Important News!!

Backstreet Moyes · 10-07-2025 10:58AM

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

Personally I am hesitant to post lately because I had a week ban, I think it's a month next.

That would be me gone completely because nobody is going to come back after that.

Moderation is gone too strict the last 7 or 8 months IMO and combined with the new rule it is causing people not to post.

I am actually having to double check anything before I post for fear of being warned.

I have had private messages with other people who are amazed at what has gone on in the past 7 or 8 months.

This is not a bashing of mods it is just what I have seen and what I think has been the downfall of boards lately.

Inviere · 10-07-2025 10:58AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123619901#Comment_123619901

I think the point is, and with all due respect to Mike, the site doesn't need to be a commercial entity in order to survive. It's a discussion forum, and to host that and run it in the hands of the community, that 100k becomes a LOT less, and the site survives another day. It began as a non profit gaming forum, and it's looking like that's the only way it can survive too (as a community ran non profit online forum.)

breezy1985 · 10-07-2025 10:59AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123619885#Comment_123619885

A huge problem with the site was "trending" was constantly full of of CA threads which were mostly over and back btchfests between the usual posters.

In particular there are 2 posters who destroy anything to do with NI and another anything to do with cycling or road infrastructure.

It makes it very hard to find actual interesting conversations that you are not already a part of.

CrowdedHouse · 10-07-2025 11:01AM

I'm beginning to think that a a way should be found to preserve as a read only archive for a few years and pull the plug.

We can't even seem to have an open discussion about the future (or not)

Sleepy · 10-07-2025 11:06AM

Having just read through the entire thread I think I'm in agreement with the majority here:

At 22, "Sleepy" is almost half as old as I am, I've literally been here half my life.
I was a subscriber back in the day and I'd be happy to be one again (even if it only buys another year).
Porting to Vanilla was a massive mistake and any future of the site needs to involve a move away from it rather than a move to a cheaper, unpatched version of it. Seems to be some good suggestions further up the thread.
The community needs to be more involved in running of the site and it's future.

Whatever monetary value was once put on the value of the millions of posts of data here needs to be written off entirely: the AI's have already scraped it. Any notion that the site is a viable commercial entity for anything more than paying one or two admins to keep the lights on needs to be quashed. Boards.ie's "value" was always in it's community, it's diminished greatly from it's peak 15/20 years ago but the value was never really monetary imo. Sure, that community was capable of being harnassed to raise serious sums of money for good causes (every time I see the Bumbulance on the road it brings a sense of pride that I played a tiny part as part of this community in funding it) but it was never going to be a contender against global players like Twitter and Facebook. It was, and is, "a local social media, for local people" to paraphrase one of the shows we quoted ad-nauseum back in the day.

The lack of any input in this thread from either @DeVore or @Cloud is pretty damning though tbh. Or are they forbidden from commenting on the site's operation as a condition of their buyouts back in the day?

Arghus · 10-07-2025 11:07AM

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

The traffic was definitely going in one way prior to the migration, but the place was still relatively busy - and absolutely gangbusters compared to now - but yeah, the trends have been there for 8-9 years. Down to, like you've said: people getting older, less time to spend faffing around on the Internet. Also there were other options out there: Reddit, Twitter, Facebook etc, etc.

It's no coincidence that board's absolute heyday was the late noughties, early tens: when lots of people didn't have jobs, plenty of free time, were in their twenties and alternatives like Reddit were only getting started.

The migration accelerated what was already going on. And then what really messed it up was the unfixed bugs. The traffic has died dramatically since the bouncing page issue started several months ago: it's done immense damage, more than anything else IMO. If a page simply can't load correctly that's going to have a huge negative effect.

cunnifferous · 10-07-2025 11:08AM

Who even owns boards now?

ctrl-alt-delete · 10-07-2025 11:10AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123618733#Comment_123618733

Yeah i don't know why I used that word.

Probably should have said migration. Which funnily enough is what happened many previous users.

loyatemu · 10-07-2025 11:28AM

Some people complaining of heavy-handed moderation, others complaining of threads going off the rails due to lack of moderation…

I assume this is all in AH and the CA/Politics type forums? I rarely see much aggro on the forums I use regularly.

Goldengirl · 10-07-2025 11:28AM

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

Reddit is not any where near the same experience that Boards is , and I don't mean that as a complement to Reddit !

And I see threads closed posts deleted and similar moderation so don't think there is much benefit bar looking up the odd question which you may not get an answer to .

Here there are so many people giving quality advice on so many things ..it's a treasure trive .

Such a shame .

Maybe people like interacting on other sites easier, quicker , flashier , but I doubt when you need someone to answer a question on construction or motors or even gardening you would get as many good experienced posters answering or giving your query a bit of thought .

I love the music and gigs threads the weather and gardening threads and have read a lot of the Construction and DIY threads and found them very helpful at various times in my life

I have even gotten into some of the forum games recently and enjoyed them .

It's a big loss .

muffler · 10-07-2025 11:30AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123619969#Comment_123619969

Why do you expect DeVore or Cloud to comment?

Goldengirl · 10-07-2025 11:31AM

Well search hasn't worked properly for a long time now so a lot of those threads are just there to trawl through .

Boy some of them are gold though !

Oscar_Madison · 10-07-2025 11:32AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123619944#Comment_123619944

You’ve been here since 2006- I’ve been here since about 2007 - I’m in a similar position ban wise-it’s obvious we both like this site and want it to survive - let’s see if the desire for our hard earned cash encourages a rethink on the ridiculous implementation of the latest rules - completely unfair bans/warnings for trivial issues or indeed punishing the lesser offender and ignoring the complete twat who caused it, coupled with an archaic punishment system that just drives posters away from the site isn’t going to encourage me to contribute - that’s my redline

The Continental Op · 10-07-2025 11:33AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123620050#Comment_123620050

Maybe because they'd have a better understanding of running a Bulletin Board than most of us here.

archfi · 10-07-2025 11:35AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123619373#Comment_123619373

Yeah, moderation should be limited to violations of the law of the land, spam etc

School monitor rules, "tuck your shirt in" "stand up straight" "don't say dat, say that" and the most humiliating, self serving "dispute resolution" process in the business won't wash with the many needed to pay and indeed what does one do with a payer being an absolute cad and getting warned for being "uncivil"? That really makes me laugh out loud when I think about it.

Just make the site usable, even vanilla Vanilla for a while, then plan a move to a proper forum platform and use the people on site with the tech skills to plan it properly and eventually keep it ticking over. Keep away from most homemade customisations (probably except CSS) to make something look like something in the past.

Then change the mindset from profit (never gonna happen) to *community driven to share costs of maintenance and upkeep and ditch the micromanagment of how users speak in supposedly "IMHO" forums. The valuable hobby/knowledgable forums (non-political/non-current affairsy/culture war places) run themselves mainly.

*When I say community, I actually mean a community of varied opinions (true diversity) and not a silo for one political/moral mindset.

Oh and clean up the mess of sub forums, sub-sub forums and micro sub-sub-sub forums.

loyatemu · 10-07-2025 11:35AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123620053#Comment_123620053

search does work

DoctorEdgeWild · 10-07-2025 11:37AM

Yeah, I'm on board(s). I subscribed years ago as I got some really good deals on one of the forums so would be happy to do so again to keep an Irish based discussion forum (mostly) free from the weirdness that destroys the more anonymous/international forums. We may indeed be pushing against the tide here, but it's worth pushing against for as long as that is reasonable.

I would say that my ideal would be a community run forum, but I don't know if these things are even possible anymore as they were in the earlier days of online communities.

Goldengirl · 10-07-2025 11:37AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123620065#Comment_123620065

Very limited ..

thebaz · 10-07-2025 11:38AM

Another casualty of Big Tech AI, boards was great when the world seamed to be heading into the unknown at the start of the pandemic of 2020. In 2 years or less it will be just AI moderated forums, controlled by Big Tech. What a future, the intenet was supposed to be a medium for independents. Good luck all.

corkie · 10-07-2025 11:38AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123618884#Comment_123618884

Try here: - https://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000%2A/https%3A//www.boards.ie/

https://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/www.boards.ie

And could someone link to the smart watch deal on BA?

dulpit · 10-07-2025 11:44AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123620081#Comment_123620081

The watch BA:

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123614298#Comment_123614298

loyatemu · 10-07-2025 11:45AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123620075#Comment_123620075

I'm not sure what you're looking for, but I can search for words and phrases, by date, by user, within individual threads and forums.

rob316 · 10-07-2025 11:47AM

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

100k is absolutely nothing for a couple of employees and hosting costs. 100k doesn't sound outlandish to me at all.

dulpit · 10-07-2025 11:48AM

It's quite disappointing that this thread has been started with 1 post from Mike and then no more input. I can't see any logic in contributing any money towards boards unless there is transparency from the top level. Are they listening to feedback here? Is there a defined plan on making changes/improvements? Will money be actually used for the future of the site? Are there creditors which need to be paid first? Is there a monthly figure that has to be met to keep the lights on? Is there future planning? Etc etc.

I've been on boards since 2006, I was in college and it was super useful. It's still part of my daily online routine, and I would dearly miss it if it did go away. But unless there is some sort of openness on what the plans are I can't help.

Also - some ownership of the CATASTROPHIC decision to use Vanilla would be nice.

Declan A Walsh · 10-07-2025 11:50AM

@Arghus and @Goldengirl mentioned the Forum Games. I actually discovered that part of Boards by accident in 2019 through a music connection and got hooked on that area. That was after many years being a poster and sometimes lurker on Boards. Posts in that forum yesterday referred to Boards being in trouble or in danger of closing, and, as I said in my first post on this thread (and this forum!), it was only when I saw the sticky on the Radio forum that I actually saw the announcement. Maybe put it on the Forum Games forum as well.

Tom Mann Centuria · 10-07-2025 11:51AM

If, as I fear Boards doesn't make it, will Mods/Admins allow people to publicise alternatives on other platforms before they pull down the shutters?

dulpit · 10-07-2025 11:53AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123620130#Comment_123620130

I assume they would, but knowing how secretive/quiet boards owners are, I can just see the site not working one day and we're all screwed. Get the lifeboats ready now I'd say.

erlichbachman · 10-07-2025 12:00PM

If such a discussion forum is to survive then it needs to look into AI bot moderation, if there’s one thing I’ve learned over almost 20 years on this site is that untrained people can’t moderate the highly divisive topics without going overboard and introducing their own bias, that’s not a slight, I couldn’t do it myself, personally the site being a bit buggy doesn’t bother me, likely due in part to being old enough to experience dial up websites, but the moderation in some areas completely ruins the experience and I’ve never once seen even the slightest acknowledgement or effort to improve it.

I probably spend more money and less time on Netflix per year but as much as I love boards it’s difficult to commit to any financial payment without any sign of a clear plan from boards.ie about how the future may look.