Will Boards survive the Covid?

Arghus

Bigmac1euro wrote: »

Same. Boards has done a lot for me over the years. And for free. I wouldn’t mind giving back.

I wouldn't be against subscribing in the future, I have subscribed in the past. Boards is a great resource and has given me advice and knowledge, not just entertainment down the years.

I know it's very unlikely to become subscription based over the years, but a long running thread I post in in the podcast forum put me thinking about the nature of this place.

The podcast in question - Second Captains - is subscription based so all the people, or at least the vast majority who post in thread are subscribers to the show and it can't be a coincidence that the thread has remained one of the few to hit 10000 without becoming a cesspit of hot takes, squabbling and re-reg trolls, which is sadly a frequent enough feature of just about every thread with more than a 100 replies in busier parts of the forum. Having that slight barrier to entry keeps the ejitry out and thread is better for it.

I know part of the appeal of boards is the ease of use and the potential variety of users and opinion, but that can work against boards to an extent too. There is so much drivel posted here, WUMs, Edge Lords, re-reg trolls, reactionary hot takes on just about everything - look at that CA forum - it's a horrorshow.

Ubbquittious

Arghus wrote: »

I know part of the appeal of boards is the ease of use and the potential variety of users and opinion, but that can work against boards to an extent too. There is so much drivel posted here, WUMs, Edge Lords, re-reg trolls, reactionary hot takes on just about everything - look at that CA forum - it's a horrorshow.

What are WUMs?

jmcc

Ubbquittious wrote: »

What are WUMs?

Wind-Up Merchants. A staple of any forum site. Some are entertaining and some are not.

Regards...jmcc

coinop

Boards.ie's chronic problems have been well documented over the years so I'll only briefly rehash the main points here. There were originally two main attractions to the site: info and entertainment.

1. Info: This is where Boards carved out an Irish-specific niche that couldn't be found elsewhere on the internet back in the early 2000s and it was hugely successful. What time does the last bus leave Limerick on Friday night? Who are the cheapest barbers in Kilkenny? How do I apply for a job in the Civil Service? Once upon a time you could be guaranteed that someone on Boards would have the answer. This function has been supplanted by sites like Yelp, Google Maps, Facebook and Twitter. Irish cyberspace has grown to the point that we have created our own little communities within the larger sites. Meanwhile the regional/college/hobby specific fora on Boards have fallen into a death spiral and become ghost towns. A passer-by is far less likely to bother asking a question in a forum if the last thread was active in 2011 and it looks like nobody is around to answer.

2. Entertainment: Before social media exploded in popularity in the mid-2000s, Bulletin Boards were a fun place to chat to others, pass the time, and maybe learn something new. Even better, you could chat to other Irish people with common cultural reference points to you, which seemed like an oasis in the Amercanised wider web. This was a time before trigger warnings, micro-aggressions and 52 genders, so you could crack a joke knowing it was all in good fun and nobody's feelings got hurt. Like most of Silicon Valley, sites like Boards were created by apolitical tech bros who enjoyed video games and nerdy pursuits like Dungeons & Dragons. Then the SJWs move in like a virus and take over the host, hijacking someone else's hard work and imposing their vision of justice on the world. (Read up on the Ellen Pao saga and Reddit if you're interested. Too much to go into here.) Trivial bans were handed out which just antagonised the community that made the site so successful. It caused a negative feedback loop where the content creators, who attracted new users to the site with their helpful answers and specialised knowledge, got banned for wrongthink which in turn cause a drop in new users.

I wish the best for Boards as it has its place in Irish internet history and contains a treasure trove of info and insights from the past two decades, but I don't see any future growth potential as the age of the average poster gets increasingly older. Young people are used to freedom of expression on Reddit and Twitter where they can say what they feel. Compare to Boards where each of the 100+ fora have their own set of rules and individual charter (lol) and whether you get banned depends on the mood of the mod overlord that day.

Even worse than the moderators mood, it’s becoming far more common that cards and thread bans are being handed out or held back based on a moderators own views on a particular topic also. That is definitely a road to nowhere fast and the administrators should have moved to stamp it out as soon as it began, not that the disputes or feedback process is any more than a public runaround for a bit of show at this stage.