What happened to Boards.ie - genuine question

TheAnalyst_

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120787233#Comment_120787233

Just a better level of smarts and chat on other platforms.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120787297#Comment_120787297

Off to Truth Social or 4Chan with you so

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120786741#Comment_120786741

There’s shitholes like 8chan and Twitter for your free speech absolutism.

I.R.Y.E.D

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120787677#Comment_120787677

Ah the sites for the short bus crowd

growleaves

I think the moderation is fair overall.

Beasty has been a good sport, at least with regards to me, and everyone seems to be trying their best.

TheAnalyst_

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120787760#Comment_120787760

They are now because the sites on its arse and they need posters.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120787747#Comment_120787747

Well then don’t complain about a seat on the nice bus.

CGI_Livia_Soprano

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120781648#Comment_120781648

I dedicated a good chunk of my life involved in an endeavour that brought Boardsies together on a weekly basis to take part in a sport they played wearing the Boards.ie logo.

Was this the cycling club?

Just remembered going to a games meet, from here. Street Fighter 4 I think, in Dublin city LAN cafe.

All fora are gone that way now. People's Republic of Cork had 5 a side teams, piss ups, weddings, games nights etc. But it's hayday was 20 years ago

They made the mistake of allowing an anything goes policy where a group of spammers were able to destroy the place and trolls lobbing personal attacks all over made people leave. You need to pay a sub nowdays, to combat that, apparently.

Boards seemingly heavy handed modding wasn't so heavy after that.

It did seem to be death by a thousand self inflicted cuts though, generally by owners wanting RoI. Being run as an offshoot of distilled media and having to have synergy with their portfolio, massive data hungry ads everywhere, new site killed it overnight.

Was it also a victim of its own success, more and more niche fora with ever dwindling and secluded posters?

Esel

Charge €5 per year's subscription. That would keep the re-reg trolls of the site.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120789468#Comment_120789468

I demand a checkmark

Esel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120789544#Comment_120789544

You can have any colour you like except blue...

TheAnalyst_

TBH its just part of the wider forum decline. None of the other options come close these days, reddit, twitter, discord. Just how it goes

Flaneur OBrien

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120787297#Comment_120787297

Huh? How is that relevant?

Your point was:

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120786741#Comment_120786741

So I asked you to show me where there’s legal rights to free speech on a private platform.

This is the BS that I have a hard time with.

Poster A makes a ridiculous false claim

Poster B asks for proof (knowing there can’t be any as it’s a BS argument)

Poster A changes the subject and tries to move on instead of addressing their point (easily done - “Yeah, sorry, not “legal rights” but people should have the right to post whatever they want” etc. etc)

The world (whatever about boards) has really gone to sh*t and for me, part of the reason is no one can ever say they were wrong anymore or apologise in case it makes them look weak. Which is BS.

Tell me how

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120779772#Comment_120779772

It seems to me to be a bit rich to be complaining repeatedly about people reporting posts to then report one that stated someone had 'fixed your IT disability'....

But Moderation is a massive issue with the platform, and it continues to be. I was warned on a thread in March of this year, and then banned from the thread without making any further posts or speaking with the Mod in the period between the 2 events. I strongly disagreed with that Mod decision and DM'ed the Category Mods listed for the forum requesting an appeal and heard back from neither of them.

I haven't seen any steps to improve the process of moderation on the site over the last 2 years. Whether technically, or through communication or anything, instead what they seem to be doing is adopting a like it or there's the door approach. There is neither consistency or transparency to the whole process around Moderation and that in a self-perpetuating cycle leads to more and more pressure on the system.

Overheal

How about we do this:

• Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day
• Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day
• New unverified accounts to 300/day

Will that help?

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120792681#Comment_120792681

Wow. I spend more time on boards than I think is healthy and I doubt I read 300 posts a day.

So people read 6000 a day?! Where do you find the time?!

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120792726#Comment_120792726

Ok, I've now seen the reference elsewhere! Went over my head.

Annasopra

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120792681#Comment_120792681

No 😶‍🌫️

ilovesmybrick

I think it would help if there was a bit more clarity around when comments are nuked. When threads were cleaned up there used to be always some mod clarification on why comments were nuked, whereas it seems a bit more common the past while to refresh a thread that I had left open in my browser a few hours earlier and multiple comments removed that, to my mind, seemed relatively innocuous with absolutely no comment in either the thread itself or the mod directions of the OP.

Tell me how

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120794611#Comment_120794611

It literally happened on this thread yesterday.

And is the essence of why so many are frustrated at the moderation practices here. They are subjective, ad-hoc, non-transparent and almost entirely unquestionable.

It's pointless having platform discussion threads whether here or on the feedback forum when you can scrub them for any content you feel inclined to.

And despite this, I'd give those involved a certain amount of leeway and would let bygones be bygones if they at any point showed an interest in resolving this central issue. They've put in significant time on a volunteer basis and deserve some credit for that. But that doesn't mean that it is their right to dictate such practices on the site eternally.

sydthebeat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120794611#Comment_120794611

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058299853/new-underhand-style-of-moderation

There's a whole discussion on it here.

Obviously little has changed

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120789468#Comment_120789468

I’d be more than willing to do that, even if I had to rereg for legit reasons. The throwaway accounts should rightfully be for Personal Issues forum only, be at no added cost, and have some expiry date, maybe a year. But technically that would not be possible with Vanilla.

freshpopcorn

I'm not sure if this feature already exists but I'd like if you could make certain forums disappear from the latest posts when you click into boards.ie.(Off topic I know).

ilovesmybrick

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120796131#Comment_120796131

Yeah, noticed that. Now maybe the comments got out of hand or something, I don't know. And that's kind of the point. If you just delete without giving some rationale or explanation no one has any idea what the rules are, what's allowed or not allowed, and what's going to get deleted. If the rules behind what can or cannot be discussed are opaque or unexplained it's going to lead to less engagement.

I'm more of a lurker than a poster, and it could be that either the issue became worse due to Vanillas limitations, as alluded to in syds posted thread, or simply due to the fact that the site is generating less traffic so it's more noticeable.

Backstreet Moyes

Covid forum is a great example.

Annasopra

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120794611#Comment_120794611

Yep.

Been saying that 2 or 3 years now. Mods/Admins basically refuse to listen when anyone says it.

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120797590#Comment_120797590

To be fair, I think they're sick of saying "the mod tools are awful".

But it does come across as "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas".

The moderation has become less invasive when like this and there's a few threads going (like this) that would have been shut down a few months back.

Yet it does feel like walking in egg shells at times "will this get deleted", "will the obvious re-reg who's come back to try and get people threadbanned succeed this time?".

Annasopra

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120797661#Comment_120797661

The points made in the quoted thread are never really acknowledged though - that if you let people know what's happening then they will learn more about what moderators deem acceptable and others posters would too which in the long term would make moderation easier.

RoyalCelt

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120753673#Comment_120753673

I heard boards staff used to throw wolf of wall street type parties.