Boards is better than Reddit

They will eventually let you back. A lifetime ban isn't really. Might be a year or more though.

Reddit is great for obscure topics. You simply can't discuss current affairs or anything even remotely controversial or political because they censor even the most innocous comment. It's like Stalin's Russia. Only possible to parrot tired leftwing talking points and cliches. It really needs free speech to come back and soon or it will become totally irrelevent.

”You simply can't discuss current affairs or anything even remotely controversial or political because they censor even the most innocous comment. It's like Stalin's Russia. Only possible to parrot tired leftwing talking points and cliches.”

That’s a good description of the relevant forum on boards where the People’s Front of Judea owns the place

The non-stop Father Ted references on the main one usually put me off reading threads on it unless I'm particularly interested in the artice/story/whatever.

I'll never understand what people get out of posting guff like this.

Reddit is a fat disaster for navigation.

Does it load quicker? Perhaps. But I can't say that I have any real issues with loading times. Then again, I have a little patience unlike a lot of people today.

The most annoying thing about Boards is the search function, but that isn't bettered by Reddit either. And there's a constant whackamole going on with re-reg trolls here that's the bane of both users and mods. But on that matter Reddit isn't winning either. There's entire subreddits that are just armies of sad wankers like that.

I do agree that Boards and Reddit don't really belong in the same category though. Boards is an actual discussion platform. Reddit is a glorified shoutbox.

It would be interesting to be able to compare the bounce rate of Boards to reddit regarding which is easier to navigate.

I would say Tree Testing would be easier on reddit although I have never tried it out.

Also threads and topics on reddit are indexed by google better than google indexes things on boards not sure why its both natural language etc.

I know websites need an internal index search to be intentionally diff from Google but reddits internal index searching just seems to be much better and that is the essence of navigating a site. Boards.ie’s internal search engine applies filters, tokenization rules, and length/score cutoffs that can hide low‑score or short matches. Internal heuristics (and I totally understand why) on boards are tuned for different user intents; this can deprioritize exact matches if they’re old, low‑score, or in small tiny forums that never took off and are now defunct (I have no idea why boards keeps these around as its unlikely people want search results indexed from them).

Also boards navigation and search function is completely inconsistent between web and mobile app meaning you have to search once on both if you really want to be sure.

They SAY Reddit search engine supports basic Boolean logic and search operators to filter results by using AND, OR, NOT (using a minus sign -), and quotation marks for exact phrases. But I have a feeling that is rubbish. It seems to be hit and miss for most search engines now and they dont truly use those operators. If i test search its random. Its worse on boards tho.

Try searching for: "type c" T8 led "2700k" "24 inch" It is not respecting those operators use the basic operators AND OR NOT and its not respecting those either. So both boards and reddit fail there. I have tried these tests a lot. Its been very frustrating. When I use '''' I am finding most search engines don't even preserve exact word order anymore and I don't know if it's just me but I thought that a few years ago most did.

Using parentheses ( ) in tests shows which operations are executed first in a series but of course ONLY if the searching honours those operators. If they did it would really help you get to know how to use the search engine more efficiently.

I expect this will get worse now with AI on most sites. Like its really annoying now. You put ''NOT'' for a specific phrase and the results ONLY show that phrase.. I am like WHAT ARE THE RULES JUST TELL ME THE RULES FOR THE SEARCH??

I can't screen out terms using a minus or a NOT/NOR operator in most search engines now! Even google won't honour that operator.

Search engines accross the web have generally stopped honouring basic operators like AND /OR /NOT its unfair for me to say its a boards issue although it is an issue here but its every search engine also. I dunno why. I thought it my strings were wrong I was really trying to narrow a search but then I tried an AI Boolean string generator and that **** show made me realize im actually quite good lol! Don't ask Chat GGPT to write Boolean strings lol partic when you can't use them in most search engines now anyway.

Someone told me they are trying to make it suit a diff type of user its just natural language.

Its funny because now they are boasting AI/ChatGPT can honour boolean strings .. it can't.

I would have thought people would be wanting this more and more with the conspiracy stuff and crazy people.

Anyway if anyone knows a search engine that honours operators like that let me know.

So I am a philosophy grad with a H.Dip in science swoftware and a lot of my friend group and brother's social group are maths PhDs or computer science etc and I have to agree. In my experience very intelligent hard working people need social skills to get through acedemia they know you need to learn these skills and practise them. You need help from your environment to be smart. 😉

Also you can't take personal advice from strangers who don't know you or where you are living. I read a post by one person who quit a job because some guru told them don't allow people to pay you below your worth etc. But the town the were in didn't have many jobs and this person hasn't found another. Whereas where I am jobs are plentiful right now and I get offered a job about once a week. You can't give general career advice globally without knowing the individual.

But yes, people who discuss, debate or advise at length unless they are paid to or simply know they enjoy it, could have a hesitant personality type. It's called rumination I think.

I don't think either Reddit or Boards are better or worse for this.

THANK YOU FOR THIS GEM. 🤣

Regarding search engines, my brother said that they may be configured this way deliberately because some people use operators to avoid ads. Or at least ads not relevant to them and maybe google needed a work around. I mean, maybe there are not many people who write huge long strings but lots of people will use ''AND OR NOT'' and maybe it cut down on the amount of ads google was able to show. I was really surprised when I wrote NOT (phrase) and it didn't reverse the value of the operand. It literally showed me every indexed page WITH THAT phrase. I even tried both Parentheses and brackets and then without. That is just a really basic operand. I know sometimes when you learn python or bolean logic you forget it and have to relearn it many times etc. So I don't expect people to be typing long strings even if they were once familiar with it but I think lots of people will miss the basic operands and I don't think that is just a techie thing. I think most people aka the general public would use the basics if they really needed to search for something specific. Never underestimate the intelligence of your users. 😛(Except for me you can't underestimate me enough).

A large amount of the Irish section of Reddit is made up of Newspaper headlines, The Irish Times says this, The Independent says that, and somebody minor says this or the other.

I wonder if PR companies and other types that are paid to do it are feeding the Irish section of the Irish Reddit.

The actual papers are posting half the time. Sunday Times in particular

It’s quieter on boards, so at least there is time to breathe on boards. Even though it is in serious decline.

For me Reddit (when redirected there on an internet search like you do) seems to be a lot of youngsters, and low brow stuff

I use reddit nearly every day but generally ignore the Irish section