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Post by RL7836 on Aug 10, 2007 23:30:15 GMT
I find things like the above interesting, sorry if it is deemed off topic. The reason I mentioned it was I see the same principal in forums, more people, more participation, results in the most useful resource. Zpyder, You put together an interesting collection of thoughts / suggestions. However, one of your main themes: "more participation, results in the most useful resource" seems only partially true in practice. What seems to happen in the forums is a continual influx of new folks w/ little to no experience w/ CPs. While this has the potential to be a very good thing for the hobby, most of these people ask the same series of questions and appear to be functionally incapable of utilizing the search function. Over time, many of the people who do have the CP experience / knowledge (& less patience) seem to drift away and contribute less & less. By losing the input of some of the people who have this knowledge, the quality of the average post (& the variety & complexity of subject matter) deteriorates over time. Simply put, it seems that greater participation of constantly-changing newbies to a forum also tends to be a catalyst for a CP-knowledge 'brain-drain'. Whether this is an accurate assessment of existing forums is up for debate. This forum, so far, has been able to attract a number of experienced CP'ers who have been reluctant to join the other forums. Let's see if we can manage to create an environment that keep these folks around ...
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Clint
Full Member
Posts: 808
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Post by Clint on Aug 11, 2007 0:29:24 GMT
As The other forums may have many members, not all of them are active members. This forum is brand new so naturally it has fewer members. We're open to all and all are welcome, but at the same time you have to walk before you can run, right? You have to cover the fundamentals first or else you'll get lost when people start talking advanced stuff.
You also need to give yourself more credit. The quality and thoughtfulness of your previous two posts is VERY impressive, and don't think age has anything to do with talent or knowledge.
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Post by zpyder on Aug 11, 2007 9:15:50 GMT
Hehe, thanks for those replies. I'm trying to improve my writing, I've yet to crack being concise (as 3000 words would testify).
I would agree with the "brain drain" theory being one possible outcome of an influx of less experienced people. This is where the minefield of moderation would come in. It is unfortunately a lot of work, requiring active moderators that have a seemingly endless energy for keeping things in line. This runs the risk of upsetting some members, which would result in the claims of over moderation. In my eyes however when this happens, it is usually an individual out of quite a large member base, with the rest of the members siding on the moderators side - It's usually clear to all except the "over moderated" who's at fault!
No system is foolproof sadly, but restructuring the layout slightly to emphasise the search feature would help - though obviously many people would just ignore this, no matter how obvious you make it.
This is a completely hypothetical solution, as it is fundamentally flawed, but having some system of a dual board perhaps could work. I.E. Some way of filtering new users through a normal board with the average style posts, which would be hustle and bustle of small exchanges. And then there would be a refuge of sorts, where it is quieter and calmer, and people only talk about CP's, and the level of discussion is much higher. As I said, this is flawed, creating such a system becomes confusing and cluttered. Another problem is if the "calm zone" is by invite only, or hidden to visitors, or seperated by some other means, the issue is the board becomes a little "cloak and daggered" with a lack of transparency, if such a thing makes sense for a board.
I'm literally just thinking out loud and brainstorming systems and the merits and demerits now. Though the board is ok with how it is at the moment (for what is intended) - it doesn't hurt to hypothesise other scenarios. As the board matures and grows you might find a need to adapt functions to accomodate more members (who are experienced etc).
One comment along these lines is the "20 most recent posts" function. Would a "20 most recent threads" be better? I would add that I do like being able to read the posts themselves, however as more people post more, new posts are going to be lost there quickly. A list of threads, though it wouldn't show the new content, would offer an index of what has been updated since the last visit.
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Post by Aidan on Aug 11, 2007 10:55:27 GMT
The concise answer is that even were it desirable, it is not possible to implement such changes under proboards software. Once the decision was taken to go with proboards its limitations had to be accepted. ICPS forum is a grand experiment currently less than six months old. Once the first six months have expired, the success of the experiment will be assessed and decisions made concerning the future direction of the board.
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Post by zpyder on Aug 11, 2007 12:01:57 GMT
Aha, ok. My experience with forums lies in other packages such as phpBB and SMF.
Wow, a short post by me in this thread!
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Post by pitcherfreak on Aug 11, 2007 23:47:39 GMT
I do tend to agree with the idea of a search function could be useful for the forum as it gets bigger. At the moment it's easy to view all the threads but looking through the UK forum takes a lot more time because there are so many posts. Love the forum though is great to be able to talk to others with my interests
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Post by Aidan on Aug 12, 2007 0:29:30 GMT
I don't think there is a board anywhere without a search function! See the "search" button at the top of the page, directly below the ICPS banner.
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matti
Full Member
Posts: 216
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Post by matti on Aug 12, 2007 12:43:52 GMT
The concise answer is that even were it desirable, it is not possible to implement such changes under proboards software. Once the decision was taken to go with proboards its limitations had to be accepted. ICPS forum is a grand experiment currently less than six months old. Once the first six months have expired, the success of the experiment will be assessed and decisions made concerning the future direction of the board. Nothing wrong with Proboards Aidan, remember the best Nepenthes forum in the world is on a proboards forum. It will be better when a couple of members there are Banned but they have seemed to quiet down in recent months. pitcherplants.proboards34.com/index.cgi?
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Post by pitcherfreak on Aug 14, 2007 8:04:39 GMT
I do now
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Post by ryanhellyer on Nov 4, 2007 9:27:54 GMT
Hi, I just stumbled across this post and thought I'd put in my two cents worth as I have some experience in forum development ...
The content on here is great and is what makes this a great forum. But there are a few technical changes I think you guys could make to spruce things up a bit.
In particular I'd be inclined to ditch the Proboards105.com domain and shift the whole thing over to carnivorousplants.org. That would look more professional and give you more scope to set the forum up they way you want it rather than being limited by the setup on Proboards.
I'm not sure of exactly what Proboards.com offers, but most of these freebie boards don't allow you to back up your database and/or shift your forum elsewhere if necessary. Plus you can run into difficulties if they go out of business - worst case scenario your forum can potentially just vanish into thin air along with your full archive of posts. Archives going back a LONG way are a good way to keep information hungry visitors happy and losing all that data would be a pity.
You shouldn't need that "Click Here to Make This Board Ad-Free" text link at the bottom of the screen as hosting is cheap.
Google search isn't the best option as a seach tool for forums like this. I recommend switching to a built in system, they're generally more reliable for searching a individual forums. Use Google for worldwide searching, but use local search tools for local searching is a good rule of thumb IMO.
cheers, Ryan
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Post by John Brittnacher on Nov 6, 2007 22:56:56 GMT
Ryan --
Everything you say is true. We don't particularly like all the ways things work here but we had to make compromises. This was the best choice for us.
You have to remember the ICPS is all volunteer and we rely on donations for most of our operations beyond CPN. I'll give you one guess as to how many people have clicked that Donate link and followed through. And I will give you one guess as to how many people deeply involved with the ICPS have the technical ability to set up and manage a forum. Hint: The two numbers are different.
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Post by ryanhellyer on Nov 7, 2007 3:17:58 GMT
You have to remember the ICPS is all volunteer and we rely on donations for most of our operations beyond CPN. What do you need money for? Hosting costs? The hosting account that carnivorousplants.org is on can't handle the traffic? If it's just technical know how you need then let me know as I may be able to help. If it's hosting costs, then I'd be keen to see some traffic stats for the site as I may be able to help with that too - 'may' being the operative word here as I'm already hosting quite a few non-profit sites at the moment so I may not be able to handle another one unless it's traffic is minimal. I'll give you one guess as to how many people have clicked that Donate link and followed through. And I will give you one guess as to how many people deeply involved with the ICPS have the technical ability to set up and manage a forum. Hint: The two numbers are different. Zero donations and one person with the technical ability? I know that feeling well. I run a forum for my local ice hockey club and we are also operating on a near zero budget. cheers, Ryan
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Post by John Brittnacher on Nov 7, 2007 17:54:11 GMT
Zero donations and one person with the technical ability? Exactly! But it was a sort of trick question. Our members have been VERY generous with donations on our membership web site. They just didn't use the link above. We do have members with technical ability but my requirement is long-term demonstrated heavy involvement. We can afford the costs of hosting although we couldn't use www.carnivorousplants.org because that server is too impacted--I installed 3 different packages on it and they were too slow, much too slow to use. (The irony is what was killing the server was people doing log analysis!) We would need a cadre of technical people so that operations don't rely on one or two individuals. We have been burned badly in the past when volunteers disappeared on us. It is especially difficult when we are scattered all over the planet. You can't just watch the obituaries in the local paper. All that said, we are always looking for more members for our web team. Our primary technologies are Unix, php, MySQL, and Dreamweaver. Contact me via my carnivorousplants.org e-mail address.
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Post by Kayota on Aug 28, 2008 0:41:05 GMT
I'm new to CPs, and 15 years old at that... a dreaded noob, right? but I did my research BEFORE coming here, and I won't be asking stupid questions.
I ALWAYS research before taking on a new living thing, be it plant or animal, and honestly, I dislike it when new people DON'T research. IT'S NOT HARD! It took maybe a few hours to find Barry's site! So yeah, I see where you're coming from there. Just my 2 cents. I may seem a little harsh, but I have to answer the same stupid questions over and over on a rat forum I go to... it gets old after a while, y'know?
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Post by pinglover on Aug 28, 2008 22:32:47 GMT
zpyder, a little late to the party here but your comments were thoughtful, not offensive in the least.
I'm so sorry you have been feeling intimidated. That was not and is not the intent of the ICPS.
The resources of the organization are open to all however I believe there was a consensus in which it was believed it would be best to steer clear of potential free for alls in the forums hence no "open" board. In the spirit of productive debate, it's ok to attack focused ideas but there will be no attacking of people.
I would like to take a moment to add that there are many safety nets in place for both students and educators. The ICPS has members who will hand hold with students outside of this forum who also create the equivalent of personalized educational programming for use in classrooms as well as other educational settings. Just because you don't see this type of activity here in threads doesn't mean it isn't happening outside this one arm of the ICPS.
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