What happened to Boards.ie - genuine question

It was good craic between 2007 and 2010. Then, probably because of the recession really impacting, from 2011 it got extremely toxic - and the misogyny was unreal. Misogyny now is nowhere near as bad thankfully, but the level of toxic has stayed since, although the source of the toxicity had shifted.

But there are still plenty of good things about it - interesting topics, great writers and some very funny stuff. That's why I came back.

hoodie6029

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120755203#Comment_120755203

Few fairly toxic comments on this thread. I didn’t venture too far into after the first few. ‘No vigils for him’ etc. Describing a mentally I’ll woman as ‘demented filth’

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058301697/woman-who-stabbed-father-of-seven-to-death-in-ferocious-attack-jailed-for-eight-years#latest

Leg End Reject

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120755392#Comment_120755392

For balance you should read the Alan Hawe and the Ashling Murphy threads.

hoodie6029

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120755440#Comment_120755440

I don’t need to do that to determine when posters are being abusive.

I think it's OK to be highly critical of the killer. It's an emotive matter - it upsets people. I just hate the "reverse the sexes" stuff (the way that's people's takeaway when there's just been a brutal murder) and when mental illness is denied as a factor (and I was one of those who kept considering that in the Hawe case - and still do).

kneemos

If the arguments haven't started by the first page they've definitely got going by the second.

Penn

There are multiple issues at play; the revamp of the site (and numerous days of downtime and months of bugs because of it), forums being far less popular in general, and forums being far less popular with younger audiences as they're not as suited to phones and not as far-reaching compared to the likes of Twitter, Instagram and Tiktok.

Given the shifts in some of the business practices of Twitter, Reddit etc lately, as well as how rampant purposeful disinformation, trolling, targeted harassment, spam is, and soon AI will be joining that, it'll become far more difficult to properly source actual information and genuine discussion. Forum-type platforms are likely to become more popular again to some degree, but likely in a new form, like Discord.

Boards will never be what it was. It was the right site at the right time for most of us. But people change, times change, and Boards can only change so much to try match it. The change to this Vanilla stuff to try have a matching desktop/mobile site made them lose more users than they'll ever gain back imo.

Brussels Sprout

I think the responses saying that the decline mirrors the aging of its core user base are probably correct.

I'm a bit bemused by some of the other responses which are implying that there is some kind of woke/progressive bias going on. Seriously? Have ye looked at the CA forum?

• Someone's complaining that they can't discuss migration - there's at least 2 long running threads in that forum dedicated entirely to the topic with new smaller threads popping up all of the time.
• There's also a dedicated traveler bashing thread
• and a dedicated transexual bashing thread
• and 2 different threads for people who want to bash environmentalism

I mean if that doesn't satisfy your urges to "say what you really mean" then you'd probably be best suited to 4Chan where you can have the light-touch moderation that you seem to be craving. I think boards has been more than accommodating.

Astartes

It's a mobile optimized site with no dark mode. All you need to know really

Lavinia

Upgrade was huge downgrade to start with usability and functionality.. somehow just not the same place anymore

Flaneur OBrien

Nah, it was when it was sold to Daft. That was the real beginning of the end. Daft only wanted adverts, but had no choice to buy boards as well.

Before that, it was Devore, Regi and Cloud. You knew where you stood. if you were being racist, misogynist, generally not sound you were shown the door to stormfront.

Boards beers were pleasant places to be and the Santa Strike Force night outs were ace.

After it was sold there was a real focus that it had to make money and that sucked the soul out of boards.

I don’t think daft own boards anymore?

Flaneur OBrien

The best thing about boards.ie was Trent.

Pew pew.

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

The WOKE MOB are pro drug legalisation and pro-sex work.

nachouser

Kinda telling that on the first page there's a guy who created an account today just to have a go.

So, that's part of what happened.

suvigirl

I don't know what happened but I spent many many hours in the forum games threads, they were great fun. They just died after the change though...not sure why....I left soon after that.

Came back lately to see if anything changed. It's just the same few people, you could start a thread and never receive an answer, used to be a great place for finding stuff out. It's a shame.

nachouser

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2057615114/have-you-ever-been-arrested

AVB was fun, in fairness.

CGI_Livia_Soprano

One problem Boards has is that the young, open minded posters of 2005 still post here. However, with the march of time and the shift of values that were once mainstream now considered unacceptable, those posters' values have become incredibly conservative and, in many cases, bigoted, while labouring under the delusion that they are as open-minded (or "logical," or "reasonable") as ever. The general tone of the site has become incredibly right-leaning (or alt-right) in the interim, look at all the threads slagging off immigrants, refugees, trans people, and so on as evidence.

I am relatively new to the site, I only joined under a previous guise less than five years ago, and I enjoy the cut and thrust of debate so unlike many other left-leaning potential posters I wasn't turned off by all the mask-off bigotry here. For other new users, mainly younger, the fact that so much speech bordering on hate-speech is allowed here gives a insurmountable stench that they don't want to be associated with.

tesla_newbie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120756294#Comment_120756294

Thankfully there are folks like you’re good self as a counterweight to the open mindedness you referred to

the 12 th man

Never the same after the last change over of Host,really hard to navigate now with loads of glitches.

bucketybuck

Boards 2nd biggest problem is that when it was busier there were enough people posting to drown out the worst of the total dickheads who pollute every thread.

Now the board is quieter, so those dickheads sound louder. We all know who they are, it's the same ones in every funking thread you open.

They are never going to post in good faith so why even bother trying to have a discussion.

Boards is an empty pint, all that's left are the dregs at the bottom of the glass.

I dont think anything happened as such, social media changed and matured but as it went on boards seemed to be attracting an amount with issues, what is a pity is that economists, accountants, and political heads, those that really understand the property market don't post as much anymore, some were the best explainers of what's really going in an accessible an interesting way.

The rise of podcasts might be a factor if I'm looking for entertainment, comedy, or political information I often listen to a podcast.

There are likely many members who make up porkies about themselves. Fine - it doesn't harm anyone, but what if they use their false persona to lure people, who believe them, offline? Permabear did. He catfished a woman. Not massive but sh1tty and humiliating for her.

And there was another person - a woman, who had tons of different personalities, all over various social media platforms (including here) - who in turn intimidated and harassed people who got to know her offline. I don't know was it that she just liked tormenting people for the sake of it. Then there was the person who got free stuff sent to them... and was ultimately rumbled.

At this stage of social media, we should all know to be extremely careful of people we get to know online... but that doesn't mean that those who sucker people in with a fake persona/story should get off the hook.

valoren

I think the introduction of Thank lead to a lot of thank whoring and threads became predictable. Any AH thread would be first and second pages as quips and jokes to get Thanks, the following few pages would be actual genuine attempts at discussion then the thread would devolve into the usual gaggle of opposing posters with vendettas against each other point scoring and doing gotchas until it would get personal and mods got involved. Wash, rinse and repeat. In short, it became boringly predictable.

CGI_Livia_Soprano

Catfishing people or scamming them is one thing, what I’m talking about is becoming fixated on the lonely posters who create personas to back up their views.

”Disband the social safety net, trust me I’m rich as fück so I know.” Honestly people like that should be pitied more than anything.

Alternatively it is impossible to know if a genuine person with an anonymous account is genuine, so either way speculation about any poster’s private lives are completely pointless, along with “unmasking” trolls.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120756843#Comment_120756843

When they befriend someone to sucker them into their private life.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120756866#Comment_120756866

Yeah, but how do posters know who other posters are contacting offline and know what happened after that?

sunbeam

All I'm going to say is that innocently pming someone on boards who had lots of free stuff sent to them turned into a bizarre and stressful saga and the worst experience I had in a quarter of a century online.

I still have absolutely no idea about how much of what they told me was actually true, though I suspect very little.

And up to recently they were still up to their old tricks elsewhere online.

Leg End Reject

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120756904#Comment_120756904

You're one of many who fell victim to that.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120756894#Comment_120756894

Their victims spoke to others about it.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120756904#Comment_120756904

God that's horrendous.