What is wrong with the site? (Please read updated post #1)

hullaballoo

This thread has become very Soviet all of a sudden. Radical simplification sounds like a Stalinist policy. Political Economics, I'm sure, was introduced to stem the witterings of a certain Komrade? And we're annexing the Balkans as well or something.

_Kaiser_

hullaballoo wrote: »

This thread has become very Soviet all of a sudden. Radical simplification sounds like a Stalinist policy. Political Economics, I'm sure, was introduced to stem the witterings of a certain Komrade? And we're annexing the Balkans as well or something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U06jlgpMtQs

Soviet anthem is still best anthem

It's a valid point though, there's a lot of forums here that could be merged or deleted at this stage.

As for the main Politics one, personally I find it incredibly hard to even read the topics with the tagging/colours

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Harry Palmr

Should I mention my five year plan and the estimated growth in beetroot production in the Volga basin?

smash

Beta link is gone. Click responsive site and nothing happens, click touch site and it goes to the beta site. Then click to go back to legacy site and it redirects to the touch site. nice

Wibbs

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

That wasn't really my point as such, but I do hear what you're saying and you have kinda illustrated what was. It was dead, but then grew rapidly after posts were moved from AH and more, it was linked within the "gateway" AH page.

Genuine question. How has it killed off the main Politics forum(s)? Have the people posting there moved to PC? If PC took away the more pub style banter, would that not free up the quality contributors in the more "serious" forums? I suspect some forums, even on the surface very popular forums are more sensitive to change and though there may be lots of generated content the number of keystone content generators is actually quite small, so if 2 or 3 drift away the forum goes slow. Was the popularity of PC such a change?

Over the years I've been in a couple of private forums here, so no lurkers or drive by posts and what I noticed was how much content can be generated over say a year with well under 20 members and more like 6 or 8 very active members. And equally how quickly such a forum can start to decline even die if a couple of key people slow down or cease posting. It can be quite a delicate balance.

Permabear

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The Moldy Gowl

I just used the new site on my phone there.

Can we not have the 'boards' banner follow me down the page?
Just leave it stuck to the top like on the touch site.
That really frustrated me. It's just taking up needless space on my phone screen.

Apart from that, meh. I'll get used to it.

mansize

The m.boards site is acting up :-(

Discodog

So a controversial proposal. Change the name of the site. I must have recommended Boards to a lot of people over the years & when you say have you tried Boards they look at you as if you are mad. It may of been a good name years ago but it isn't now.

smash

Discodog wrote: »

So a controversial proposal. Change the name of the site. I must have recommended Boards to a lot of people over the years & when you say have you tried Boards they look at you as if you are mad. It may of been a good name years ago but it isn't now.

Tweetface?

Harry Palmr

Fasciaboards.

Esel

BoredFace

my3cents

At this rate "Boardedup"

irishdude11

Dav wrote: »

This site, as a "Forums" site is shrinking - a combination of changes in how people simply consume and create internet content combined with After Hours being seen as the "catch all" forum on the site has seen to that (that's by no means a criticism of AH or it's regulars, quite the opposite). All the specialist forums get quieter and quieter. Hardly makes sense to stick to a "Forums" structure when it's clearly eating itself. A tag system makes forums redundant, but it doesn't kill off communities. It does make them interact with one another though. Again, I state, we're not a forums site, we're a community site. Community revolves around discussion of a common interest which is why forums lend themselves quite well, but so do groups on Facebook or Lists on Twitter or even hashtags on Instagram. I'm not suggesting we simply copy what they're doing, but there's surely something to be learned from them given their global success? Look, it's an idea that's been in my head for a while and has rarely left it, I was just trying to share some ideas with the rest of you - encourage a bit of creative thinking from us all about where we drive this bus.

For those of you who seem to simply hate the new site, well the good news is that I can guarantee you that the Legacy site isn't going anywhere for 2016 and the boss has indicated that if it doesn't cause us problems, he may leave it live indefinitely (that is not a guarantee by any means).

I think a large part of why the forums outside After Hours and the other big ones are shrinking is because of the change to the top menu bar months ago.

It is not convenient to browse to these forums now, there is too much clicking and expanding of menus. Over many years of using boards I've looked at many different forums simply because it was so easy to just hover click with the top menu. Since the change to the menu bar, which buries the entire site under the Topics category, and also requires clicking to open submenus inside Topics, it is just too much hassle to check out other forums.

Now I only check After Hours and MMA. I used to look at 10+ different forums daily, before the menu bar changed. And that is not including niche ones I would randomly click into. I never randomly click into anything now, its too much hassle.

I saw numerous people complain about this at the time the change was made but the change went through anyway and, in my opinion, the best functionality feature of the site was sacrificed for a slicker design. If the current redesign gets pushed through I think boards.ie is just going to die off over the next year or two.

As for Facebook and Twitter:
Twitter is just celebrities and media people posting crap all day to raise their profile.
Facebook is for keeping in touch with your real life friends and family and acquaintances. No one has actual discussions on Facebook..its all just comments on photos, articles, and statuses.

Boards.ie is a forums site. That's why people come here. If it became a poor man's Twitter or Facebook why would I use it? All my friends and family are already on FB...and Twitter is pointless for discussions.

hullaballoo

Just in relation to facebook, they're are public and private groups that behave a lot like forums. That's where newbies are going now instead of signing up here.

There is also a perception I was unaware of until recently that boards is for old people. That was a tough reality to face up to when the young ones in work confirmed that's what their generation think.

Lovely Bloke

irishdude11 wrote: »

I never randomly click into anything now, its too much hassle.

This.

RDM_83 again

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

I'm not sure politics is a very good bench mark for judging the site traffic though, its so extremely variable while also being a problamitc forum due to constant trench warfare over certain topics that are often brought up.

Lemming

hullaballoo wrote: »

Just in relation to facebook, they're are public and private groups that behave a lot like forums. That's where newbies are going now instead of signing up here.

As I said earlier, trying to engage in - or find content - that's older than perhaps an hour on facebook is akin to pulling teeth. It is an abysmal experience and more an exercise in futility and random luck than anything else. Not exactly something that encourages discussion, nor should it be particularly desirable as a communications medium other than throw-away posts about what your pet paper-clip got up to today.

Edit: So rather than trying to ape facebook, twitter, and the like, boards.ie should be setting out its own sales pitch; not trying to compete with established global giants on their terms. Because the losers will be boards.ie, and the community that makes it what it is.

There is also a perception I was unaware of until recently that boards is for old people. That was a tough reality to face up to when the young ones in work confirmed that's what their generation think.

These are the up and coming generations that love Justin Beieber, and think that censorship of opinions that they personally don't like is a good thing for society. You're giving them - as a societal group - a higher opinion than their collective intellect should allow perhaps given the track record thus far for this decade.

I've got mates who do nothing but spend all day on facebook, and the are most certainly not teenages or anything remotely resembling that age group. So the opinion you got given was by a bunch of clueless idiots that probably think that facebook is the pinnacle of d'internet. Like.

hullaballoo

Lemming, I wouldn't disagree with anything you've said other than to point out that at no point did I express a view on these people, nor did I attribute to them any opinion other than their thoughts on boards.

Whether they're highly intelligent authors of professional law books (they are) or mouth-breathing lovers of Justin Beiber is irrelevant. The point is that this site is perceived in a particular way by young people and that is what it is.

In relation to facebook groups, each group acts like a forum, e.g. Angling Ireland, within which there are threads (posts, followed by replies) and discussions and communities are formed. It is no different to what boards has been in the past in that way.

I suppose what facebook has over boards is that when you type certain keywords into the search bar, e.g. "fly-fishing Dublin", the Angling Ireland group is suggested. Here, you have to know the exact name of the forum without spelling mistakes or incorrectly ordering the words before you go asking your questions.

I don't know, maybe that's the issue with boards, an issue that has plagued the site for as long as I remember - the search function is a pile of shite.

anothernight

hullaballoo wrote: »

The point is that this site is perceived in a particular way by young people and that is what it is.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. At least that's not my experience of it. I have many offline friends who are active on Boards and they'd be in their early and mid 20s (as am I). The problem with anecdotes and all that. :P

I do, however, think that the forum format is quite old fashioned, much as I personally like it.

hullaballoo

My anecdote is more accurate than your anecdote, though.

anothernight

hullaballoo wrote: »

My anecdote is more accurate than your anecdote, though.

Ok...
What makes you think that?

pickarooney

Another possible reason for reduced traffic around the site may be that the search function simply doesn't work and never has. I don't know what they can't just use a Google site search. I presume anyone who actually wants to make the effort to find something here does that anyway.

Esel

Anecdote Waving thread -→

hullaballoo

anothernight wrote: »

Ok...
What makes you think that?

I was being facetious.

You said words to the effect that my anecdote isn't correct because [anecdote].

In fairness, our experiences irrespective of other factors don't need to match up for it to be a problem for this site that there is a perception, no matter how prevalent, that this site is for oldies.

nesf

Lemming wrote: »

As I said earlier, trying to engage in - or find content - that's older than perhaps an hour on facebook is akin to pulling teeth. It is an abysmal experience and more an exercise in futility and random luck than anything else. Not exactly something that encourages discussion, nor should it be particularly desirable as a communications medium other than throw-away posts about what your pet paper-clip got up to today.

Busy Facebook groups are very annoying alright. I've found smaller ones to function a lot more like forums though because of the lower churn of posts per day. They tend to be a lot easier to search too. Boards like Facebook like Twitter like Reddit etc all tend to turn into an ungodly mess if the number of users participating in the discussion gets too high. It doesn't seem to be platform specific as much as signal to noise ratio. But to judge Facebook by the busier groups is like judging Boards off AH and ignoring the variety of forums that exists.

Gremlinertia

There around 02.00 i got more 522 errors didn't seem to last too long..

EmptyTree

In fairness i like the topics page, this is much clearer and I'm glad to see it being implemented after so many people complained when the last iteration of boards was rolled out.

That said, i much prefer the layout of the legacy site for my mobile. Feels much more data friendly and i can see a lot more on the screen

ancapailldorcha

hullaballoo wrote: »

This thread has become very Soviet all of a sudden. Radical simplification sounds like a Stalinist policy. Political Economics, I'm sure, was introduced to stem the witterings of a certain Komrade? And we're annexing the Balkans as well or something.

Not much happening there in any case.