What would you do if you owned the site?

Pintman Paddy Losty · 08-11-2023 10:09PM #1

Imagine you've found yourself in a situation where you've come in to a good bit of money, and for whatever reason you decide to buy boards.ie.

What changes would you make. What direction would you take your site? How would you breathe new life in to a site from a bygone era?

gifted · 08-11-2023 10:18PM

Id lay off the drink first anyway.

Jim_Hodge · 08-11-2023 10:25PM

I'd look at the traffic and seeing, as right now, there were posts in over 50 distinct threads in the past 20 minutes I'd run a campaign to sell more advertising. What would you do yourself?

Ubbquittious · 09-11-2023 12:19AM

I would take the site off whatever hosting it's on now and throw it onto a Raspberry Pi running phpBB because shur it's getting feck all traffic anyway.

Slideways · 09-11-2023 01:05AM

I doubt you would need “a good bit of money”

The site is worth 4/5s of fûck all.

You could say Boards.ie were trend setters, they took a thriving website and did a Twitter on it long before Elon came up with that idea

jj880 · 09-11-2023 01:18AM

Id go at it awful and very hard with a few devs to create a top quality mobile app. Then probably never use the mobile site again.

Gregor Samsa · 09-11-2023 01:18AM

~~Collect Underpants~~ Buy Boards.ie
????
Profit

freshpopcorn · 09-11-2023 11:30AM

I'd get a function that would allow you to make certain forums invisible!

Jim_Hodge · 09-11-2023 12:21PM

I'd get rid of posters who constantly complain about the site but still are willing to use it F.O.C.

EmmetSpiceland · 09-11-2023 01:00PM

First thing I would do would be to give all mods an anonymous account, one they could run along side their “personal” account. I believe this would attract, more normal, users to the job and would eliminate any potential doxxing or attacks by deranged users of this site, or others.

I would, then, set up a “dedicated” forum for the shinnerbots, specifically designated for their whatabouttery and propaganda.

After that it would be another forum, this time designed for the MGTOW types, and the others with clear “issues” with women, just to keep all their odious, and contemptible, opinions away from, more normal, forums like “After Hours”.

Finally, I would remove as much moderation from the “Current Affairs” forum as possible. As “light touch” as possible. Only serious breaches of site-wide rules would be actions. Far too much time is wasted on trying to police the place and actions in there tends to poison the rest of the site when those reprimanded, or banned, scuttle out and infect other areas.

z80CPU · 09-11-2023 01:16PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058321770/what-would-you-do-if-you-owned-the-site

For some reason this reminds me of a text based adventure for the zx spectrum, " Kill YS" where instead of buying out the your sinclair magazine staff, you've killed them all.

Then you have to deal with the clients of the magazine

If I ended up owning boards.ie I'd quickly dump it for what shekles I could get pretty much.

The opinion is already pretty much decided before it is discussed anyway

z80CPU · 09-11-2023 01:17PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121344577#Comment_121344577

A raspberry pi 3 should do.

ancapailldorcha · 09-11-2023 01:18PM

Frankly, I am amazed the site still exists. I can't imagine that it turns a profit and there are still glaring technical issues on top of features that were lost in the transition from vbulletin to Vanilla.

To answer the OP's question, I'd probably either flog it or keep it going if I could afford it. In the event that I couldn't do either, I'd have to shut it down.

eightieschewbaccy · 09-11-2023 02:06PM

Probably a large scale consolidation of forums that are rarely used.

Creamy Goodness · 09-11-2023 02:14PM

I'd put it out of its misery and pull the plug to be honest. It's a shadow of its former self for a multitude of reasons.

People - myself included - would be happier without it and the majority of cesspool discussions that are here.

ancapailldorcha · 09-11-2023 02:16PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121346108#Comment_121346108

I'd be sad without it and, without going into detail, I've seen the ugly alternative option to this place.

Creamy Goodness · 09-11-2023 02:19PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121346114#Comment_121346114

So would I, I did work for boards many moons ago (2010-2012) so it has a place in my heart. The alternatives suck but I haven't built an affinity to them like I have checking boards somewhat regularly (dwindling more and more for various reasons).

Would love to turn it back to what it was in the earlier days, small microcosms of life in Ireland. The first place you check for hyper-specific things in Ireland, not to see 500 threads in a week about dole bashing. Which I don't think it's possible to do as those people have grown up and left, moved to other platforms like fb/instagram/whatsapp etc.

jj880 · 09-11-2023 02:41PM

Definitely keep it for now. The discussion is still good for topics Im interested in. As Ive said in the Welcome To New Boards.ie thread I cant afford to not be on Boards. The amount of great bargains and offers that members post is excellent. Easily saved me 1000+ euro this year.

TheAnalyst_ · 09-11-2023 02:51PM

< admin snip> <user warned>

Strumms · 09-11-2023 04:41PM

I’d invest in it being less glitchy… if I use boards for 90 minutes a day in total…. You’d lose track of the number of occasions now that it crashes or reboots … usually mid post creation…so I’d try sort that.

otherwise probably different attitudes to moderating certain aspects of it….

its a good site but probably frustrating that certain issues DO at times detract from the user experience…

09-11-2023 05:12PM

I'd switch if off, then switch it on again, and see if that fixed it.

TokTik · 09-11-2023 05:18PM

Advertise it. How are potential new poster meant to know the place exists? More traffic means more advertising income.
Cut moderation to abuse, anything illegal, circular conversations and sh1t-posting. Just because someone has a different opinion to a Mod shouldn’t mean they are persona non-grata. Not everyone supports Israel and Russia as examples, and once they are not being abusive etc they should have a voice here.
Hire more mods and have a Chinese wall between mods and those above them. I’ve seen people complain on here about disagreeing with a mod action, being told to take it higher, and the same mod is the higher power also. A ridiculous situation.
Find a suitable host. Vanilla is horrible.
Try to have more varied and interesting AMA guests and have them stickied on top of home page to draw people in.
Decent mobile app.
Sell it for billions to Elon.

antimatterx · 09-11-2023 05:21PM

Migrate it off vanilla to a custom build in a modern stack.

BrokenArrows · 09-11-2023 05:26PM

Id put the website back to its design a few years ago. Whatever they did is absolutely terrible. Impossible to find anything.

highgiant1985 · 09-11-2023 06:31PM

Fire all the mods!

Heighway61 · 09-11-2023 07:59PM

If I bought boards I'd try to get rid of the mod/admin personal fiefdoms. Be that in forums, categories or site wide. Ok, it can help in keeping the plebs under control but it chokes the site. Let the place breathe again

I would merge many of subforums back into their parent forums. Would mean a single post would have more visibility and a better chance of interaction.

I would try to find a way to recognise (or reward) the genuine, helpful, friendly, intelligent posters. Some are pure gold but not appreciated. They are perhaps the site's biggest asset. With the demise of the commercial Talk To forums would some form of community Talk To work? A large number of first posts are in the Feedback forum. People come to the ste with a question or problem. I would look to have an easier path into the site for these first time posters rather than closing or moving the feedback post (eventually) and/or chastising the new poster.

If I owned the site I would bust my balls to try to get Community back. The commercial approach hasn't been a great success. Maybe it's enough of a success for the current owner but as per the op if there was enough financial room I would try to regroup, stabilise, and go again with incremental commercialisation, taking on board the mistakes of the past.

Boards 2010 would probably open a feedback thread for this topic. Boards 2023 will probably close this thread.

Ask the community for advice, particularly with regard to looking for a way to clean up the Vanilla mess as cheaply as possible, but reliably this time.