Email list and forum

[David Pilling]

I feel the chat about the list and forum would be better here. Anyone tuning in to read about bulbs is going to be a bit fed up with the list by now.

There has been a PBS offering on Facebook for many years - last updated October 2021. That would be a model for Instagram.

I believe we can add a plug-in to this forum that automatically generate a Facebook presence. Why not the same for other platforms.

Today I found a web page that said a forum was better than a social media presence. Something like you get less fools on a forum and it is likely to last longer.

The question of longevity. I always see this as a operation to collect wisdom and save people making the same mistakes in the future. Others do not see things this way, now is all that matters. We had the Yahoo lily list, probably 20 years of amazing lily photos, and it all vanished without a murmur of complaint. That is what happens with proprietary systems.

As to the existing list - my idea is to customise the html to text code and make it turn large images into links.

I can't bring myself to flick the switch to turn the list over to html - it'd probably run OK until someone decided 100MB of photos are necessary to illustrate a point. At which point we'd find out who has the capacity to handle large emails.

I also have to point out that the existing web archive cannot handle html.

We could limit the size of posts - however this is making work - I could spend time showing people how to scale down images (been there, done it on the Yahoo list). You can do a good job of reducing image size if you understand it. But it is something no one want to learn or needs, it is not done in the modern world.

What is the smallest size posts can be limited to without someone complaining it is too small - start at about 20MB and work your way up.

Hopefully no one worried about the climate emergency is posting 50MB photos of polar bears without knowing how much energy it takes to maintain them on the 'cloud'.

If we went to a html list, perhaps we would install mailman 3 (we're on version 2), which comes with its own web based archive.

I noticed someone say that young people only want photos - dangerous thing with gardening, that perfect flower, took 10 years to bloom, and did not last much longer than how long it took to take the photo.

[Arnold]

David

When we moved our town listserv over  from Yahoo groups over to Groups.io all the files and images were transferred over.

Did you not give that a try?

[David Pilling]

Arnold - groups.io wanted paying to move the Yahoo stuff. I actually downloaded all the content from Yahoo, but no one has asked me to put it up somewhere.

I believe a lot of the photos have gone though. Yahoo had a setting where photos were either sent out or stored, and that list operated with them sent out.

[David Pilling]

Lee Poulsen wrote on the list "The forum is okay. But I miss not being presented with *everything* new that has been posted."

My technique, being somewhat required to read all that goes on here, is to keep visiting this URL:

https://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbsforum/index.php?action=recent

via a browser short-cut.

I presume the original point is that forum email notifications don't report every post. We have tried to improve this, and it has improved, and you need to put effort in to turn on all the notifications you want.

The people who write the SMF software are not keen on producing a storm of emails. I can see their point.

Maybe if we could produce a weekly digest.

[David Pilling]

This appeared on the Gesneriphiles@lists.ibiblio.org list

"Happy to see I got the reminder notice of the Streptocarpus: Virtual Education Program that's at 3:00 p.m. Eastern time, Saturday, February 18, 2023.   

Be sure to check now what time it is for your time zone when the program is 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time.  That's 2:00 p.m. my time (I'm in the same zone as Chicago and Houston).

I see the reminder has a section where you can cancel your registration.  Because we are nearly at capacity of 500, if you cannot attend, please cancel so someone else can join.

If you want to try and register (but I'm not sure any more can be accepted):

https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_rCX3XEKJQx6tPPUaqJO34w?fbclid=IwAR0m9fXpBE0fx3XOa2PrHrZEGt7TQ_vcFXa3L9V750YcZaHij0p5czGZbF8

The plan is in the near future a link will be provided so you want watch it again or for the first time.

This is the program which is about 1 hour 3 minutes:
The Gesneriad Society is offering a unique opportunity to learn about the very popular Streptocarpus. Award-winning growers will share photos and their expertise. Terri Vicenzi who won "Best Streptocarpus" for her entry of Streptocarpus 'Little Kan' will show amazing photos of outstanding plants, and discuss how to grow a show plant. Dale Martens who won "Sweepstakes in Horticulture" will show photos of propagation and repotting. Hybridizer Stephen Covolo-Hudson uses the alpha name, "Steffano's", and he will guide you from pollination to the excitement of seeing new hybrids.
"

[David Pilling]

"Are there other websites quite similar to this one that people could give us links to show their photos?"

PBS Forum 

[fierycloud]

If it possible that let the RSS feed viewer show the picture if there were? But the fuction may take more resource. And it may let non registed account to view the image.

[David Pilling]

If it possible that let the RSS feed viewer show the picture if there were? But the fuction may take more resource. And it may let non registed account to view the image.

I'm not sure I understand that because it is a long time since I had anything to do with RSS. Maybe something like this, the PBS list archive page provides an RSS feed, presumably links are present in the contents of the feed along with the text of messages, but you'd like links to pictures turning into explicit photos?

I know that when I did the "bulb day" random wiki entry page RSS, I concentrated on supporting pictures, so screen savers could use the data.

Sat here today, I am not sure why typical RSS readers can't pick out image links themselves. I do have some privileged access to images linked from the PBS forum, if that would help me. Obviously I can't do anything special on images linked from elsewhere.

But the main thing holding me back, is, how popular RSS is today? In 14 years this is the first time anyone has mentioned it. It does work nicely on something like a "My Yahoo" page, but how popular are those pages. Google dropped their own.

We are happy for non-registered users to view images, or the entire forum. As long as we don't get excessive usage from... you know the bad guys, or mistakes.

[fierycloud]

I'm not sure I understand that because it is a long time since I had anything to do with RSS. Maybe something like this, the PBS list archive page provides an RSS feed, presumably links are present in the contents of the feed along with the text of messages, but you'd like links to pictures turning into explicit photos?

I know that when I did the "bulb day" random wiki entry page RSS, I concentrated on supporting pictures, so screen savers could use the data.

Sat here today, I am not sure why typical RSS readers can't pick out image links themselves. I do have some privileged access to images linked from the PBS forum, if that would help me. Obviously I can't do anything special on images linked from elsewhere.

But the main thing holding me back, is, how popular RSS is today? In 14 years this is the first time anyone has mentioned it. It does work nicely on something like a "My Yahoo" page, but how popular are those pages. Google dropped their own.

We are happy for non-registered users to view images, or the entire forum. As long as we don't get excessive usage from... you know the bad guys, or mistakes.

Thanks for the reply.
I found that I mistake the forum RSS and the List RSS. I suscribe them both.

[Leo]

If you want to see a plant board with photos, running on antiquated software, with a loyal following, take a look at http://www.orchidboard.com .