Why did you signed up to Boards.ie

It was a quake board. I played quake and starcraft and met other Irish players here. I happened to work in an internet cafe at the time (remember them 😁)

I was probably more active on P45 back then. It was another board that died a few year ago.

Signed up to quake.ie to find others to play Quake.

Signed up to boards.ie in 2004 and was a few years before I realised they were connected. Managed to get my accounts merged.

Well blast me with piss and feed me to the coke and hookers.

(PS I'm not really facekicker or pighead, for clarity)

I'd read boards on and off since around '99 but actually signed up as I was spending so much time reading the 9/11 threads as it happened.

Hard to believe that's all over 20 years ago now.

Dangerhere.com died.

Drama, airsoft? first I heard, any more detail?

Boards.ie should be renamed boreds.ie

Sounds right!

I can't remember exactly when, I'm sure I read the site for ages prior to that - this would probably be about 08-09? Message boards were were it was at back then if you wanted to find out about anything or chat to people who shared common interests to yourself. And boards just seemed to be the best of the lot: incredibly varied, Irish-centric and with a huge active userbase filled with all kinds of people, even down to the tiniest regional sub-forum. It felt like if you had a question to ask about anything, there was probably already going to be a thread on it, or if you got one going you could expect traction and good responses pretty quick. I view that couple of years, around the turn of the decade, as boards halcyon period: the place was hopping and there was a genuinely social feel to it - there would be meet-ups/beers etc on a pretty regular basis, at least in the regional sub-forum that I would frequent.

I've had two or three other accounts down through the years. The first was connected to a college email address and when I lost access to that address I couldn't log myself back in after forgetting my password, and I think I lost another in similar fashion. And there was a hack back in 2010/11(?) which I think nuked another one - but I could have my order and my dates slightly mixed up. Been on this one now for a long while.

Originally I only came here to post about films, music, football or local stuff. I didn't even know what After Hours was for years. I'd see people mentioning it elsewhere on the site and I hadn't a clue what they were on about: I didn't even realise that there was a separate forum called AH. But, honestly, the other forums were busy enough that you didn't even have to come here for debate. Over time though the traffic has dwindled.

As another poster said earlier in the thread, we all give out about it, but, at the end of the day, it is a great site. I know traffic is way down and once lively forums are kinda hanging on life support, but there is still a bit of life to be found and it can, even now, be a great resource, - I'd be very sad to see boards disappear. And I'll always prefer the structure of a linear thread on something like boards to the busy incoherence of something like reddit. It's just a pity that the userbase has dwindled. People blame moderation etc, I'm not sure about that. I think it's just a fact of life that people move on and the userbase ages outs and that basically old school message boards are just not that interesting to younger users.

I have been knocking around these parts for nigh on 22 years! .... I was involved in pirate radio and the new facility of boards.ie , allowed us an opportunity to open a forum for direct contact with our listeners. It was groundbreaking at the time and tied in nicely with our early experiments at web streaming too.

This was back in the days when we had to divert our single request phone line to the dial up modem, to 'go international'. We also had to read out complicated URL designations to tell listeners where to find the stream.

Yes.. I am that old.