Important News!!

hometruths · 10-07-2025 09:02AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123618972#Comment_123618972

Over time I feel like a bit of an American attitude was adopted where if you don't agree with the majority then you're a bad person who should be warned or banned. I don't feel like I changed my writing style a huge amount but I went from going 5+ years and 5000 posts on my first account without a warning to something like 10 warnings and a ban in the end on this one. I could be wrong but I feel like the place changed not me….
….From then on the whole place was on a path to be a lot more personality and hive mind based where disagreeing in a discussion was enough to get a warning or ban. So what's the point anymore. That's what killed it for me. If I could actually discuss things with people I'd still be here daily.

Fair point, well made. Totally agree, and I think that is what has killed the traffic and activity far more than Google AI results or the issues with Vanilla. These things obviously have compounded the problem, but really they are just convenient excuses for not admitting the real issue.

In its prime Boards was an excellent discussion site for debate and discussion, the strength of which was in the conflicting views of the posters. Nowadays there is very little tolerance for genuine discussion.

Over and above the warnings and bans I've seen handed out to others for very little, what really drives me mad personally is that some of my posts have simply been deleted by a mod without comment or any sort of warning. This has happened repeatedly. There was nothing in them to suggest I'd broken any site rules, and it is impossible to get any kind of feedback as to why the post might have been deleted, as you cannot PM a mod if you don't know who deleted it. And I've better things to do with my time than PMing Admins to find out who deleted it and why etc.

I think at some stage, and it happened over time, the admin and modding of the site became less about recognising that the site would live and die by the user generated content and as such the users were the most valuable assets of the site, and more about the modding team trying to steer what they believed to be the quality of the content, believing the modding team were the most valuable assets of the site.

This has been raised time and time again, and short answer from Boards is essentially - "It's a free service, run by unpaid volunteer mods, posters don't have any rights to express their opinions, if you don't like it you can lump it, there are plenty of other sites you can visit, don't let the door hit you on the way out."

And that's fair enough. The site owners can do what they like with it, that's understood, but a huge number of users have taken heed and thought what's the point.

Having the run the site on that basis and driven the user engagement into the ground, it's a bit much now to start blaming Google and AI for the self inflicted problems with the site.

Inviere · 10-07-2025 09:10AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123619520#Comment_123619520

50 a year is nothing for the majority, true. However, in the bigger picture, they're looking for €100k a year in perpetuity, for a VASTLY worse product than we have here now as I type this. A lot of people seem to have forgotten just how abysmal stock Vanilla is as a fit for boards. It genuinely can't be understated. People are going to drop like flies from the ranks of donators once they see/remember how bad it is, and how much traffic drops away (again) once we go back to that.

I think the point some are making is that, that alone is going to absolutely murder the site, irregardless of how many donators sign up, and as such, it's in essence, fruitless to throw money at it.

I feel for Mike obviously, as he's had the toughest gig of all here, and it's essentially his job on the line here. Mike has done his best to hold the crumbling walls up. The other lad couldn't even be bothered to make this announcement himself, which he should have done, but that shouldn't surprise anyone - nothing new there.

Goldengirl · 10-07-2025 09:13AM

Ah look mistakes were made for sure. But most of us still here have persevered with the glitches because we like reading and using various parts of the site .

I think it's definitely worth a subscription and a push from the userbase to try to keep it open .

Anybody know what happens our personal data etc if it suddenly goes ?

Do we get an option to delete before that happens ?

Where is Odhrán ?

And yes Mike is left carrying the can here this last year .

greenspurs · 10-07-2025 09:19AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123619593#Comment_123619593

This...

This exactly....

Mods running people out of Boards , its gone to a stage where youd be very hesitant to post anything that contradicts the mainstream thinking in a thread , in fear of getting warned/banned...

Very little engagement with mods , just the ' its a free service go elsewhere if you dont like it' response.

So yes , its a bit rich to now come on and blame G0ggle ... mods have run more people out of here without a care, and my mindset is , if it goes it goes. Plenty others out there, it would be a shame , but hey ho...

El Gato De Negocios · 10-07-2025 09:20AM

As difficult as it is to accept, Boards has been circling the drain for years. It all started I feel with the regulatory induced close account option. Prior to that, people couldn't simply rage quit, they got steamed up about something, said they were never going to post again but calmed down and returned in a few days or weeks. Once that came into effect the entire user experience became disposable and the sense of community died.

There have been various "cuts" across the site as people become more and more entrenched, the closure of the prison forum, the closure of Nein 11 and many other things that in isolation were annoying but combined were death blows.

The final nail was obviously the move to vanilla, talk about a pig in a poke!

I'll happily pay 50 quid a year and dont care about seeing ads, they are on every other website i use anyway so why should boards be any different? Unfortunately the writing has been on the wall for some time and subs will only be a plaster over a gunshot wound.

Thanks for everything Boards, i had a great time.

ELM327 · 10-07-2025 09:27AM

Boards has been a part of my life since I was 20 odd and I'll be 40 next year. I've made friends here, been to weddings because of people here, learned oodles of stuff I'd never have known otherwise, and as an autist it is part of my workday on a regular basis.

I was a paid sub back in the day (not on this account) but.. shall we say.. some forum bans and username changes later I am still here. Older, greyer, fatter and much better off for my history with boards.ie

It's not what it once was, of course, but times change. Make a tiktok account and post regularly (perhaps fund this with some of the sub money). I'd probably subscribe at the costs advertised to keep the lights on.

Also, if you're going to turn off the lights I'd be happy to make you an offer for the site as a going concern.

breezy1985 · 10-07-2025 09:30AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123619637#Comment_123619637

It's quite clear from this thread and any got to do with modding that "not mainstream" means a load of racist incel nonsense.

Ya the mods picked sides because one side was pure scum.

circadian · 10-07-2025 09:31AM

I moved to reddit years ago and ended up coming back once they effectively killed third party apps. Vanilla was definitely a big hit as it just didn't perform as before.

I think misinformation and culture wars bullshit has made debate worse to an extent and obviously harder to moderate.

I wonder what the breakdown of costs is for running the site. As others have said there's plenty of technical ability to keep it running/migrate to a better platform.

Would it be possible to to get a breakdown of costs?

_Puma_ · 10-07-2025 09:39AM

While having a go at the moderation is a valid point, it's not the crux of the issue. I've seen the best and the worst of the moderation over the past 2 or 3 years since the vanilla change and genuinely I think it's unfair to finger this as the problem here. There is a lot worse out there. I find the moderating team are doing a great job at removing all the Api crawling and AI generated posts that now plague modern group think forums like Reddit. Boards alwayas was a general interest forum with an Irish twist and in general is light touch with the group think moderation we see on other larger commercialised forums like Reddit.

What this is in essence is a commercial decision. I don't buy the "Google algorithm" either as a cause. Boards has to make it's commercial owners an ever increasing profit.

The move to Vanilla was a a decision to reduce hosting costs. Hosting costs are still a problem and it would be better to just own up to this fact and address it. For example I don't think there would be much blowback if a decision was made to auto archive posts and forums that fall below a usage or time threshold.

Vanilla customisations were necessary so that we still had a viable minimum boards product. Rolling those back now would be the ultimate nail in the coffin I think.

Personally I would stump up a yearly contribution to keep the lights on but I fear that's not the intention here. It seems to me that this is just a decision to try and extract additional profit out of the website for its owner.

I already contribute to hosting costs for other special interest forums run by voulenteers. I don't think it's the same situation here unfortunately.

LuckyLloyd · 10-07-2025 09:40AM

Realistically, smaller, more vibrant forums should consider moving ASAP. You can obtain a very decent cloud-based vBulletin package and a domain for under €100 per year. More than enough for a small dedicated community. The writing is on the wall here, and getting ahead of what's coming will give you a place to switch to immediately once the inevitable happens.

In particular, I hope someone can provide M.T. Cranium with an alternative place to post.

Yes, you may split a small community initially, but what is on offer here is to pay into a failing idea. Full-time salaries, exorbitant hosting fees, and a massive DB of forums and history that your small community doesn't need. When the reality is now confirmed that your small community will be washed away with the platform as a whole. Why subsidise a largesse that offers no functional value to you, the active member of a small community?

Larger forums, like Current Affairs, are a different story. You're presumably here for the traffic (which is declining) and know that alternatives like Reddit will be there for you when it fails. That's a different proposition.

fplfan12345 · 10-07-2025 09:41AM

I would be very happy to pay a sub and keep boards alive but I’ve ZERO interest in paying for that Vanilla experience. It’s crazy to even ask us to pay for that. People left the site because of it !

Hopefully a solution can be found that doesn’t involve Vanilla.

circadian · 10-07-2025 09:43AM

I genuinely wonder about the costs and can only imagine the database/storage is the largest cost and would be the hardest to trim down.

I feel like Boards could cull or archive in some way, old threads, reducing the footprint.

Barcley · 10-07-2025 09:46AM

Can't see it working unless subscribers get extra features versus non-subscribers otherwise you're just relying on good-will. For example, the ability to delete or edit old posts, these things are possible on most social media sites.

breezy1985 · 10-07-2025 09:47AM

The biggest problem is surely just demographic. Maybe I am misremembering but people were complaining about traffic being way down before the switch to Vanilla.

It's like one of those memes about middle aged men whk can't figure out why they never see their friends anymore.

castletownman · 10-07-2025 09:47AM

A subscription with no real perks on a site where you can't express your opinion like before due to mod heavyhandedness, where once great discussions are now ruined by WUMs and argumentative so-and-sos and where the general quality has declined rapidly post-vanilla?

No thanks.

SCOOP 64 · 10-07-2025 09:48AM

Boards has given me good advice with pensions ,Amazon deals, car insurance.... over the years, the list can go on and on, i will pay the fee I'm sure it as saved me alot more then €50 over the years.

But the jumping has started again on this thread 😁

Quiet Achiever · 10-07-2025 09:59AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123619386#Comment_123619386

Askaboutmoney is great, has a great layout, but as younsay does not have the breadth of Boards. Why can't Boards look like it though?

Bottom line is if the cap is in hand, it needs to be to finance a move away from Vanilla.

So. What is the Big Hairy Audacious Goal here?

Inviere · 10-07-2025 10:01AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123619717#Comment_123619717

Traffic was reducing, for sure. I think it was more of an organic reduction though, ageing user demographic, other ways of interacting online emerging, forums generally becoming a more niche way to stay in touch, etc etc. Boards peaked, soared at one point really, and then began to naturally slow down.

There's nothing inherently wrong with this, it doesn't mean the site was doomed regardless of anything else. It most likely would have declined to a point where particular communities would have stablisied, and still survived. And that's perfectly fine.

What's happening now though, is a futile and desperate attempt to keep the site alive as a commercial entity through Vanilla. We all get it was a desperate effort to keep the site around, and it has done so to be fair. The heavy customisations have done that though, not Vanilla. Now that we're undoing them, it's going to go back to what already happened three or four years ago, a site that very few people will want to use.

Oscar_Madison · 10-07-2025 10:03AM

The OP is pretty clear if you look at the pertinent sentences.

2000 subscriptions and we might survive

If they don’t get 2000 or additional funding , we won’t.

I don’t know what the traffic numbers are - but here’s a few things to consider:

I would guess, that many posters , who find boards useful, use boards for “information” - they lurk rather than post

Whilst current affairs can be busy, it’s not necessarily representative of what most posters value the site for- the “value” of boards to posters, are the topic specific forums- EV cars, Cycling/Other sports, Cooking/Food/Bbq, Bargain Alerts etc

I would guess (again) that Many posters would only frequent a few specialist topic forums and would rarely move out of these.

The success or otherwise for request for donations, will likely be down to just how valuable these topic specific forums really are.

Certainly there’s a wealth of knowledge stored there and there are many posters with a wealth of knowledge willing to share. But when it comes down to payment, many if not most posters will be asking - is my 6 euro or whatever per month, worth continued access to X forum ? They won’t necessarily be taking into account the whole site.

Another way to ask the question is- if say the 10 most popular non-current affairs forums became subscription only, would people pay for access? I probably would if the rate was reasonable - but not sure you’d get 2000

josip · 10-07-2025 10:10AM

Happy to suck it and see for €50 for a year anyway.

Oscar_Madison · 10-07-2025 10:11AM

Another way to quickly determine if the subscription model will work is find out just how many posters subscribed in the past when the voluntary subscription model was in place- then divide that number by 4, because we’re at least 75% (or more) down on traffic from boards hey day. That’s the very most that you’ll likely get now - I can’t remember what the subscription amount was but likely it was less than what it will be asking for now.

Backstreet Moyes · 10-07-2025 10:25AM

It would be interesting to see what the traffic is like on Current Affairs the past week.

Maybe it is the weather but it looks like nobody is using it.

I like a browse with the breakfast in the morning, go back few weeks and you would see 60 to 70 posts since yesterday on a few topics.

So many of these threads this week has 6 or 7 posts a day.

I would happily pay a monthly fee but if that is the traffic on one, if not the biggest forums then I don't see how you get the number of subscribers needed.

Oscar_Madison · 10-07-2025 10:43AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123619830#Comment_123619830

Even if you look at a really busy thread- like the US presidential election thread last summer- or a Russian/Ukraine thread -there might have been 100s of posts per day at certain times, but many of these posts were made by just a handful of people- maybe 20-30 people max each contributed 4-5 posts per day - it’s giving the allusion of being busy where in fact it’s just the same people posting there over and over- nothing wrong with that I might add, but more that a busy thread doesn’t always indicate a large number of individual unique contributors -

Luckycharms_74 · 10-07-2025 10:44AM

Happy to contribute a yearly sub to keep boards open. I also agree there needs to be better feedback and a reign in on the over zealous mods in certain forums.

And finally please bring back something comparable to vBulletin

P.S. Could there not be a flash banner across the site that people will see. I only found this thread from the soccer forum.

mossie · 10-07-2025 10:44AM

I have been going back and forth on this since I saw the post yesterday. I've been on here since 2002 and have found it to be an invaluable source of information and assistance on a wide variety of topics. I haven't got the level of posts that many of you have - average of around 100 per year, though that declined post the Vanilla debacle, but reading the site has been a great pastime over the years. Neither did I have any clashes with Mods so that isn't an issue for me. The environment on boards, like society in general I guess, has certainly become much more toxic in recent years though.

The big issues for me were the move to Vanilla, with it lack of user friendliness, and more so the inept way in which it was handled at the time by the people in charge. For me a return to basic Vanilla would probably be the final straw, so I won't be paying €50. I might pay the €6 for a month or two but if it's like before I won't be staying.

I wonder if boards ran a poll just to see the general opinion?

Bass Reeves · 10-07-2025 10:46AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123619610#Comment_123619610

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123619694#Comment_123619694

To run any business 100k isn't exactly huge. A small GAA or Football club costs in excess of that to run. An employee on the minimum wage probably costs there employer a lot of 35k a year. I am not sure how many fulltime employees but even two will swallow a lot of 100k with even salaries below the national average.

In reality we are where ww are. Can we roll back Vanilla technically it free but the add on cost. Data bases themselves cost money to run as do comunication links to access the data bases. Even if boards move away from Vanilla any site software will cost to maintain

On subscriptions will this get rid of the page jumping when you open a thread or switch pages.

Hannibal_Smith · 10-07-2025 10:48AM

Now, its future is in your hands.

I do think this is perhaps a bit of a kick to those who have stuck with it tbh. If it wasn't for those of us who persevered through the change over and stuck with it, boards would have been gone long ago.

Moderators and posters alike tried to work with what little there was to keep the place alive. We've already taken it into our hands and tried to limp along with it.

If subscription fees replace or bump up ad revenue, does that mean there'll be money to things like fix the glitches like the jumping pages and do something to stop the trolls reregging?

ancapailldorcha · 10-07-2025 10:48AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123619717#Comment_123619717

There were definitely concerns about site traffic pre-migration. I think all the migration did was to just accelerate a process that was well underway.

odyssey06 · 10-07-2025 10:51AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123619909#Comment_123619909

If they roll back to basic Vanilla it will likely fix the page jumping but lose lots of functions really needed on Boards such as iirc bookmarked threads etc

Not a mod so not sure what the mod tools were like immediate post Vanilla migration, but it seemed a retrograde step to what was there pre migration.

circadian · 10-07-2025 10:54AM

The last major release for Vanilla was 5 years ago. myBB is much more lightweight and has a more recent update. Vanilla is being maintained for sure but there are alternatives out there.

I'd suggest culling the ancient threads, as much as people like to have them hanging around they're costing money for no real purpose. You could run myBB in a container set along with wla WAF in the cloud, with a dedicated DB and cloudflare for DDOS/load balancing. I'd say plenty in the community would help, I know I would.

I have no idea of Vanilla hosting costs but this could be a viable alternative depending on the DB/storage requirements. Like I said reduce the footprint and save money.

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