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Now Ye're Talking - to a Boards.ie Community Manager
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I don't have any favourites, I despise all trolls equallyGowlasauras Rex wrote: »Who is your favourite troll?
Have you met any troll in the real world and you knew who they were and vice versa and how did they react?
Yea, I've bumped into them on the street or at social occasions. It's a lot less awkward for me than it is for them cause I wasn't the one caught being an eejit.
Busy!What is a typical day like for you?
I get in, get some tea and then log into the PC and check my PMs, the Admins forum, Mods forum, Feedback, Site Dev and anything that needs my attention based on that gets assessed and inserted into my list of work for the day. Then I look at my emails and do the same - most of the time that'll be stuff for our clients (Talk To's, Reps, etc).
After that, I just get stuck into my list of projects. At the moment, I'm helping Sales with a potential new Talk To client, working on category re-organisation, site features wish list, site redesign, bug tracking, instructional guides for new members signing up, a guide for mods and a few other things.
I had no plans to break the site the first timeHave you any plans to break the site again?
Do you help out on the tech side or is it responding to emails and adminesque duties?
Was the hack the most "interesting" thing that's happened during your tenure?
I don't help on tech, it's been way too long since I was a coder to be of any use to the team. I do add bugs from the site into their work-lists and talk about these things with them - I know just enough about how things work to be able to have a somewhat meaningful discussion with them and I can head off any requests I know will be extremely difficult or at least not feasible before it gets to them.
The Hack certainly was interesting, but probably the most interesting was a suicidal poster which caused a bit of a stir amongst the Twateratti who just assumed that we didn't deal with this sort of thing on an unfortunately regular basis and went from reporting it to the Gardaí to verbally abusing one of the reception staff of the office (who're Daft.ie Employees in case anyone's wondering - they don't work for us, so it's not like they can "fix" anything Boards related for anyone). The following day, after the poster was directed to the usual sources of help, a member of AGS contacts me saying they've been asked to investigate it as it had landed on the desk of a Minister (I'd rather not say who, the aide that spoke to me said "this isn't the Minister's office talking, it's the Constituency office, the guy on your thread said he was in this TD's constituency). The aide wasn't looking to do anything other than try and get this gent matched up with his closet mental health service.
Long story short, a Section 8 request was being put together for the guy's details to allow the Gardaí to check on him. I was in contact with him and said "hey, heads up, this is a thing. You haven't broken any law or done anything legally questionable, they're not trying to arrest you or take you away, they just want to know that you're in one piece" and his response was "please don't waste any more time or money on this, my details are...., please pass them on" which was quite a change from someone who was suicidal not 24 hours previously.
It was rough on the soul for sure, I struggle with non-trivial mental health issues myself (none of which are helped by this job), so it was really close to the bone for me personally.
But, we saved a guy's life. I think that's a good thing.
There are far too many of my friends old and new here for me to consider it. It's given me employment, somewhere to live, advice, help, laughs, tears, girlfriends, colleagues, best friends for life.Darkglasses wrote: »A question I also asked Gordon - Do you ever think you will leave Boards entirely - both professionally and as a poster? How/when do you ever foresee it happening?
I've banned friends several times, not fun, but business is business so to speak. It's not personal. I think on the few occasions it's happened the other party has been cool about it.Business Cat wrote: »Have you ever had to ban someone that you didn't really want to but had to due to the rules of the site?
If money was no option for the site, what's the first thing you would do?
Money no option: Hire the best UI/UX person I could find as well as an experienced designer and 3 more tech people with a range of abilities to get all the back end stuff rebuilt to finally separate us away from VBulletin whilst the UI/UX and Designer worked with Declan (our product manager) to start constructing the new Boards (which, by the way, won't be looking radically different to current Boards, it's just that the software it sits on will be completely different).
Whilst all that's starting, I would like to go to each community on this site and say "what sort of stuff would you like this website to be able to do for you?" Things like events calendars, photo galleries, links to relevant external content, whatever they think might be useful and be able to offer any and every forum a list of "plug-ins" so they can have a level of customisation that makes their corner of the site better for their specific needs.
When they company decided it wanted some more employees, they posted about it on the site. I got the CV together and sent it in with a cover letter, just like you'd apply for any job. Did 2 interviews with Vexorg and Paul Kenny (who's the Chairman of Distilled now, but it was just Daft back then). Got a phone call from Vex to say "hey, there was this other guy we interviewed that we want to hire, but we want you too, does it bother you having another person to work with?" My answer was a resounding "not even slightly" and that was that. I started a month later after serving out my month's notice.December2012 wrote: »How did you get your job?
I mostly agree with all of the rules we have, there are some things I would have stronger personal feelings on than my professional self doesDo you ever feel conflicted about the rules of the site, vs your own personal feelings on certain issues or situations? i.e. have you ever had to apply the rules against your gut feelings? Or does 'spirit of the law' take precedent?
But I can keep these things separated reasonably well.
Doo!Doodly?
We employ 9 people - Seán as the CEO, Declan as Product Manager, Niamh and I as Community Managers, Chris as Sys Admin, Diego, Pablo and Andres as developers and Matt in Sales.How many people does boards.ie actually employ and in what kind of roles?
Who owns boards.ie?
How much would it cost to buy boards.ie??
Cheers.
The company is owned by Daft.ie, DeVore, Cloud and Vexorg.
I have honestly got no idea what we would cost to buy - one of the important things about my job (and its been this way since I started) is that I have no responsibility for company finances or bringing money in or anything like that. My job is to work for you folks and bridge the gap between the site and the company (which are 2 separate entities as far as we're concerned). That's not to say that if I have a good idea and it might also be a revenue generator, that I'll keep it to myself But money isn't a part of my day-to-day at all.
I don't know what either of these things are, but a quick Google tells me it's soccer related. I don't follow soccer at all (it's far too corrupt for my liking).FourFourFM wrote: »The Wealdstone Raider or Andy Tate?
Official Registered accounts as of 13:01pm today is 688,648 (you can see that on this page by the way).How many members is there on boards?
Active accounts which we define as "logs in once a month or more" is about 70,000.
Bigger, better and with more people engaged. I'd like us to be a place where people can talk to their local county council or corporation, their local TD, their service providers (which we've made a great start with thanks to the Talk To forums) or just their neighbours as well as finding the best and brightest people in their areas of interest to talk about any given topic under the sun.A question I was asked: where do you see boards going?...
The office is lovely. We're in the middle of Dublin City (even though we technically have a Dublin 8 Postcode), it's a nice building that's got a really good vibe to it. It's decorated well but not excessively or anything, and it's got a great view of the cityWhat's the actual place you work like? Is it a small office or what? How many people are actually employed by boards? Thanks. In the 18+ years since I left college, this is the nicest office I've worked in. We've got enough room to be comfy and not be on top of each other (I've been in some really awful crammed, overheated, stuffy places and also in almost empty floor's of buildings that were cold and had a real feeling of isolation).
We share our floor of the building with TheJournal. They're a really lovely bunch of people to be sharing a space with. On the floor below us are Daft. Back when I started, it was just one section of the third floor that made up Daft and Boards. Then they took over the entire floor (it was split into 2 offices) and then expanded onto the 4th floor as well when Adverts was split into a separate company and TheJournal was founded.
I hope I answered that above, but just wanted to say that the hamsters/servers don't live in our office, they're in a rack in Digiweb's data centre out in Blanchardstown.Cookie_Monster wrote: »So aside from spending hours feeding all the hamsters what does a normal day in boards HQ tend to entail for you?0 -
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Got a phone call from Vex to say "hey, there was this other guy we interviewed that we want to hire, but we want you too, does it bother you having another person to work with?" My answer was a resounding "not even slightly" and that was that
What ever happened to him? Do you now regret that answer?
In all seriousness though, bearing in mind your replies to the future of the site above what's been the biggest frustration of working with Boards.ie in the past few years, given you know the potential and opportunity for the site is there. I know budget, resources and so on are an issue, but is there something (else) that people might be surprised to know about?0 -
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It's not something I'm willing to discuss I'm afraid, but it was a legal matter.Banjo String wrote: »I can't be the only one wondering..... What did This guy Do that started the numerous threads....?
As I said earlier on, money isn't a part of my day to day so whilst I have some notion of how we're doing financially, I don't have enough knowledge to even begin to give an informed answer. I do know that it's not enough and that we operate at a loss and we do need to change that.batistuta9 wrote: »what is the ad revenue like, & operating cost of the site also
what are you looking at to increase revenue
have you ever considered selling user data
has the site ever considered being more social/personal
have you noticed an increase in information requests
do you personally believe the site has been hacked unknown to the sec. team, do you believe the site is monitored.
personally again, do you think the web is dead in a free, unmonitored, uncontrolled sense. will filtering be the new norm.
Plans to increase it: continue expanding our sponsored content and Talk To forums. There are other projects we're putting together - it's a challenge that hundreds of bigger websites than us haven't yet cracked either, so we will always have an element of trial and error with these ideas.
Selling members data: I'm the company's data protection officer and I'd immediately report the sale of data to the commissioners and see whoever thought it up answer for their madness in court. Thankfully, the role of data officer for a company brings with it a "whistle blower" immunity, but I would give very serious consideration to resigning because if we allowed someone who would do something like that in the door, I'm not sure I would want to be here anymore.
More social/personal - it's a difficult thing to put a definition on. I also think it's entirely up to the site's members to decide how they use the platform and what changes they would ask of us to better support what they want. We're always open to suggestion on these sorts of topics. I met my girlfriend here, I have been to the weddings of loads of people who met here - I'm not sure how much more "social" it can get
If by "Data Requests" you mean section 8 requests for member data by the police or courts then no, it's extremely rare that it happens (a total of 6 occasions I think since I started working here).
Have we been "hacked?" No. Are we being monitored? Of course.
Is the "free" web dead? Not even slightly. Filtering has always been the norm, just not for the web. We filter things out all the time, the only differences we've faced in our new "always connected" world is the novelty of total information overload and not really having the behavioural patterns to deal with it effectively. I think, in my heavily sci-fi influenced way, in a hundred-ish years, assuming we haven't annihilated ourselves in some sort of resources war, anthropologists, psychologists, historians and the rest will look back at this as being the kick start to a new evolution of the human brain.
Gods no, not at all! I only have issues with people who cause me issues. For the first 12-18 months of my time here, AH was the biggest source of these issues. It was the reason we were getting legal threats on a weekly basis, it was hostile, unwelcoming, deeply sexist and well on it's way to becoming <insert horrible section of internet here> of our site.Titan Curved Rider wrote: »This might come across as rude but I always perceive you as having contempt for the users of Boards, specifically the posters in After Hours. Do you feel like this is an accurate perception?
Long story short, that is not even remotely the case now and I hold the regulars and especially the mods involved in the last 5 years in very high regard. The community there said "we want more, we want better and we want to be taken seriously" and worked with the mods to make it that way.
To provide some context and history: AH's rep of "it's only AH, you can pretty much ignore anything they have to say because they have no idea what they're talking about" was not without substance for a long time on this site - it was where the founders wanted those who were both trouble makers and who didn't know how to engage in a discussion on any given matter (and back then, on this site it was 75% gaming, 15% technology and 10% "other") to go. Those of us who were a part of the Boards Community (cause we were still very much small enough to be one single entity) were, well, we were snobby and condescending bastards - there's no other way to describe it. Now, I'm making a very grand sweeping generalisation here, so please keep that in mind. We were all smart, tech savvy (often times working or studying in the tech sector) and we looked down our noses at people who didn't know how to build a computer from parts, configure and set up a LAN and all the rest.
Had we simply been nicer and more inclusive, we'd never have created the sort of "us and them" mentality that lead to AH being a mess and the "its only AH" group-think that we still battle.
The AH of then is a radically different AH than the one we have now and I'm really really happy about that. I am really sorry if I've given the impression that I have some sort of problem with AH or it's community, I really don't.
I'd be a lot more careful about choosing the software platform and the various options contained within. VBulletin is a great platform if you're not as big as Boards. Chances are, It would still have been the early platform of choice based on the way it works, but I'd never have allowed things like Social Groups, Tags (all stuff we've gotten rid of), etc to have been deployed in the first place.ScienceNerd wrote: »If you were starting boards all over again, what would you do differently?
I'd give a lot more and smarter thought to being able to work with businesses from day one. The benefits of being able to talk to your customers directly on their "home turf" are huge for any business and customer. If we'd taken a different approach other than "all corporate/commercial content is evil" then the site would probably pay for itself
I'd also be less of an arse and encourage others to be the same way - see my musings on AH above
Yea, they definitely do. Some days though I'd be hard pressed to give you that answerMiss Behave wrote: »Is it worth it? Do the positives outweigh the amount of crap you have to put up with on a daily basis?Fancy going for a fee pints after work tomorrow?
1) The people.Miss Behave wrote: »What's your favourite thing about boards?
And your least favourite?
2) The bad people.
None of your business.What is your salary?
Cake and Hackers tbh.Vex Willems wrote: »coke or hookers?
I cannot.Can you lick your elbow?
I'd usually play a quick Sudoku.Gowlasauras Rex wrote: »What's your favourite thread/ YouTuber to watch/read while having a poo?
No more or less than the rest of us.Do you think the poster above is strange?
Someone once accused me of personal and professional corruption and it took me 3 days to stop being not just angry, but blindly outraged about it. It was, to be fair to the other party, a case of poorly chosen words rather than any malicious intent and it's water under the bridge now.What's the most offensive thing anyone has said to you on boards? What are the chances of a convicted murderer doing an AMA?
I'm not sure why you have this convicted murdered fixation - I agree it might be an interesting AMA, but you've been going on about it a bit much... I don't know how I'd go about getting one on board, but maybe OMackeral can hook me up with one of his inmates 0 -
I won't lie, there've been times when I've definitely gone "got you, you prick!" when dealing with a particularly bothersome troll. I don't want to get into specifics, it would be unfair and would look as petty as it probably seems to a lot of you reading. It's not big or clever, but I'm human tooknucklehead6 wrote: »Have you ever banned someone and thought "YES! Finally got that Bastid"
Or, as others have said, has there ever been a time when Dav the professional Boardsie has had to take action against one of your(or your alter ego's) friends?
As I said before, I have had to take action against very close friends and once upon a time I even had to ban my girlfriend.Boards.ie: Chris wrote: »Are you really "still looking" for the key to the lock you used to chain me to my desk as a "first day joke"? It's just I've been here 3 weeks now and I've run out of chocolate HobNobs.
Do you guys see what I have to work with? :rolleyes:Boards.ie: Diego wrote: »Just 3 weeks? Lucky you Chris, I have been chained for 15 months. Dav... are you there? I need to go to toilet, I promise I won't escape.
The other one is Niamh. She was promoted to the title of Community Manager recently and I'm delighted because she's been a part of the team since Boards Deals and she's a whole lot better at a whole lot of the more business admin side of things than I am. Niamh also has a different outlook (I would say far more positive!) on life to me, so we each approach a problem from a very different point of view which often means 2 very different potential solutions to any given issue.ScouseMouse wrote: »Who is the other one? Is it a big lanky fella, needing a shave, who eats cow pie?
My favourites are the PC Gaming forum and the Games forum. There are also a couple of private forums that I'm a member of that I love very much.Miss Behave wrote: »Do you have a favourite forum on boards?
NopeHas too be Prison...... Same as the rest of us!
There are a lot of ways to get around a ban unfortunately and none of them involve as much as packing a bag to move anywhere. Those that slip through and stay slipped through have clearly changed because it doesn't take long to spot a numpty.Gowlasauras Rex wrote: »Something I should have asked Gordon.
But do you find it is easy to get around a ban? All I would have to do is move house and change my email.
Or do you find that these people just end up getting banned again and those who slip through just change their posting style.
Yes I'm suggesting to get around a ban, move house.
Don't ask us, we ask youbennyineire wrote: »I know this question was probably posted before but I can't remember seeing it any where.
How does one become a mod, is it voluntary or paid ?
How may mods is there ?
Have you had to fire any mods who let their power go to their heads ?
Who mods the mods ? It's entirely voluntary and unpaid. If you're smart, you don't get into fights or petty squabbles, you contribute a lot to a community then you'll be in the running if a mod is needed.
There are about 600 volunteers altogether including Mods, CMods and Admins. The only people who are paid to be here are those of us with "Boards.ie Employee" in our tag-line.
We have de-modded people for various reasons, abuse of their position has been one of them.
The Admins mod the mods.
Ladies and gents, please say hello to my friend Darragh who was my partner in crime in the early days. Every time I go to an event where I'm representing Boards, I get at least one person asking me what he's doing and what he's up todarraghdoyle wrote: »What ever happened to him? Do you now regret that answer?
In all seriousness though, bearing in mind your replies to the future of the site above what's been the biggest frustration of working with Boards.ie in the past few years, given you know the potential and opportunity for the site is there. I know budget, resources and so on are an issue, but is there something (else) that people might be surprised to know about?I was at this last night and it was the first thing 2 people asked me He's some bollox but I loved working with him and learned a hell of a lot from him.
Biggest frustrations: not being able to say "yes" to some of the interesting things that cropped up as much as we should have. Also, we had too much of a reliance on Tom and allowed our incorrect assumption that we needed his input on everything to overshadow some of our own decision making.
We get that a lot, what unique blend of talent and humour are you proposing?john the one wrote: »Do you want me to work at Boards.ie with you?
I don't have any formal computer training, im not very good looking but damn, i would be great craic to have around the office
Personal feelings have definitely come into my decisions, but only to the point of realising "I'm making this personal, stop" and I leave it alone for however long it takes me to come back at it in a dispassionate and disconnected manner. I then rethink everything from the start and don't let personal feelings bother me.Business Cat wrote: »Have your personal feelings towards a user ever clouded/influenced you when dealing with a user in the CM capacity?
How difficult is it to remain impartial?
It's not always easy, but it's definitely something I've gotten a lot better at. The version of me that posts on this site as Dav is a different person to who I feel I am (mostly, I swear a LOT more in person).
I also suffer from depression, something this job has a major impact on (a therapist told me I was headed for a nervous breakdown 2 years ago because I was always bringing it home with me and it consumed my existence), but working on that has made self regulation of mood something I've become accustomed to and better at spotting what's likely to have triggered a reaction and why.0 -
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About 28-30%How much of boards.ie active membership is from outside of Ireland?
Do you think boards.ie plays any role in keeping the Irish diaspora connected with home?
One more. What's the best perk of the job?
(Or freebie you may have gotten over the years..)
Some for sure, but less so with the proliferation of more individual centric platforms like Facebook - they're simply better at doing the sorts of things people might want to do in terms of connecting with friends and family in a more personal way, but for general discussion, we're still relevant. As a "what's the pulse of the nation" sort of site, we're really good though.
I've been rather fortunate with perks - I got a couple of free phone out of Meteor and Vodafone who were having some manner of press event and everyone in attendance got one. Getting to meet and interview the 2 founders of Bioware was a real treat (video) and meeting Terry Gilliam, it was difficult to keep the fanboi in check (video). I did get him to autograph my "The Animator" card from my copy of Monty Python Fluxx which pleases me greatly
I have a list, yea. I rarely have to reference it cause the rest of the team all the way up to the board level are well aware of what will and won't fly on the site anyway.Do you have a list of things which the company side get told No! about, like ads between every post?
What is the strangest thing which has happened to you because of boards.ie?
The strangest thing that's happened...
I'll give a few answers cause I'm not sure I could pick. These ones are before I started working here
In no particular order:- I ended up playing poker in Graham Linehan's house one night and got to see an early version of an episode of season 2 of the IT Crowd
- I met and had a great chat and some drinks with Ram Vaswani and Ross Boatman of the Hendon Mob.
- The first Boards Beers
Meeting people and getting an "OMG you're Dav from Boards!!" sort of reaction - I promise you all this is a real thing and I have no idea how or why. It happened just this week after the discussion I was involved in at the Innovation Academy - a person from the audience insisted in having a picture with me. That's fking weird to me, I'm just a fat nerd who works on a website.Rachel_Ann wrote: »Rachel_Ann checking in!
Cadburys or Nestlé?
Chrome or Firefox?
Converse or Vans?
Rain or Sunshine?
Greatest captain of Star Trek?
Preferred OS?
Favourite 'guilty pleasure' song?
First console?
Favourite crisps?
Will it snow this Christmas?
Would you be opposed to a Konami Code on Boards.ie?
Are all your base are belonging to us?- Cadburys
- Chrome
- Vans
- Rain
- Captain Benjamin Sisko
- Windows 8.1
- Dragonforce - Through the Fire and the Flames
- Atari 2600
- Tayto Cheesy Onions, although a strong new challenger has appeared recently in the form of the Keogh's Farm Cheese & Onion offering.
- Yes - somewhere
- Not even slightly
- No, they are belong to CATS.
It's a good job I don't work in IT anymoreYou've mentioned girlfriends twice on this thread - are we to seriously believe IT guys get girlfriends?
I was away extolling the virtues of Shadows of Mordor to one of my friends last night and breaking him of his GTA V habit, but thank you for the offerGenuine gesture, no evil trap. I'm in the bath pub. Stall it?
erm, I do still have my original Feb '98 personal accountIf you didn't have Dav as your username, what would you choose? But the "work" username needs to be my name so there's no confusion when I'm dealing with people.
I changed it some years agoKharn maybe?
I love both equally.Cookie_Monster wrote: »Star Trek or Star Wars?
I think it was mike65.Who has the most postsWhere do you want to be in life in 5 years.
What angers you in real life.
Do you have a party piece.
Can you touch your nose with your tongue.- Not much further from where I am now tbh. I'd like to still be involved with Boards, heading up a hopefully expanded Community Team (cause we've had an influx of 30,000 more active members every week and there's loads to do).
- Almost every single aspect of "modern" Ireland makes me angry. A legal system that only works if you're rich, a health system that just does not work, a political system that is built with corruption and small minded thinking in mind at its core, essential services being the first thing that gets targeted for the chop, an organisation that cares more for the reputation of paedophiles than children being our "moral compass," our front-line civil service staff (Gardaí, Teachers, Nurses, etc) being asked to do more and more for less and less but most of all, the total lack of options and appetite for actually fixing any of it.
- I can play the guitar (badly) and sing and have been known to drop the odd metallized rendition of Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive on occasion.
- I can not.
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