Important News!!

Yup.

Basically when you Google something now, Gemini AI does it for you where as before you'd have to actually click into the source/website, such as Boards.ie and read it yourself. And maybe sign up and start posting.

And guess what, Gemini don't pay Boards.ie for those would be sessions.

We've slepwalked into a completely new way of how the internet works.

I've brought this up three times in the past. Niamh and somebody else said they were going to look into it but I haven't heard anything since.

Yeah I think I mentioned it before as well! I also think many of us suggested plenty of ideas years ago but nothing, surely we could all see the iceberg dead ahead years and years ago whilst the powers that be reorganized the deck chairs.

Other forums I’m on have a donate button. I’d much rather throw a few quid instead of a sub.

This site is so much more than a forum. It’s a treasure trove of knowledge that Irish people can(or used to be able to) search for. Like how to tackle a specific legal problem, or dealing with insurance issues, or where to find a niche tradesman. There’s pages upon pages of threads that should not be lost.

This website is not the future of conversation and has been trending in a clear and inevitable direction for years. Vanilla and recent Google changes are part of the story, sure - but if you take a step back, declining users and dying sub-fora are a reality of the boards.ie experience for quite some time.

If I were to pay, I'd need to know a great deal more about what an exit strategy entails, including the baseline numbers required to make it work, etc. My assumption for some time has been that this site will fail and be abandoned. I also assume that the infrastructure and hosting packages, etc, represent a significant outlay that would prohibit the calls for this to be 'turned over to the community' when the time comes.

If people are to pay, then, in my opinion, they need to have assurance that growth is not an assumption and the plan here is about maintenance and end-of-life extension. If there is still a business behind this, looking to turn a profit and thinking a subscription model will do the trick, it seems to me a poor investment for the user. Money down the drain.

Will paying subscribers get a voice in how things run? Will paying subscribers get special privileges? Can / should you be banned as a paying subscriber? What does "community" really mean in a paid subscription model? I don't expect excellent answers here, to be honest.

As someone who has a number of “bans” for ridiculous reasons including moderator incompetence and over zealousness , I’d happily pay an annual subscription to keep boards afloat but I would want to see this ridiculous over modding approach and penalties dumped - we’ve gone from a year ago with no mod in sight to bans for the most trivial of issues - it’s ridiculous at this point

There’s tons of gibberish too 😀- and with about 17 years of posting I’d include myself in that category

But yeah- motors forum alone is a treasure trove no less I’m sure Cycling or BBQ threads or food etc etc

I could see a few folk who lead out on these forums and are respected setting up their own discussion forums

Are these new envisaged subscribers going to be paying for AI scrapers to train on them?

Can anyone answer that?

They did until some admin changed a guy's profile and proved it's not secure

People are going nuts for €30 smart watches in the BA forum - Has anyone in Boards HQ considered buying a bulk load of them then flogging them at a profit?!

Boards is such an important part of Ireland’s open online voice and discussion.

With alternatives like reddit Ireland being quietly and heavily censored to align with certain viewpoints and keep advertisers happy, it's a real shame things have come to this. Then again, there are better niche Irish sub reddit forums that have the Boards spirit.

Boards feels like the last of a dying breed in that sense where people can post in a free manner and you will find all sorts of sub forums/topics to discuss, with people specialising in the forum. Now we have garbled messes of websites where everything is lumped into one pot and things get lost in the spam/shuffle.