopat · 10-07-2012 11:18am

So I just noticed.

Unfortunately I date from the long long ago, when accounts were not run by Microsoft and got deleted once your course had finished, so I've been banned out of hand.

Nice way to treat the alumni.

Ficheall · 10-07-2012 1:41pm

Sycopat wrote: »

Unfortunately I date from the long long ago, when accounts were not run by Microsoft and got deleted once your course had finished, so I've been banned out of hand.

Accounts are still deleted after you graduate, I'm afraid.

Fionn MacCool · 10-07-2012 2:49pm

In this day and age, with storage and bandwidth so relatively cheap, would it be that hard for NUIG to keep everybody's email addresses? Even if it were just a forwarding one with no inbox.

I know a lot of goons who use their @nuig email for loads of things, possibly because they didn't have one before college or whatever.

Sycopat · 10-07-2012 3:12pm

Ficheall wrote: »

Accounts are still deleted after you graduate, I'm afraid.

Really? How quaint... Been to different places since and the accounts seem to persist after graduation. (Although in both cases they're managed by google and essentially gmail accounts)

ethernet · 10-07-2012 6:33pm

I changed my address to the NUIG one. Can still log in to check my NUIG email but now realise that's all I can do - no mail will actually deliver to that address. Grrrr. Well that's me off the Sin Boards now. At least <current university> lets us keep our email address after graduation.

SomethingElse · 16-07-2012 9:39pm

ethernet wrote: »

I changed my address to the NUIG one. Can still log in to check my NUIG email but now realise that's all I can do - no mail will actually deliver to that address. Grrrr. Well that's me off the Sin Boards now. At least <current university> lets us keep our email address after graduation.

The trick is to never graduate.

Squeeonline · 19-07-2012 12:18pm

My idea was to give alumni an email address too, name.alumni.nuigalway.ie or something to differentiate us from active students. Mail sent to the old address would forward automatically to the new one.

It's just another element of the Irish 3rd level education system that makes it seem more like an extension of 2nd level.

Ficheall · 19-07-2012 1:12pm

That wouldn't work for the sinboards either. Just sayin'. I tried an @socs.nuigalway.ie, but no luck...

Squeeonline · 19-07-2012 8:08pm

Ficheall wrote: »

That wouldn't work for the sinboards either. Just sayin'. I tried an @socs.nuigalway.ie, but no luck...

Oh I meant in general. Whoever is in charge of the sinboards now doesnt have a clue how to work phpBB nor what is best for the members of the forum. It's almost like they are trying to kill it off...

Ficheall · 19-07-2012 8:14pm

Aye.. had ACTA been passed I could sort of understand the concern, but...

Squeeonline · 19-07-2012 9:38pm

Ficheall wrote: »

Aye.. had ACTA been passed I could sort of understand the concern, but...

You dont care that the sin boards are being killed off slowly? You're the one who fought hard for their survival.

Ficheall · 20-07-2012 12:54am

Of course I care

I meant the concern that someone might post something which would get the SU in trouble, which is the excuse the SU is voicing as the reason for the drastic reductions in who is allowed to post. Given that ACTA has now rendered this unlikely scenario almost a complete non-issue, I can't see the grounds for that supposed concern.

Once I have this thesis lark out of the way, I'll look into seeing if we can persuade them to allow alumni to post.

Sycopat · 26-07-2012 12:37pm

I find it slightly irritating that the SU are still trying to kill the sin boards. Mostly because I enjoyed the majority of the time I spent there and remember it surprisingly fondly.

But also because it seems like a constant thing elements in the SU were trying to force and for little if any apparent reason. It's hardly costing them enough money to be a serious drain on resources is it?

Ficheall · 21-04-2015 5:35am

Seems I have finally been kicked from the Sinboards, after ten years of loyal membership

Shame to see how the SU have destroyed the resource. Some fun times were had there.

Squeeonline · 21-04-2015 6:18am

My new account that I had set up is also gone. Maybe they've just deactivated sign ins. edit: looks like it's "spring cleaning" time. Goodbye boards

We could set up a private subreddit but the existing nuig reddits haven't really caught on.

phpBB is far more hassle for sysadmins than it's worth. So prone to spam attacks and server hacks...

pmasterson95 · 21-04-2015 3:16pm

SU ****ing things up are they?

Mr. G · 21-04-2015 11:46pm

I very much doubt it's the SU's decision to get rid of it. In fairness the forum is hardly ever posted in. The number of current students using the forum is very few so it doesn't justify keeping it apart from an archive purpose.

Ficheall · 22-04-2015 4:12am

Mr. G wrote: »

I very much doubt it's the SU's decision to get rid of it. In fairness the forum is hardly ever posted in. The number of current students using the forum is very few so it doesn't justify keeping it apart from an archive purpose.

Au contraire - an SU president removed the existing active admins a few years ago and neglected to do any admining thereafter, successive presidents did nothing to remedy this despite advice from its users. This led to a massive increase in unmoderated spam, and multiple periods of months of downtime for the website. The search function does not work properly - making it much more difficult to encourage new members.

Eventually, the SU announced that they were going to delete the sinboards, and it was only due to a considerable amount of complaining by myself and other users (we even spoke to Cloud about it, and he was in favour of keeping them, though he no longer has any involvement with the sinboards) that the SU agreed to keep the boards, but only active users with an active @nuigalway.ie account were allowed to keep their accounts, and only students with @nuigalway.ie email accounts were permitted to register "to minimise the Students’ Union’s exposure to inappropriate content". The SU also agreed to promote the Sinboards to members of the SU, but just try to find any mention of it! (It is there, but incredibly difficult to locate).
This left a very small handful of users who could post, and all of them knowing that their accounts would be locked as soon as their @nuigalway.ie email address no longer worked - hardly an incentive. A user from 2004 (and therefore no longer in possession of an nuig email address) posted a week ro two ago, and had his account immediately locked. I commented on this, and then the admin - the SU General Manager - decided to lock all accounts, as you can see posted in the Woohoo thread: http://boards.sin.ie/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=20244&start=9820 , so that users could reactivate their accounts if they "get in touch" and have an active nuig address.

The sinboards were a valuable resource back in the day - whether they should be kept open is perhaps open to debate, granted - but getting rid of them was definitely the SU's decision.

Sin Boards back up.. but...

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