What is Boards.ie? {To you} | Please DO NOT USE this thread to discuss moderation!

Hi, I don't want you to think I'm having a go because I'm genuinely just curious as to why like so many other long term members who say similar in forums all over the site but haven't subscribed. Please don't take me up wrong and if it's a question you aren't comfortable answering please don't.

For anyone who has been saying members who don't subscribe are being targeted and hassled this is not why I'm asking. It would be interesting to see if there is anything that could be done by the powers that be to reach out to these long term members is the only reason I'm asking.

That is the conundrum getting some people under the age of 40-50 to join!

Keep the "Faith" Fr.

I can't believe people are hesitating about supporting a small Irish business, especially one that's unique of its kind. Before long, the likes of meta, google and the other big corporations will be all that's left of the internet.

I think you are right that there are a lot of people who despite being regular users of the site feel no commitment to it.

Anyone with a fear of losing money in the event of a closedown can take a monthly subscription which will limit their exposure to €6.

If they are short of funds then it's understandable if they can't make a contribution.

Discussions hardly ever develop and inform on Facebook to the same degree they do on Boards.

People on Facebook tend to click onto something new very quickly and then there is the notorious algorithm.

Boards has been literally life-changing for me. I was always a very shy, withdrawn person due to a mix of a sheltered upbringing and what I now know to be autism. Boards gave me an outlet to express myself and I even ended up in some social groups and private forums that helped to get me out of my shell a bit. I'm not part of them anymore but still have friends from there and I even worked for one for a few years. It was always much more to me than CA or political threads, there's some forums on here that suit my interests and haven't been replicated elsewhere from an Irish perspective. I've had a handful of on-thread warnings over the years (all but one were justified IMO) but was never banned or carded. So I had no real reason to be critical of moderation.

Losing that outlet would be sad for me. Yes, it's not what it was before, but still an important part of my life.

Boards is a site that I've gotten a lot out of over the past 24 years - almost half my life at this stage!

Lots of good advice, information, discussion of local and global news/events, entertainment in a format that I much prefer to the likes of Reddit.

But it's definitely long past its peak - partly the result of the social media world moving on, but a lot of self-inflicted reasons too.

The polarisation of some topics/forums was inevitable I suppose, but it could have been dealt with so much better. No point in going into what's all been said many times over the last few years though.

The current situation is not a surprise though. The sporadic engagement and still no real progress or plan with less than 2 months of the deadline remaining, and only 29% of the target funding secured is emblematic of some of these wider issues.

I'll miss it if indeed the end is near, but what I'll miss has nothing to do with the owners or mods - it's the users who generate the content and thankfully (like it or not, agree or not) some alternative options are appearing so that at least some of this will continue.

We'll all know soon enough anyway I suppose.

Boards did actually give that a go, years ago there was the 'reactive' site or whatever it was called. Everyone hated it and wanted the site to go back to the traditional forum type experience.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't really.

Boards to me has been a part of my working life for nearly 20 years at this point. I met some good friends here in the heyday of the site when meetups were a thing.

Now I mostly frequent the EV forum and one or two others occasionally. It's a shadow of what it was, but it's still real to me goddamit!