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Now Ye're Talking - to Boards.ie: Sean

Boards.ie: Mark

For our next AMA, we have one that was much sought after in the AMA Wishlist thread. JCX BXC and Victor requested that Boards.ie staff or management make an appearance, and so we have Boards.ie: Sean here to talk all things Boards.ie.

Please remember that some information may be quite sensitive and he won't be able to disclose absolutely everything. Fire ahead with your questions below

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knucklehead6

begbysback wrote: »

Stats in the last graph are exaggerated by CSG

CSG?

begbysback

Chore sex guy

Sean - has this name reached the ears at the top?

FunGoose

Hi Sean,

I am on boards.ie everyday, I very seldom post as I guess I don't have much to say.

So, obviously I've got a hell of a lot more out of the site/users than I have put in. I have tried to help other users but there are always others who are more qualified/knowledgeable than I am so I end up not posting as it wouldn't do much good (they are much quicker at posting too!).

What other things, do you think, I can try to do to help/repay my fellow boardsies?

Boards.ie: Sean

5rtytry56 wrote: »

Sean, what do you see as the most successful social platform right now?

Depends what you mean by success but if success is measured by size, power, influence, ubiquity and financial clout then it has to be Facebook

Boards.ie: Sean

GLaDOS wrote: »

If you had unlimited funds, what changes would you make to boards?

Now you did say unlimited, right? Not just a large injection of cash. Okay, so this is not an exhaustive but if I had unlimited funds, here as a starter for ten, are some of the things I'd do:

- Hire 5, 10, 15 times more developers, however many it takes, and fix all the issues that our users have told about on the legacy site, add in the new features they've requested and realise (i.e. develop, test and release) the plans we have for the responsive site (which I think are really good, it's just taking us a while to get there), keep both versions of the site running and supported, build proper apps, develop a class leading onboarding process

- Remove all the ads forever (remember it's unlimited funds). I'd still keep things like sponsored posts and sponsored subforums because I think there's value for both the community and brands to be able to interact in these types of fora, but other than that no more ads

- Do something nice for all our mods and admins and do it regularly (a night out, a Christmas pressie, whatever). I think the voluntary, community-led aspect of moderation on Boards is really powerful and I wouldn't want to lose it so I wouldn't see all mods getting paid for their work or anything like that. However, they put it a huge amount and time, effort and dedication to Boards and they don't get nearly enough recognition for it. In fact, often it's only when people have a complaint about them or a decision they've made that they hear from the community. They're human and like all of us they won't always get it 100% right but they do put a huge amount into the site and Boards couldn't operate without them. We should all give them a bit more love

- Spread our wings a bit ... develop and test some new products (we've got a couple of ideas but it's still too early to go into any details as yet)

- Get the word out there about Boards. I think Boards is a great resource and more people should know about it and use it. A bit of marketing and promotion wouldn't go amiss

- Get a table tennis table for the office (we'd need a bigger office ...)

I'm sure I'll think of more but hopefully that's enough to be going on with

eviltwin

Is there anything that can be done to stop persistent reregs?

What is the biggest challenge facing Boards at the moment?

bucketybuck

Are you involved with the daily administration of the forums? Making decisions on complaints or reported problems, things like that?

If so, have you ever decided that enough is enough, that a certain poster is just an ass and their whining is more trouble than its worth, and so got fed up enough to throw due process out the window and just unilaterally ban them from the site, just beause?

[Deleted User]

How come there are so many raciest type posts and paranoid posts about woman on AH lately. There use to be a bit of an effort to keep a lid on it, has that stopped for some reason.

Interesting question why are posters like that attracted to boards.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

JCX BXC

How much of boards would you read youself?

Do you have a regular account to post without identifying yourself as CEO?

fussyonion

Are you aware of any celebs who have Boards accounts?
And I don't mean "social influencers" :rolleyes:

[Deleted User]

Are you guys bricking it trying to get everything ready for GDPR? Honestly, it's one of those processes that digs up skeletons. Complete nightmare.

Do you still host the site yourselves or have you made the jump to aws or similar? (That's not your phone number, it's your AWS bill)

Boards.ie: Sean

robyntmorton wrote: »

I always thought that an employee doing an AMA here would turn into a bit of a trainwreck for people complaining about things being done in a way that they don't like, so thank you for stepping into the lions den!

Thanks

robyntmorton wrote: »

As head honcho, can you hint at anything the userbase has coming its way? Obviously I'm aware that you can't give away anything solid before time for commercial reasons, but hinting at how Boards is evolving for and with the userbase, maybe?

So, from a user experience perspective a big focus of our efforts has been on significantly improving the responsive site. As I previously said (and will continue to repeat as I want there to be no confusion about this) we will continue to support the legacy site. Why? Because this is what many of users like and want.

However, if you've been around for 19 years (as we have) then your user profile and user expectations change over time. If you look at the age profile of our users year-to-date (1st Jan till today), 10% of our users were in the 18-24 age bracket and 33% of users in the 25-34 age bracket. So that's quite a high proportion of our users being 34 or younger.

I'm not that far off 50 and my experience and expectations of the web are going to be different than an 18 year old's. The legacy site is reflective of websites say 10 years ago and for many people this is fine as it works very well for them. But for others and particularly for some in the younger demographic the legacy site can appear complicated, dated and not very user friendly (before I get a slew of younger users telling me how much they like the legacy site I am not saying this applies to everyone). I believe that Boards requires both the legacy site and a properly enhanced and updated responsive site to well serve all of our user base.

I know the current responsive site is not where we want to be but in coming months we should start rolling out significant improvements to it. And here's an interesting stat .. even still 30% of all visitors to Boards choose to view the responsive site for at least part of their session

Boards.ie: Sean

job seeker wrote: »

Hi Sean, What's the strangest private message you've received?

To be honest, none of the PM's I've received have been that strange. They all either telling something isn't working on the site interspersed with the occasional offer of help or enquiry about a collaboration opportunity. All quite mundane, really ...

job seeker wrote: »

Also, is coke and hookers still in fashion or a is it a thing of the past?

Are they ever out of fashion? (but, hell, what would I know)

job seeker wrote: »

Finally, what advice would you give someone who would love to follow in your career path?

- You don't need a 40 year master plan for your career (nothing wrong with having one if that works for you) but at any point in time you need to be able to answer these two questions: am I satisfied that at the moment this is where I want to be in my career? if not, am I clear where I want to go next and what I need to do to help me get there? You always need to be clear about your direction of travel, either happy staying doing what you're doing now or planning for the next move

- Opportunities don't necessarily come knocking at your door, you have to go out and find them (this is a variation on the theme that you create your own luck which for me means being proactive)

- If you're going to do something, even if it's an unavoidable couple of years slogging away in some uninspiring and/or boring role, do it well. It will be noticed and it's a great skill to develop ... even the most inspiring jobs have parts of them that mightn't be particularly interesting, developing the self-discipline to push through those aspects of the role and do them well will serve you well

- Aim for what you want to do, not what others are telling you to do (you're master of your own career). If you want to make a bucket load of cash, great, figure out where your particular skill set can best be employed in parting their hard earned cash from other people and go for it; if you want to save the world then same thing applies, figure out the best match between your skills and the opportunities and work towards that

- Be persistent and resilient, sometimes you have to put in the hard yards to build up the skills / contacts / experience / opportunities you need to get to the next stage of your career

Boards.ie: Sean

GypsyByName wrote: »

What has been your favourite AMA that you have read?

The AMA by Sonics2k - Now Ye're Talking - To A Man With 2 Mothers

It was an open, inspiring piece, got a huge level interest on Boards and was brilliantly topical coming as the Marriage Referendum campaign was gearing up - I thought it was great

Boards.ie: Sean

begbysback wrote: »

As CEO do you have the power to rescind a yellow card?

Don't know, I've never tried it. I always defer to my much more knowledgeable community managers, Niamh and Mark!

Boards.ie: Sean

irishgrover wrote: »

How difficult is it to get the balance right between commercial realities and community spirit?

I'd describe more as delicate rather than difficult.

irishgrover wrote: »

I'm thinking specifically in relation to the "Talk to" forums.
For example, a very clear behavior has emerged in the Talk to forums where the pattern goes as follows..
1. A member makes a request from a "Talk to" company
2. The "Talk to" company then sends a PM to the OP, and then states publicly (via public post) that information has been given / the issue resolved.
3. The OP refutes this, and to defend themselves and their reputation shares directly or refers to the PM.
4. The tread gets closed by boards because sharing of PM's is against rules.
5. I fully understand the original concept of protecting PM's between individuals but when it is being used as a vehicle for purposely mislead, does it not concern you?

On the specific issue above, you can give me any rule you want and I will give you the exception that proves the rule, you can always find examples where any rule or policy does not work particularly well. But that doesn't necessarily mean the rule is a bad rule. In general sharing publicly PM's is a bad thing particularly since both parties have an expectation of privacy of the communication and one party unilaterally breaking that understanding of privacy without the consent of the other seems unfair. And I would point out any Boards member is still free to express their views on whether the issue was adequately dealt with or not and they can do this without sharing the PM.

The alternative is that there is no restriction on sharing PM's in which case they stop being PM's and become just M's. I think this would not be good for Boards, there needs to be a mechanism where users can communicate with each privately if needed.

irishgrover wrote: »

Alternatively, another example is obviously Gearbest, where a poster would get labeled a shrill and be shot on sight for even mentioning them, and then overnight after they pay to hop into bed with you, boards an gearbest are suddenly best of friends, and end result is allegedly counterfeit and potentially dangerous products being bought by unsuspecting boardsies..

Ok, Gearbest previously misbehaved on the site , they were called out on it and banned. They went away, thought about things and cam back a while later and said that they wanted to do things the right way - pay for a sponsored forum, be clear that they are a paying customer of Boards and are on the site as company representatives etc.

There are two ways you can approach a situation like this:

1) Say that if commercial companies have misbehaved previously on Boards then we want no truck with them in the future

2) Say that we want companies to do the right thing by Boards, to be up front with our users about who they are and what they are trying to promote and sell. And so, if by previously banning companies who misbehave we get them to re-evaluate their approach, we welcome them back because they have agreed to abide by our rules

Like other things we talked about in this AMA there is no right or wrong answer to which of the above two approaches to take. But let me give you two reasons why we have chosen to take the second approach:

- firstly, if we take the first approach there is zero incentive for other similar companies to do the right thing. If other companies see that by holding their hands up, admitting their mistakes and trying to do things in the right way, the response from us is "No, you've brunt your bridges and we don't ever want you on the site" why would they even bother. At best, this would mean we get the same level of shilling as now, at worst we get even more

- secondly, no question about it, it helps get a bit more revenue into the company

Personally, I admire Gearbest for holding their hands up and trying to do the right thing. And they have worked very hard to try and be responsive to the community against some very significant headwinds of negative sentiment. Fair duece to them, I say

GypsyByName

Boards.ie: Sean wrote: »

The AMA by Sonics2k - Now Ye're Talking - To A Man With 2 Mothers

It was an open, inspiring piece, got a huge level interest on Boards and was brilliantly topical coming as the Marriage Referendum campaign was gearing up - I thought it was great

And not mine???????

Boards.ie: Sean

GypsyByName wrote: »

And not mine???????

A close 2nd

Boards.ie: Sean

irishgrover wrote: »

How difficult is it to get the balance right between commercial realities and community spirit?

I'm thinking specifically in relation to the "Talk to" forums.
...

Alternatively, another example is obviously Gearbest
...

I fully understand that you exist to make a profit from our existence, and hopefully provide a service in return, but is it difficult to get the balance right? How do you balance between top line and community ?

On a more general point regarding the balance between top line and community .... what the community sees is the decisions we make that are commercial in nature (putting ads on the site, having subforums like Gearbest, policing Talk To's etc.). What the community doesn't see and can't see is the decisions we make that are community in nature and completely non commercial. We could easily make (at least in the short term!) more money, we've had commercial approaches that involved more ads placements on the site, skinning the site, more intrusive ads, sharing usage data and user interests, not allowing any negative comments about certain paying customers etc.

The community doesn't see these decisions because these are the calls we make when deciding to decline those revenue opportunities. I can think of a number of Irish publishers who have commercialised their sites a lot more than us. We have decided not to go down that route and we are constantly striving to find the right balance between giving the community what they want and running a sustainable and financially viable company and there is a healthy tension internally between community management (who are genuine advocates for our users and argue passionately their case) and sales (who we are pushing to constantly look for more revenue opportunities).

I know that without our users we are nothing. Our users are our content creators, our users provide the traffic numbers that make us attractive to advertisers. If we lose our users then we might as well shut up shop and go and do something else with our lives.

Equally, our users won't have a site to go to (at least nothing resembling its current form) if we don't make some money. A site generating 2.4 million unique visits a month that has always been and continues to be free to use costs money to keep up and running, servers, hosting, maintenance and support, community management, sales ... I could go on

So we all need each other and finding the right balance between community and top line is something we need to regularly check and course correct when necessary. That's why I described it in a previous post as a delicate task.

Boards.ie: Sean

hawkelady wrote: »

Have you ever been contacted by solicitors looking to sue because of a post ?? Have guards ever contacted you looking for info on a poster because of something that was posted?

Yes and yes!

We regularly get solicitors letters in about comments on posted on the site. Most of the time we deal with the matter and everyone moves on. Rarely, it can proceed to a case being taken against us, normally for defamation. Since I've been here we haven't been in a situation where any defamation cases when as far as a full hearing although in one instance we were in a legal process for about 2 years before the case was dropped. We have also been before the Equality Tribunal (which found in our favour).

In terms of the Guards it is rare that they will contact us. Our position in this regard is crystal clear, we will release no information about a user (other than what is publicly visible on the site) unless there is a court order requiring us to do so (in which case we have no choice!).

Robxxx7

Boards.ie: Sean wrote: »

I'd describe more as delicate rather than difficult.

On the specific issue above, you can give me any rule you want and I will give you the exception that proves the rule, you can always find examples where any rule or policy does not work particularly well. But that doesn't necessarily mean the rule is a bad rule. In general sharing publicly PM's is a bad thing particularly since both parties have an expectation of privacy of the communication and one party unilaterally breaking that understanding of privacy without the consent of the other seems unfair. And I would point out any Boards member is still free to express their views on whether the issue was adequately dealt with or not and they can do this without sharing the PM.

The alternative is that there is no restriction on sharing PM's in which case they stop being PM's and become just M's. I think this would not be good for Boards, there needs to be a mechanism where users can communicate with each privately if needed.

Ok, Gearbest previously misbehaved on the site , they were called out on it and banned. They went away, thought about things and cam back a while later and said that they wanted to do things the right way - pay for a sponsored forum, be clear that they are a paying customer of Boards and are on the site as company representatives etc.

There are two ways you can approach a situation like this:

1) Say that if commercial companies have misbehaved previously on Boards then we want no truck with them in the future

2) Say that we want companies to do the right thing by Boards, to be up front with our users about who they are and what they are trying to promote and sell. And so, if by previously banning companies who misbehave we get them to re-evaluate their approach, we welcome them back because they have agreed to abide by our rules

Like other things we talked about in this AMA there is no right or wrong answer to which of the above two approaches to take. But let me give you two reasons why we have chosen to take the second approach:

- firstly, if we take the first approach there is zero incentive for other similar companies to do the right thing. If other companies see that by holding their hands up, admitting their mistakes and trying to do things in the right way, the response from us is "No, you've brunt your bridges and we don't ever want you on the site" why would they even bother. At best, this would mean we get the same level of shilling as now, at worst we get even more

- secondly, no question about it, it helps get a bit more revenue into the company

Personally, I admire Gearbest for holding their hands up and trying to do the right thing. And they have worked very hard to try and be responsive to the community against some very significant headwinds of negative sentiment. Fair duece to them, I say

I think you need to read some of the posts in their thread about blatantly supplying counterfeit/fake goods and wonder whether its the company that you should admire or look to protect your customers ...

9or10

Boards.ie: Sean wrote: »

Ok, Gearbest previously misbehaved on the site , they were called out on it and banned. They went away, thought about things and cam back a while later and said that they wanted to do things the right way - pay for a sponsored forum, be clear that they are a paying customer of Boards and are on the site as company representatives etc.

There are two ways you can approach a situation like this:

1) Say that if commercial companies have misbehaved previously on Boards then we want no truck with them in the future

2) Say that we want companies to do the right thing by Boards, to be up front with our users about who they are and what they are trying to promote and sell. And so, if by previously banning companies who misbehave we get them to re-evaluate their approach, we welcome them back because they have agreed to abide by our rules

Like other things we talked about in this AMA there is no right or wrong answer to which of the above two approaches to take. But let me give you two reasons why we have chosen to take the second approach:

- firstly, if we take the first approach there is zero incentive for other similar companies to do the right thing. If other companies see that by holding their hands up, admitting their mistakes and trying to do things in the right way, the response from us is "No, you've brunt your bridges and we don't ever want you on the site" why would they even bother. At best, this would mean we get the same level of shilling as now, at worst we get even more

- secondly, no question about it, it helps get a bit more revenue into the company

Personally, I admire Gearbest for holding their hands up and trying to do the right thing. And they have worked very hard to try and be responsive to the community against some very significant headwinds of negative sentiment. Fair duece to them, I say

That's absolutely fine - a commercial company made a commercial decision.

OK, but there was no amesty or forgiveness for the users that shilled for GB - and that leaves a bit of a taste with me.

Particularly now as GB is offering users some vague, commission based associate programme. Although they haven't actually said shilling.

Incidentally the GB thread was one of the most interesting and lively for some time.

Jobs OXO

9or10 wrote: »

That's absolutely fine - a commercial company made a commercial decision.

OK, but there was no amesty or forgiveness for the users that shilled for GB - and that leaves a bit of a taste with me.

Particularly now as GB is offering users some vague, commission based associate programme. Although they haven't actually said shilling.

Incidentally the GB thread was one of the most interesting and lively for some time.

The GB feedback thread? That type of discussion is suppressed now.

misstearheus

If you could rename the Website what would you call it?

Any sign of loads of lovely Emoticons/Smilies to make an appearance down the road?!

What is your personal favourite Forum?

longshanks

Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?

Boards.ie: Sean

Colonel Claptrap wrote: »

1. The previous iteration of the Politics Cafe turned toxic fairly quickly. A lot of long-time posters shut down their accounts which was a pity.

Management of the forum looked like such a pain for the mods and admins. Are you happy with the Cafe currently? Looking back, do you think shutting down the old Cafe was the right decision?

On issues like whether to shut down specific forums or threads, I think these decisions are best taken by Niamh and Mark, our Community Managers and so I usually will be guided by their views.

Colonel Claptrap wrote: »

2. What does a day in the life of the boards CEO look like? Is it as glamourous as it sounds?

If only

We have a great team here in Boards (split into 3 main sections - dev, community management and sales) who are at the core of all that we do here in the office. One way to think about a lot of what I do is as a cross between a mechanic (adjusting the settings when needed and making sure all sections of the team are working smoothly together) and a route planner (deciding where we're goinmg and what's the best way to get there). A lot of my average day is spent on one of those two tasks.

Colonel Claptrap wrote: »

3. I understand that targeting new revenue streams - such as sponsored forums - is vital to Boards future. But is there an active plan to increase the number of active posters? Would you be willing to share some stats on posting trends?

On average we have over 9,300 posts on the site every day which is a is very substantial number. We saw some drop in the average number of daily posts over 2015 (even though the number of pageviews has been holding relatively steady) and since the start of 2016 this rate of decline has decreased and has now started to level out.

Encouraging more people to post and increasing the number of active posters is extremely important for us. Posts are our lifeblood, without people posting there is no Boards. It is hard to disentangle the multiple factors that can cause either increases or decreases in the number of active posters but there are 3 that I am very interested in:

1. The move from desktop to mobile. In Dec 2014, the traffic to our site broke down as follows: Desktop 47.1%, Mobile 41.0%, Tablet (where users could either be using the Desktop or Mobile versions of Boards depending on device and preference) 11.9%. In Sept 2017 it was Desktop 33.1%, Mobile 58.9%, Tablet 8.0%

In data is clear, there is a move from desktop to mobile. One big question for me is that for a site like Boards do users find posting harder / more off putting on mobile compared to desktop? If so then this would definitely impact on number of active posters. We don't know the answer to this question yet but are introducing new tracking measures to associate each post with the category of device that was used to make the post. Once we have let this run for a couple of months we should be able to see how big an impact device category has on propensity to post. If we find that users are less likely to post on mobile devices then we need to make that experience a lot easier for them. How, by improving the UI and UX on mobile - exactly what we're working on at the moment with the significant updates we are making to the responsive site.

2. Poor onboarding experience. As I pointed out previously 55% of people who went to the trouble of registering with Boards never made a single post. That's a high number, particularly given that the only two advantages that registering bring is the ability to post and the ability to save preferences / follow forums / follow threads. We need to not just encourage but actively guide and help newly registered members to make their first couple of posts.

3. A welcoming community. Now I am not generalising this to the whole site but there are definitely a number of forums that range from not very welcoming to downright hostile to new posters. At times, some members of these forums are the same ones talking about how quiet Boards has become recently! If we want an active and vibrant site with lots of people joining in the conversation then we're going to have to cut newbies a bit of slack!

You know what, if they're new they mightn't understand all the rules or they mightn't have had time to read the previous 367 posts in the thread before they chip in with a comment or a question. For sure, if they break the rules let them know (and if they repeatedly break them, sanction them). But we can either let them know in a encouraging and friendly way or we can publicly call them out in what can turn out to be a exercise of ritual humiliation. And I know what one is going to encourage them to come back and post again and which one isn't.

Unlike the first two points, this isn't an issue that we here in the office can solve. And it isn't an issue that the mods and admins can solve by themselves. This is a issue that lies firmly in the hands of the community as a whole.

Boards.ie: Sean

Cake of Tremendous Power wrote: »

Why did ye ditch Vbulletin? The answer might be obvious but I know **** all about running a forum

We didn't. Underneath the hood we still are running (a modified version of) vBulletin. But we are moving more of the codebase away from calling directly into vBulletin by placing an API layer above the vBulleting code and gradually migrating all front end code to this API

Boards.ie: Sean

begbysback wrote: »

Chore sex guy

Sean - has this name reached the ears at the top?

Hadn't reached my ears until this AMA - now I'm curious

Boards.ie: Sean

FunGoose wrote: »

Hi Sean,

I am on boards.ie everyday, I very seldom post as I guess I don't have much to say.

So, obviously I've got a hell of a lot more out of the site/users than I have put in. I have tried to help other users but there are always others who are more qualified/knowledgeable than I am so I end up not posting as it wouldn't do much good (they are much quicker at posting too!).

What other things, do you think, I can try to do to help/repay my fellow boardsies?

JCX BXC wrote: »

How much of boards would you read youself?

Do you have a regular account to post without identifying yourself as CEO?

Thanks for the offer to help out FunGoose!

Just like in offline groups, in online communities like Boards different people will work in different ways. Some will be more vocal than others and will contribute more to the conversation, others like FunGoose will listen more and contribute occasionally rather than regularly. Boards is and should be a home for both. If you look at my own posting history on Boards I am more like FunGoose. I do not constantly post on Boards, rather I tend to do it in bursts when I have something to say, like now (and I do have a regular non-Boards account on Boards).

In terms of trying to help/repay fellow boardsies, I would say that positive feedback is very powerful, perhaps when you've got something useful from Boards, letting the poster(s) know would be appreciated