Adam Maguire

boards.ie, one of my favourite websites (and one of the few forums I spend any time on), recently conducted a census of its members for information and advertising purposes.
Of the 43,305 existing members (according to Big Boards) just over 1,400 voted in each of the five categories, meaning that only around 3% of the population of boards.ie actually took part in the census. While you can be sure that the actual active population of boards.ie is much lower than 43,305 it would still leave us with a small percentage of poll takers. So for a census the turn out wasn’t great but for a survey it gives a pretty good reading of the people on the forum.
What I found most interesting about the results is that they seem to match just about everybodys image of you average internet user. For example, nearly 87% of the polled were male; a pretty amazing majority that would rule out any possibility of a boards.ie Utopia surviving!
Next up is age. At first glance there seems to be a respectable enough spread across different age groups, but when you put them together to make an 18-30 group you find that 66% of the voters are within this range. Adding another 5 years on the end to make the group 18-34 would up the numbers to 80% of voters. So it’s fair to say that they vast majority of users on boards.ie are 20 to mid-30’s.
Now for marital status. 55.5% of users are currently single. This group is a whopping 35% ahead of the next nearest option, Monogomous Longterm Relationship which is at 25.5%. Just under 16% are currently married and less than 1% are divorced.
The final group of note is Occupation. This result is the final nail in the coffin of any argument relating to Internet usage. 29.5% of users work in the IT industry, while another 37% are either secondary, third level or postgrad students. This means that around 67% of boards.ie users are either students or in IT. The next nearest group is the self employed at 6%. It should be noted, however that 20% of users voted “Other” as their line of work was not covered in the individual options.
What I found funniest about the whole thing though, was not that the average boards.ie user is a male between 20-34 whom is single and works in IT (or as a student), it was more the fact that I am average in so many ways. I am 20, I’m male, I’m a student and I live in Dublin (like 51% of users). I am different in the fact that I’m not single and I won’t be moving into IT eventually.
I guess it goes to prove the constant reminder that people give on the likes of the Games forum, the posters on boards.ie are not representative of the population of the country. You’re damn right we’re not.