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Post by jocelyn on Oct 8, 2017 12:17:37 GMT -5
So, what are folks doing for food storage? Here, it's 2 freezers, and about 500 mason jars, plus a cellar full of 5 gallon buckets of vegies. Not squashes though, they stay upstairs where it's warmer. Then, the nuts, also in 5 gallon buckets...walnuts mostly.
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Post by paquebot on Oct 8, 2017 21:57:54 GMT -5
The bulk of those zero posters are spammers. Proboards allows anyone to put a link in their information right away. Usually it has nothing to do with gardening. Check the newest member, azradon1, and there will be zero posts but a link to radon gas. Do a search for that person on the Internet and he or she will show up on other forums also with zero posts.
Martin
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Post by philagardener on Oct 9, 2017 5:06:10 GMT -5
Luckily we don't see most of those because our few remaining Mods (mostly joseph, but orflo was on recently when I reported one) heroically keep playing wack a mole.
It's a trickle at this point but in the past I believe it was a much larger issue.
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Post by paquebot on Oct 9, 2017 21:39:03 GMT -5
Luckily we don't see most of those because our few remaining Mods (mostly joseph, but orflo was on recently when I reported one) heroically keep playing wack a mole. It's a trickle at this point but in the past I believe it was a much larger issue. Wrong! They are coming in almost daily. Latest new member linked to a key and lock service. There is nothing that can be done about it on Proboards since there is no rule about posting a link to anything. Most other forum formats have option to block all links until the member has submitted X number of legitimate posts. (IDig required 5 when it was in existence.) Martin |
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Post by diane on Oct 9, 2017 22:00:29 GMT -5
- what more do keen, steve1 (amongst others) and me have left to say about purple snowpea breeding, for example? Hey, someone posted today on Tomatoville, all excited about breeding purple peas. |
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Post by philagardener on Oct 10, 2017 5:09:13 GMT -5
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Post by philagardener on Oct 10, 2017 5:22:44 GMT -5
Luckily we don't see most of those because our few remaining Mods (mostly joseph, but orflo was on recently when I reported one) heroically keep playing wack a mole. It's a trickle at this point but in the past I believe it was a much larger issue. Wrong! They are coming in almost daily. Latest new member linked to a key and lock service. There is nothing that can be done about it on Proboards since there is no rule about posting a link to anything. Most other forum formats have option to block all links until the member has submitted X number of legitimate posts. (IDig required 5 when it was in existence.) Martin Hmmm . . . sorry, I misread your original post , paquebot . I was thinking of spam posts, which seem remarkably few on this board, rather than spam users. Are zero post users some bot effort to inflate the number of members on boards (attract advertising $?), or are they all Trojans waiting to open the gates and flood forums with garbage posts? Puzzling. |
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Post by prairiegardens on Oct 10, 2017 13:53:02 GMT -5
Just to say that this is an issue elsewhere as well. I run a bridge club that supposedly has 1000 or so members...we still have almost 3000 members on the club website but the host site had a glitch and booted almost all of them off about three months ago. They've (the thousand or so who reregistered) all trickled back on mostly somewhat indignantly, yet we still have only maybe 100 or so who actually participate in anything, teaching sessions, tourneys, team games or just playing in the club. This spring the host site made everyone change to a web based system rather than a download system and that lost a lot of people, including some who used to participate, but the gap between members and participants has been frustrating the admin for a number of years. We haven't been able to figure it out, other than thinking some people just like to collect club memberships.
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Post by paquebot on Oct 17, 2017 18:28:50 GMT -5
Alan has his distillery which is almost a full time thing. He still grows a lot of things including the corn to make his bourbon. If anyone is concerned, follow him on Facebook and find up what he's up to.
Martin
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Post by oxbowfarm on Nov 28, 2017 20:18:37 GMT -5
I think a lot of folks join because there is fairly unique information here at HG, I know I was initially attracted way back in 2011 (I think) by some really interesting stuff mybighair was posting on perrenial brassica breeding. And I was quite active for a number of years, and I've fallen away big time. Partly because Facebook hooked me (and many others) away. It is astonishing to be in a Facebook Group and be a part of a seed train with insane numbers of people on it. The germplasm I've received from the Kenosha Potato Project has CHANGED MY LIFE. One thing the internet has shown me is that far more people are interested in saving seeds and sharing them than are interested in joining an organization like Seed Savers Exchange and dealing with all the hassle entailed, or being a member of a forum like this and crafting a complex post with hyperlinks and inserted multiple photos from a photo host etc. The big thing ecosystems like FB and Instagram have is they are designed to make sharing your fluffy quick thoughts EASILY. Posting on a Proboards forum is a PITA by comparison. I don't know if a more updated version of this forum might be different but another BIG problem with HG is that the Alan Bishop has abandoned the thing. So we are left with a forum structure he created almost a decade ago and has never updated and a tiny cadre of remaining moderators (2 or 3?) who have limited capabilities. |
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Post by billw on Nov 28, 2017 21:10:19 GMT -5
Forums are just dying out everywhere. There are a lot of likely reasons. The biggest is that a large percentage of people now access the Internet most frequently through mobile devices. Most forums are clunky on anything other than a full computer. It's nothing particular to HG though - pick just about any big web forum and you'll see declining participation. People need a very convincing reason to sign up for another account, particularly when whatever topic the forum covers likely already has many analogous social media communities. It is too bad because platforms like Facebook encourage more superficial communication, but you can't fight the trend. Nothing on the Internet ever dies, it just fades into the background and fails to attract new users. Usenet is still out there even though most had left it behind by 1998. Forums will be like that.
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Post by rowan on Nov 28, 2017 21:55:52 GMT -5
I have to differ in my opinion. I am on a heap of FB groups, and yes, the instant responses are great but it doesn't make up for the ease of making longer posts and thoughts in a forum like this. I find these sorts of forums much easier to use and more enjoyable to read and participate in.
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Post by nathanp on Nov 29, 2017 0:32:56 GMT -5
This is a very interesting read, partly because I've been asking some of the same questions. To me, one difference between forums like this is the quantity and depth of information is unmatched. I treat them like they are encyclopedic. They are storehouses, or so to speak, the genebank of ideas and knowledge of this sort of thing. I have probably learned more about growing food crops on this forum than on any other internet source of information. FB and other social media can't come close to matching that. Even Linkedin, which is possibly the premier business social media site currently, can't touch the depth of information able to be stored.
However, there is something to be said for the networks that are built around FB groups. The breadth of involvement, ease of sharing photos and speed of response time from many, many people lends itself much more to networking and making contacts. It is light years ahead of what you get with forums. There are definite pros and cons with both, as anything on FB, for example, is difficult to search, and often the amount of information that is shareable is necessarily much smaller. But it can be shared much more widely. And makes things like seed sharing much more accessible.
Out of curiosity, I just ran some statistics on activity for the KPP FB group. Some of you may find this interesting. Others may not.
in the past 60 days, each day had:
Average of 389 'active' people per day. Out of about 2700 members.
Average of 1.1 new member per day
Average of 5 new posts per day
Average of 35 comments per day
In the past 28 days, there were 3,300 comments, posts and reactions. That's more than 100 per day.
The involvement of 389 'active' people per day out of 2700 is not a high percentage, but it's probably quite a bit higher than on forums like this. Obviously the depth of involvement for the vast majority of those people is lacking. But that's not what FB is good for.
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Post by nathanp on Nov 29, 2017 0:37:13 GMT -5
The germplasm I've received from the Kenosha Potato Project has CHANGED MY LIFE. Oxbowfarm I would be interested to hear any details on that you are willing to share. In whatever format (forum, FB, email, etc.) you are comfortable with. Personally, I'm glad to organize things like that. By the way, I would feel very comfortable opening up that seed train to long time members who have been involved on this forum. We had several people participate last year. |
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Post by templeton on Nov 29, 2017 2:03:10 GMT -5
The photo issue here is a real pain. Can we just pay to up the image capacity? I don't use a cloud storage facility. I used to take pics on a camera, eject the SD card, upload to picasa, and right click for a link. Now my new phone is my camera, no SD card, and my brain is already to full of 60 years of garbage to have room to learn bluetoothing, etc etc. Every cloud facility wants to be my best friend and to know my whole fucking genome, which i refuse to give, and picasa has stopped sharing last time i looked. Pity, since rowan 's fruiting cactus is just flowering, and it is spectacular! |
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