Posting bulb photos elsewhere

Rodger Whitlock totototo@telus.net
Wed, 23 Jan 2013 11:14:48 PST
I would say no, for several reasons.

First, if you resort to facebook, twitter, or "google groups" (really, usenet 
newsgroups that have existed for decades), you are at the mercy of the host. I 
remember when the alpine-L mailing list had an extensive photo library on 
Yahoo. One dark night it simply disappeared, never to be seen again. Harry 
Dewey, who was running alpine-L in those days, was (to put it mildly) beside 
himself because there were no backups.

Second, the PBS wiki is quite easy to maintain. When I was actively 
contributing to it, it posed no real problem. Mary Sue and her helpers have set 
up a good system that's fairly easy to use, and it's OURS, not someone else's.

Third, to start using Facebook is a balkanization of "where to find bulb photos 
on the web".

It's quite one thing for PBS to set up a Facebook account and point it to the 
PBS wiki, but that's as far as I would go. Remember, Google indexes the PBS 
wiki so someone searching for information on bulbs can find the PBS wiki easily 
enough.

One thing that could be done to improve things is to make sure that Wikipedia 
articles on specific bulbs include links to relevant articles on the PBS wiki. 
Those who are easy with their photos going into the public domain can also beef 
up Wikipedia with suitable photos; many articles lack good photos of the most 
obvious subjects (though I think the horticultural articles are not the sinners 
in chief). 
-- 
Rodger Whitlock
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Z. 7-8, cool Mediterranean climate



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