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Boards is becoming a Ghost Town

WarZ

Is it just me or is boards.ie becoming extraordinarily quiet? It's something I've started to notice and its making me go elsewhere (Reddit is incredibly busy in comparison). I'm not sure if its because the quality of posting is taking such a dive or if its because of over zealous moderation. Perhaps both. I think a balance needs to be struck; posting needs to be better but at the same time a lot of mods in the forum have over exerted their influence to the extent where we've lost so many great posters. The site is becoming too nany-esque however I'm aware the site was suffering from a huge problem with trolls and racists. I'm just wondering what are the thoughts of the admins on this issue?

Seems like boards is dying out.

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hullaballoo

It's dying all right but I'd put it down to an almost antediluvian search function rather than anything else.

The bad news is that it gets even worse when you switch to the new site.

If they sorted the search out, I'm nearly sure they'd see a rise in users.

jjbrien

Me I stopped posting as I dont like this new look. I loved the old look where all the recent topics were on the main page. Now it just looks like a glossy version of windows 8

The Backwards Man

Is boards becoming like a ghost town?

You must not be one of The Specials.

I'll get my coat

Gordon

WarZ wrote: »

I'm just wondering what are the thoughts of the admins on this issue?

posting needs to be better

Is there anything to be said for another mass?

weisses

Gordon wrote: »

Is there anything to be said for another mass?

Boards could do with some divine intervention .. Good point

GLaDOS

Some of the smaller forums I frequent definitely seem to be quieter these days.

A lot of good posters have closed their accounts in the last couple of years and that can really have an affect on content generation on a small forum.

Wibbs

More competition from Facebook/Reddit is a major pressure. That can't really be helped from what I can see. The drift towards more viewing on mobile devices is another pressure.

hullaballoo wrote: »

I'd put it down to an almost antediluvian search function rather than anything else.

The search is pretty bad alright H. I gave up on it TBH and if I do want to search Boards I'm as likely to use google to do it.

The category rejig down to four headings didn't help. At all. With a few of the forums I'd have subbed, traffic went off a cliff pretty much immediately after the introduction of that. Actually the category rejig actually went down to two headings as far as the "old" community goes; Topics and regional. That rejig was a mistake IMH. Looked like a great idea on paper and the kind of "streamlining" that is fashionable when outside agencies are consulted.

The new layout rolled out recently - again with it seems outside agencies being consulted - is a mistake /end, full stop, period for our US viewers. Consultants gonna consult and too often management forget that they have to justify their existence by consulting for change. It would have been a bloody hard sell when Boards what at its peak, it's a true head shaker of a decision when it's seeing a downturn.

The ageing demographic is another trend. Even a fair few years back I had heard "Boards was for older people" as a thing, now it's more in play. Where once it was mostly folks in their twenties, they've gone on into their thirties. I certainly feel less of an old fart around the place than I did ten years ago. That can sometimes bring a "stuffy" more "middle management" dynamic to things.

There have been successes. Politics Cafe was/is one. Granted it had some issues, but as far as bums on seats goes it was getting people in. Hopefully the rejig encourages more in. Farming and Forestry went ballistic too and After Hours seems as popular as ever.

On the latter score, AH is one of, if not the main gateway into the rest of Boards(after search engines). That should be looked at as a way to guide people around the rest of the site. IMH if the aforementioned Politics Cafe had just been added into the main Politics section minus the permanent link in AH it would have been a ghost town(though doesn't seem to have had that much of an influence on the Irish language forum?). I'd look at a serious culling, rather melding of forums too. There are too many, especially under the two heading category system. Too many clicks to browse for the casual user.

My 3 cents anyway.

hullaballoo

The Irish language sub-forum might not be busy but there are regular posters. I put its inactivity down to an overall absence of Irish language users on the site. The Gaeilge forum, which allows English use, is only slightly busier and mostly it's people looking to have meaningless "inspirational" sentences translated or looking for information on Irish learning IRL (which is the best way to learn any language, so in no way is the latter description intended to be as disparaging as the former.)

Wibbs

There's that too many forums thing right there H. Two forums that basically cover the same subject.

As an experiment it might be an idea to add a third forum link to the AH page, maybe the main Politics forum(s)? Just for a month and see what happens to the traffic. I'd be willing to bet it would go up. And by a fair bit too. Politics is another set of forums I'd amalgamate into just one; Politics. With the Cafe left for the lulz. You could go through the Science forums with the amalgamation scythe too. And so on. That way you get more people in the one place and that leaves things far less vulnerable to dying forums when keystone members drift away.

Another thing that's more a psychological one is the "Closed Account" option. Maybe it's just me to be fair, but I think that sends a really bad signal. 1) it makes your account, you seem less "valuable" and 2) comes across as a negative when reading a thread*. Locals of longer standing know that most come back after a time, some the next day, but to a newbie or lurker it makes Boards look like a declining concern rather than a going one and that's bound to influence how they feel about the site. I'd really be looking hard and asking questions about the actual legal need for that option and if there isn't one getting rid of it with utmost speed.

*Not just old threads either where the list of those who look like they've left can be a bit mad, you can see this on even recent threads. I clicked into one on the main page of AH earlier and over the weekend there are two "closed account" users.

intheclouds

Wibbs wrote: »

The category rejig down to four headings didn't help. At all.

This.

This combined with literally no proper search facility.

Plus the new layout looking crap compared to the old one.

Dial Hard

Have definitely noticed a decline in activity recently. I suspect a lot of people just didn't come back after the DDOS attack/subsequent bugginess.

Wibbs is right about the move to mobile having an effect too. The touch site and app are both barely usable.

Links234

Wibbs wrote: »

Another thing that's more a psychological one is the "Closed Account" option. Maybe it's just me to be fair, but I think that sends a really bad signal. 1) it makes your account, you seem less "valuable" and 2) comes across as a negative when reading a thread*. Locals of longer standing know that most come back after a time, some the next day, but to a newbie or lurker it makes Boards look like a declining concern rather than a going one and that's bound to influence how they feel about the site. I'd really be looking hard and asking questions about the actual legal need for that option and if there isn't one getting rid of it with utmost speed.

As well as that, a big problem is also the amount of banned users you see, which is giving a really skewed false perception. As an example, from my experience moderating the last while in the Rock & Metal forum, there's a thread where it looks like half a dozen people who've been posting in that one thread alone are banned. Now the reality is actually quite different, all those accounts are the same person who keeps coming back after being banned by the admins several times, but for anyone else looking at the thread, "Holy crap, all these people are being banned for no reason at all!" is the impression it's giving.

There's a painful lack of transparency with bannings, and I'll be honest, folks seeing banned accounts left right and center with no explanation is giving a really, really bad front of shop. Your average user should be able to see why a person was banned, maybe something on their profile, and it should be clear and transparent. Anyone looking at any one of the banned accounts in the thread I allude to above, and trying to figure out why that person was banned will come up lacking, and can only come away with the conclusion that boards is way too strict. Something has to be done about that.

Custardpi

Make clicking on a "banned account" user link to a Prison thread?

LuckyLloyd

Traffic is inarguably declining. I guess the question is whether it is declining at a faster than anticipated and unacceptable rate? If the redesign indicates "yes" to that question then I'd suggest it's an unfortunate way to attempt to deal with it!

DEFTLEFTHAND

Is it just the way online message boards in general are going? There's so many other options available to people these days.

hullaballoo

It's hackneyed at this stage but people (not just the young uns) have a dreadfully poor attention span these days as well.

gallag

No one going to talk about that there giant elephant standing in the corner? Boards fell down the liberal pc hole of no return! What was it the head honcho Dav said about right wing opinion? Then 90% of mods being left to ultra-left has created an atmosphere of hostility for about 50% of the population, if yous want more traffic then stop moderation on a ideological basis and show more respect to anyone who simply has a differing opinion.

intheclouds

gallag wrote: »

No one going to talk about that there giant elephant standing in the corner? Boards fell down the liberal pc hole of no return! What was it the head honcho Dav said about right wing opinion? Then 90% of mods being left to ultra-left has created an atmosphere of hostility for about 50% of the population, if yous want more traffic then stop moderation on a ideological basis and show more respect to anyone who simply has a differing opinion.

What do you mean by this?

First of all I have no idea what Dav said about right wing opinion.

But, more importantly, (a) are 50% of the population really right wing? and (b) I really havent noticed any hostility to people holding a right wing opinion - do you have any examples of that?

Esel

"Are you now, or have you ever been, a moderator on Boards.ie?"

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

KERSPLAT!

New site and close account function would be the main issues, IMO. The close account function has ruined the site and the new site will kill it off.

There was a sense of community in my early years, posters I held in high regard. Now when you look through some of the older threads its a mix of closed and banned accounts. Anyone gets squeezed into a tight spot in discussion, close account, get a warning from a mod, close account, etc, etc.

I would second the suggestion from someone above, the close account function should be revisited and if possible, removed.

The new site. Well, so far its awful but at the same time it isn't the finished product so we'll see how that goes.

MEGA BRO WOLF 5000

I'd hazard a guess that moderation is the real reason people are leaving in droves. It's becoming impossible to have an opinion in After Hours or the soccer forum anyway. Moderated to death.

Edward Hopper

The Hunky Monster wrote: »

I'd hazard a guess that moderation is the real reason people are leaving in droves. It's becoming impossible to have an opinion in After Hours or the soccer forum anyway. Moderated to death.

Soccer forum has been more heavily moderated than most forums for years, it hasn't got worse, it's less harsh if anything recently so I don't buy your argument there tbh.

KERSPLAT!

The Hunky Monster wrote: »

I'd hazard a guess that moderation is the real reason people are leaving in droves. It's becoming impossible to have an opinion in After Hours or the soccer forum anyway. Moderated to death.

Read: it's impossible to be a dîck, you always get banned

Thousands upon thousands have no issues with moderation but you always get a few who act the bollox, get banned, get carded, etc and blame moderation rather than look at themselves. Then you've the reregs who hate the site and moderation but still stick around because... Well, I don't know why, you'd have to ask one of them.

Moderation is far from perfect on boards but it wouldn't be a leading cause for the downturn in users, IMO.

Harry Palmr

hullaballoo wrote: »

It's hackneyed at this stage but people (not just the young uns) have a dreadfully poor attention span these days as well.

If one can't keep focused on something as transitory as a boards.ie thread then there is no hope at all.

I'd gut the place to be honest - far too much peripatetic guff around the edges - and work on the core forums both internally and externally. "Boards - now you're talkin'" is no longer the case when it comes to the wider world.

Boards should have a greater Irish internet presence than is the case. Look at the churnel for goodness sake - everyone's heard of that (name checked frequently on radio for example) and yet it's terrible really.

Within Distilled Media's portfolio it sticks out as not fitting in with the rest really - property being the bulk of the titles now, the place hasn't won an award in years - remember how pleased we all were when Golden Spiders were the rage?

Perhaps it's time for some manufactured outrage to bring the name to the public attention. Sponsorship of a naked ramble round Ireland for de-criminalising sex work maybe!

Links234

gallag wrote: »

No one going to talk about that there giant elephant standing in the corner? Boards fell down the liberal pc hole of no return!

Quite frankly, that's giant elephant dung. Constantly you see threads about travellers, immigrants, people on the dole, feminists, etc, and they're brimming with, if we're being polite, decidedly un-PC opinions. Quite frankly, there's some absolutely blatant racists on boards, yet users have gotten carded for calling people racists/bigots, it's laughable.

If there's anything killing boards, it's some of the outright nastiness that goes on from overly hostile users with a bug up their ass and an axe to grind about whatever their pet subject is. The Ladies Lounge was absolutely buzzing with activity, but the life was practically stamped out of it by people who were quite aggressively derailing every other thread, the mods there are doing a good job trying to turn it round, but it's barely recovered and might not fully recover at all. Some folks are just making boards a seriously hostile place, and people are leaving because of it. I've quite a few friends who've left boards entirely, and it's that hostility that's the reason, it's fracturing any sense of community.

smash

Wibbs wrote: »

Another thing that's more a psychological one is the "Closed Account" option. Maybe it's just me to be fair, but I think that sends a really bad signal.

Whether displayed under a username or not, I think the feature itself is a necessity these days with the amount of targeting of users being done. Both on site here and on other forums.

Ludo

Pointless forum duplcation. Online TV and TV...What? Why? utterly pointless. Topics heading is terrible also. I Used to regularly browse around and visit some forums which I no longer do. And dont bother say abut adding them to My Forums. I dont want that turned into another massive menu. I recently looked for discussion about the government formation as it interests me. Couldnt find the politics forum with a discussion about it quickly (never had that problem with old navigation menus) so I went off to politics.ie.

Esel

smash wrote: »

Whether displayed under a username or not, I think the feature itself is a necessity these days with the amount of targeting of users being done. Both on site here and on other forums.

It might be just optics - but could Closed Account be instead titled Resigned?

Banned could be Retired.

Think 'outplacement'...

Mainly Closed though.

Felix Jones is God

KERSPLAT! wrote: »

Read: it's impossible to be a dîck, you always get banned

Thousands upon thousands have no issues with moderation but you always get a few who act the bollox, get banned, get carded, etc and blame moderation rather than look at themselves. Then you've the reregs who hate the site and moderation but still stick around because... Well, I don't know why, you'd have to ask one of them.

Moderation is far from perfect on boards but it wouldn't be a leading cause for the downturn in users, IMO.

Sick of that old chestnut... Thousands never get carded.... Frankly...nobody cares!
If you're in an active forum with debate, chances are you will pick up a card or 2....if not, well you're either a lurker with nothing to contribute bar banging the thanks button or someone who has nothing original to say imo