At the end of Spring Semester 2018 the BarkBoard service run by Information Technology will be retired.


Barkboard.mtu.edu has existed for a very long time.   During the semesters it sees some use as a place to sell things, post that you're looking for a roommate and as a digital rideshare board.   It's running a very very old set of code and no real department "owns" it.  We've asked University Marketing and Communications and Student Affairs if this is something they consider a "Service" that they offer and they do not.


It was first created by request of the campus community over a decade ago because the previous technology(Michigan Tech Newsgroups - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet_newsgroup) were retired.  Over the years IT has kept barkboard plugging along for the most part - Most of it's maintenance lately involves removing posts for various reasons(Illegal sales, posts that violate Michigan Tech policy, and other moderator type work, etc).  However we only do if that work if somebody reports it to us.  Currently we don't have the staff/time to actively maintain, monitor and moderate it.


With the existence of websites like Craigslist, eBay, Facebook, etc a lot of the reasons we used BarkBoard are replicated by different/newer services. Barkboard currently gets an average of 5 visitors a day, those users post on average 0.12 new topics per day and make a total of 0.18 posts.  The most used forums are the Housing and Rides section.


For a while IRHC ran a ride board themselves but now that links to a dead space https://blogs.mtu.edu/parentnet/tag/irhc-rideboard/


USG provides an off campus housing site http://usg.mtu.edu/usg/housing/ however it seems the traffic on BarkBoard is about finding a roommate or single rooms.


We will be posting an announcement on BarkBoard asking your constituents to contact you with any feedback they have about BarkBoard’s retirement.   During spring semester our hope is that USG, GSG, IRHC and other campus groups will work together to find a way to support the users of the current BarkBoard service for the future and communicate with the campus community about where to find those services going forward