Michael Mace makes good points on this subject, especially about reaching future and nascent bulbophiles. To reach them, and to capitalize on the growing interest in plants in general, the strategy must include modernized platforms (with or without FB). As others have noted it is not an either/or choice, and an analogy is nurseries who offer items on various hosted selling sites at the same time they maintain a regular business webpage. I have a different view on the wiki, especially the genus and species pages. When I look online for photos of rare bulbs, the PBS wiki often shows up in the top choices. iNaturalist can also, but its organization is less friendly and the content is mostly centered on field botany rather than horticulture. I do not see the wiki as stodgy, though more photos and text updates could always be added improvements, something true for any website. There seems to be agreement that we don't want to lose the large body of information, contributed by so many over the years, that is potentially useful to others in the years to come-- if only they could find it more easily. FB is certainly not the solution to this particular problem, nor would it help to manage all the valuable writings to come. One of the major drawbacks in using FB is not being able to archive or protect photos and information, which should take it out of the running as a new venue. Lastly, I am amazed reading through all the comments on the topic in recent days that in all the charges brought against the "oldness" of the email system we have, no one brought up the "untrimmed" email replies one must wade through to see the messages in batch form. Frequently they are ridiculously long. If the prior messages in a response could be collapsed into a "bullet" at the bottom of each message (as gmail does), it would make reading a lot easier. (Apologies to David P.). Dylan Hannon > Message: 13 > Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2020 21:58:45 -0800 > From: <michaelcmace@gmail.com> > To: <pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> > Subject: Re: [pbs] was Messages now Facebook vs. > Message-ID: <063e01d6b338$ba052c50$2e0f84f0$@gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > I know some folks are irritated by this discussion, but I find it a nice > civilized break from discussing the US presidential election. > > I've been on Facebook for years and also have been in this forum pretty > much > from the start. To me they're very different things. Facebook is great for > sharing images and very short text comments like "o my GAWD what a pretty > flower," but a terrible place (in my opinion) to have a threaded discussion > about something. > > This forum is very awkward for sharing images, but excellent for written > discussions on interesting topics. > > Because the two venues are so different, I don't think a PBS Facebook forum > would actually cannibalize this one. But I also don't think our forum on > Facebook would be all that special. What would we offer that you can't > already get on, for example, Bulborum? > > There's bulletin board software out there that we could move this forum > onto, and that would be a better location than Facebook for continuing the > conversations we have here -- but it'd require more setup and maintenance > and a LOT more moderation, and on a bulletin board the discussions tend to > separate out into different threads in ways that dissipate the group's > attention. So I don't think it would be worth the pain of moving. > > What I love about this forum is that, despite or maybe because of the > ancient technology, we've fond a nice balance of topics and participants > and > it makes for a good read almost every day. Don't underestimate how hard it > is to create and maintain something like that. Thousands of startups try > and > fail to achieve that sort of thing every year. > > But there are a couple of other things for us to think about... > > --How will we create the next generation of bulb growers? Most young people > these days barely touch email for personal correspondence. I'd like to see > us nurture the next generation of bulb gardeners, and I am not sure that an > email forum is the right way to do that. On the other hand, I am not sure > Facebook is the right place for that outreach either; generation Z feels > it's old-fashioned, someplace Grandma uses to complain about her knee > replacement. > > --We should also talk about the future of the wiki. When we started it, > there wasn't a good place online to find photos of species bulbs, and the > resource we all created was amazing. Now there are a lot of those photo > places, especially the astonishingly complete iNaturalist. I still love the > wiki, but the photos on it are just not as special as they used to be. On > the other hand, the accumulated text of all these emails is a unique > resource that just gets better over time as we add more to it. I think Mike > L is right -- in this email forum we've collectively written an > encyclopedia > on bulb growing that's not duplicated anywhere else. We do have a way to > search it, and it's far better than nothing, but it's also very primitive > and hard to use, and it's not indexed by Google as far as I can tell. So we > have basically hidden it from the world. I think we could do something > really special with that material... > > Mike > San Jose, CA > > > > ------------------------------ > > Subject: Digest Footer > > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net > http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/… > Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> > > > ------------------------------ > > End of pbs Digest, Vol 45, Issue 8 > ********************************** > _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/… Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net>