Forum and email list
Mary Sue Ittner via pbs (Sun, 12 Feb 2023 11:55:42 PST)

Over the years there have been many requests for volunteers to help
running this organization and usually not a lot of replies. If you got
rid of all of the people who contribute their time without getting
anything in return, except for occasional thanks, I expect that would be
the end of the Pacific Bulb Society. I for one am very grateful for all
the volunteers. I periodically have asked for help with the wiki and for
whatever reason, maybe because of the learning curve, it hasn't resulted
in the last few years of any sustained help. Dues for this organization
are modest and that allows people to participate in the BX and the SX
and to get the Bulb Garden and provides money to pay to keep the list,
the wiki, the BX/SX, the Bulb Garden, and the forum going. The main job
of the Board is to find ways to make sure all of those things continue.

There was email discussion about forum vs list before the Board made the
decision to start a forum. There were many of us who preferred the list,
but also others that were unhappy with it. I suspect if there had been a
vote there would have been no consensus. And who would you have vote?
The list has always been available to people who were not members of the
Pacific Bulb Society. So would all of them be allowed to vote even
though they do not pay dues? It seems to me that the Board came up with
a compromise. They created the forum, but did not do away with the list.
The disadvantage to this is that announcements like the BX have to be
two places and some people just participate in one or the other so we
don't have the rich discussions that we once had. The advantage is that
people who were unhappy with the list now have the forum and those
people who preferred the list still have it. If David Pilling is able to
find a list where it is easy to add photos I'm sure the people who use
the list would be grateful.

David has given so much of his time over the years. I'm not sure how
many people recognize this. It was 2009 when the wiki was no longer
functional since the software was not being updated and some things no
longer worked. We had to convert.  This is one of the times when I asked
for help and got it. David volunteered and he has been the main stay of
technical help since then. That's 13 years.  It took me a year to fix
everything after we converted it to new software. During the conversion
a lot of people checked pages for me and reported the mistakes I needed
to fix. And a lot of people helped over the years with the wiki, but now
there are few. Luckily David continues to help and Martin has spent a
lot of time on it as well, but basically it's just the three of us.

Arnold has been volunteering since 2002, maybe before. He does all the
mailings, manages the finances, contacts new members. Jane McGary has
put in years and years, was President, before she took over membership
and writes for the Bulb Garden. Diane Whitehead has been helping with
the list for years and years. And there are many others who have helped
for a long time. Robin is editing the Bulb Garden AND being the
President. Who would you replace? PBS is lucky that they have continued
to help. It would be really unfortunate if posts like the one from
Robert led to resignations.

Mary Sue

On 2/12/2023 8:42 AM, Robert Lauf via pbs wrote:

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