Master Threads for Certain Species

[Heather]

I'm wondering what members think of this idea. I personally like it, cause I'm anal, and like things neat and orderly in general. However, it means we'll need to do some work on the administration side of things, and conform to the idea on the member side of things.
Jon (in SW Ohio) tried to start this a while back and it sort of lost entropy.
If we decided to do this we need to, as members of the community, help to keep it up.

So, what do YOU think?
Do you want all rothschildianum photos in one place? All besseae photos in one place?

I'm not thinking of doing this for every orchid, I'm thinking of this regarding the most popular plants we have photos of, for comparison value more than anything. P. micranthum would be another good one - some of the other parvis and more variable hybrids perhaps...

If you do want it, and want to help with it, post some suggestions for other master threads!

(and please be patient if we decide to do it, it's going to take some time...)

 

[Roy]

Heather, if this could be done, I think its a great move. I think the forum is excellent but ths idea would be a useful educational tool as many posts have great cultural advise etc, its all there ready to go instead of searching.
Very good for newbies also.

 

[goldenrose]

I agree!

 

[paphreek]

I think this would be an excellent move if it is possible. Less posted species could be lumped into their various alliances.

 

[Gcroz]

I agree with Paphreek. I like the idea, but why not just do the dominant tribes, ie. parvisepalum, brachy, barbatum, etc.

I know that I'd probably not see much of the rest of the site, as I'm sure you know Heather. LOL

 

[SlipperKing]

Are you talking about sub-catagories under the "Paphiopedilum" forum? I would find that useful. But like the roth thread that's currently running, for it to turns into a monster thread like the "person below me game", I wouldn't be able to handle that. Too big, I couldn't set and read through all of that. If there were subcatagories of species say, under the Paph forum and members posted everything pretaining to that species under it's catagory that could be cool. You could surf the thread titles and pick & choose the ones you what to read. These sub-cats might turnout to be "seasonal" where a flury of active occures when everyone has it in bloom then nothing for the rest of the year. But that could become a good source for history over time for the maintanence for each species.

 

[Heather]

The dominant tribes would be a hell of a lot more work. Are you volunteering, G? :wink:

 

[Heather]

Hmmm, okay, so what are you suggesting? New forums pertaining to each group? Instead of species, a forum for multis, parvis, brachys, etc. In which there could still be species threads such as the roth mega? That's an interesting idea.

HOWEVER, I will say that if we go with that idea it will take time to get past threads sorted out into their individual forums. So, you'll have to bear with us on timeliness but going forward we could do that.

I'd like to see more imput on this from members, before we go forward with the idea.

 

[SlipperKing]

I raise my hand in favor of the new resolution, any seconds?

 

[paphioland]

I think again you could have both but individual plants should get their own post. Especially in things such as roths that generate high interest. I am not going to read every post of a huge thread everytime I am on. I might miss a new roth posted. How am I to know if the last post was a pic of a new plant?? If you could mark the post maybe as indicating that a pic had been posted.
I still think it is better to have both. IF you want to spend the time looking at all the roth pictures they should be in one place so you don't have to search. Also general discussion could be done on those threads. New roths should also be posted in a seperate thread as well so we know there are new pics not posted before. Otherwise you have to check every post of the megathread to make sure you don't miss a pic of a new clone.

 

[SlipperKing]

What about the # posts not read since you're last visit? Isn't that clue that a new coment or pic has been added to an "old" thread?

 

[Gcroz]

Volunteer? Who, me? I think that you'd have an easier time getting me to spray an herbicide in my gh than to do that.

I think your last post kinda hit my idea, at least in my mind, on the head Heather. But, perhaps make the group pages and start them fresh. Honestly, is there a need to re sort everything if you keep the archives? Over time, these pages would fill up.

Anyhow, I'm terrible with web pages. I know how to use them for enjoyment, but building one is akin to translating Upland Guatamalan Mayan dialects for me.

 

[Heather]

I was really just kidding with you, George.

Paphioland - yes, Slipperking is correct - you could just click on the link for new posts and you would get anything you had not previously seen.

I'm thinking of breaking the paph forum out into groups but then what do we do with the Phrags? Hmm?? I mean, we could go about this ad nauseum...

I appreciate that you like the idea of doing it going forward. That would help. As time permits, we could move important threads into new areas but it will not be overnight.

 

[Rick]

I think its kind of a perk for growers to show off their hard grown flowers with a new post. I know that not everybody is interested in the same things, and you do see seasonal waves of certain species and hybrid types that probably wear folks out after a time, but I think everyone should get their chance to introduce their trophy.

Maybe after the interest dies down on the thread, then go ahead and move it to the mega thread.??

 

[paphioland]

What about the # posts not read since you're last visit? Isn't that clue that a new coment or pic has been added to an "old" thread?

But then you have to read every post. You have no choice. If you want to see if a new pic or clone has been posted you have to read every post to the thread. It is not ideal. There is no harm in having both

 

[Gcroz]

Of course I know you were kidding, Madame Administratrix!

I don't like to volunteer... I prefer being told what to do!

 

[Candace]

Personally, I think people can just do a search on "roth" or "parishii" etc. and find all the threads to read. I guess the negative I see about having megathreads is that I don't think people are going to want to read a thread that eventually will have say 15 pages to sort through..Plus it makes a lot more work for the admins. I created the roth megathread, but I don't necessarily think we should do this for every specie or hybrid out there...My 2 cents.

 

[Heather]

Of course I know you were kidding, Madame Administratrix!

Ha! And don't forget it!

 

[Sirius]

There is a structural problem with megathreads as well. Let's say for instance, that you remember seeing a photo of a really nice roth posted and later you can't remember who posted it. Imagine that you even forgot the clonal name, but you really want to find a copy of that photo because you think you found a similiar plant for sale. So you come to Slippertalk and perform a search for "rothschildianum."

If the forum is set up so everyone can create their own thread about roth, you may have to scroll through ten pages of search results in order to find your photo. Maybe the title of the thread or the name of the user who posted it jogs your memory and makes it easier, maybe it doesn't. This is the way the forum operates now. It can get tedious to search sometimes, but that is what you get for being forgetful. : )

However, if the forum is set up so that every roth photo is now posted at the end of a megathread, you now have to look through all the pages of the thread. This could be 30 pages, 40 pages or even 100's of pages. If you are looking through the thread for a photo, you have to wait for all the images to load on every page, which on dialup could take quite a while.

Also, if you post a photo of a roth in the Megathread and a few months go by and many more people post in the thread after you, your photo is now in the middle of the thread somewhere. Now say that you want to point someone to your photo. You can't just go to the end of the thread to see your photo anymore. In the past, you would search the forum and find the thread where you posted the photo and link that person directly to the thread. If you have megathreads everywhere, you now have to search the forum and potentially dig through the megathread for a few pages, then link the person directly to that page.

Also, when you search for "roth culture" on the forum now, the site searches all the thread titles AND body content for that phrase. So you might pull up a thread that is titled "Bob's roths" in which Bob talks at length about his technique for growing roths. If you switch to a megathread format, when someone searches for "roth culture", they will see the megathread listed in the search results, but when they click on it they will have to start at page one and click through every page in order to read the culture information.

I really don't see the benefit of having a megathread. They will become huge and potentially messy as older photos are deleted leaving dead image links throughout the thread. Nobody will be able to easily find culture information dispersed in them.

What I would suggest is this. Start an image gallery. I am absolutely sure there are plugins available for vBulletin that allow you to copy photos that have been posted to the forum into a gallery where the photos can be labeled with the grex info. If the photo is deleted by the original poster, it disappears from the gallery with no dead image links. This way, you can have a great visual reference of the plants and also have the freedom to post multiple threads about the same species.

I also like the idea of adding subcategories to the Paph section. When you click on the link into Paphiopedilum culture or photos, you see subcategories like multifloral etc. I would caution against getting too technical with these subdivisions, because you could make it very hard for a newbie (like me) to find where to post a thread if the forum is broken up into "thingamajig subsp. whatsit" categories everywhere. Heck, I don't even know the names of these subcategories, so there would be big learning curve for me while I figured out where to post new threads. I am sure I would not be the only one frustrated with this at first, but eventually I think it would benefit me to learn these things.

 

[gore42]

I agree with John and Candace. I'd rather do a search if I want to compare photos of a particular species.

- Matt