Yes, this is my 1000th post on this board, and in time honoured boards.ie tradition I'm going to post about it. However instead of indulging in the usual "1000th post w00tage" I'm instead going to take a look over my time on boards and how it (and I) have evolved along with it.
My very first post on boards was made on this very board
here.The irony of being a moderator of two boards after implying that moderation = censorship = bad in my very first post does not fail to escape me. Boards.ie seemed to be quite different back then. There were quite a lot of 'in-jokes' that were frequently banded around by boards regulars. One of the most common was Hobbes and his tinfoil axe (I eventually found out the story to that one). Amp test.
The proliferation of these "in jokes" went hand in hand with the strong sense of community that boards.ie had in the past. This was because the smaller user base meant that people were more likely to be familiar with the next poster. Of course I was still the newbie at this stage (and some may argue that I still am) so while I recognised this community spirit I was not really a part of it. As boards.ie grew and more people joined, a lot of people felt that boards was becoming increasingly anonymous. Some decided to simply leave, either in a blaze or quietly. The more common response, however, was to set up private boards. The original private boards set up (AFAIK) almost expressly for this purpose were the Knights of Comeonbanus and the Freemasons. I still don't know what Lexcorp was/is about.
Some of these boards were viewed as 'elitist', but this ignored the fact that people still wanted somewhere where they could discuss issues with a community that they knew and trusted. More recently, such private boards are less private, and serve mainly to discuss issues that are either too personal or controversial (such as pr0n or drugs) to share with the main boards.ie community. Good examples of these boards is The Illuminati and PearTree house. These boards could also be considered a refuge from the regimented boards.ie forum style, where every possible topic you could imagine (and some you can't) had it's own board, and of course belonged in that board.
I spend a lot of time on boards. Certainly too much time, and although my present post count only indicates that I have been posting approximately only once every day, I read boards far more than I would post. I still feel that I cannot possibly find all, or even most of the threads that would be of interest to me. The increasing number of boards has meant that each particular category has many more boards than it had in the past. Winnowing the threads in each board that are of interest to me against those that are not is now becoming a chore due to this fact. Allowing subscriptions to the boards that were of interest to you made browsing issues of relevance/interest to you easier, but it also meant that you automatically became less likely to browse the fora that were not of immediate interest to you. Boards has become too big and complex for any one individual to know everything that is going on in the site at any one time. In many ways, this is a good thing™, but even a website such as SomethingAwful, with a membership figure far greater than that of boards, has a “GBS” (figure it out) general discussion board, where many of the most interesting and relevant threads are found, a more laid back version of the After Hours board.
As for my posting style, I would have to say that I have noticed a subtle change over my time here. I still hold many of the same opinions and convictions that I held when I first joined, but I have noticed that my debating style has become somewhat less dogmatic than before. As a moderator, I am also conscious that I am expected to uphold a good standard of posting, not just in terms of views and opinions, but in the manner in which I express those views. I also find that a lot of my posts in that capacity as a moderator have been chiding/warning people who breach posting guidelines of the fora I moderate.
As for the future, I don’t know. I can see myself posting on boards for a while longer, at least while I still have internet access. I’ve made some good friends from boards, and I would certainly stay just to remain in contact with them, irrespective of the content of the site itself. In this respect, I would see boards as a positive influence on my life. At least, this is how I justify spending so much time here instead of doing some work
.
