Gardeners Corner

Nathan for my two pennyworth I agree that, wonderful though GC was and is, a ponder about the future format may be needed.

It was useful to seperate the gardening from the non gardening chat - though Today's Active Topic does not differentiate which makes it a tad difficult with the current number of posts - so its 5 pages to scan with todays active topics, or selecting sections, and perhaps missing something.

A library of pictures, and information would be very useful The Search facility is useful, but a library would be better - where information and pictures are more easily found by browsing as well as searching.

What would also be useful is be able to reply to the individual - rather than the response just being part of the thread. My addled brain sometimes has difficulty remembering what I posted the day before and have missed responses in the past.

Whatever - I like GC and its members and would want nothing that spoils its very special culture and support.

If you need any help - just shout.

 

I agree with Fran and BM- I have lots of time to spare if help is needed.

 

I agree too - I love it here

 

Ditto from afar!

 

Perhaps we should have two active topics - gardening and non-gardening! Though how that would be achieved, heaven only knows!!!

 

I did think we had that, MMD .. but how do you "split" the two ... within the threads, if you know what I mean? :eek:

 

I think the friendliness and banter is what makes GC special. I rarely go into the other forums I belong to now because, as you say MF, they are stuffy (never looked at the beeb one).

The American / Canadian one is chatty and I have made one friend on it, but there must be hundreds of thousands of members, some with posts of 10,000 and more! They have just re-vamped their image and taken out the masses of advertising that was done on it (enough to really get on your nerves) and it looks smart now, but I think GC is easier to get around and more organised.

I'm certainly "hooked" on GC. I like a chat, a laugh ... and I've certainly learned a lot about gardening in a few months. I also hope I have contributed something positive as well!

Long live GC!

 

My two penn'orth -
Seems to me that the chat forum is pretty much ok now. People can go to those sections that interest them and avoid those that don't. The email notification of replies to topics of interest is a great help too. The only people who are going to have problems with the amount and range of topics are those people that want to follow every thread. They can still do that by looking at the current topics.
Nice idea to call the non-gardening section something like "In the Shed" as MF suggests.

The real BIG problem remains of how to locate previously submitted information. The search facility is ok up to a point.

eg - someone recently asked about sloes. The response gave the address of a photo on another website despite the fact that I had posted two photos of sloes a few days earlier. Do we want to direct people away from GC? No.

We still need the search facilty, but a gallery of permanent photos and a library of cultural and other notes would be great and then when we get the umpteenth request for info on killing slugs we can just refer then to the slug page.

The slug page (for example) would be written intially by one of us and could be added to as new products come on the market. It would, I hope, present green alternatives too.

 

Sorry Hornbeam, that was me with the sloes! From habit I go to 'Google images' to find an illustrative example.
I have difficulty sometimes with the search facility; for instance the other day I was trying to locate a thread from Feb. about Compost Tumblers and for the life of me can't find the bit I want [ mind you, compost is probably our largest topic].
I do agree with all your suggestions, and you would be a really good contributor. My reservation is the amount of work needing to be done on the site; whilst a lot of people have said they are willing to help [I for instance would be able with proof reading, editing and indexing as I have lots of time], it really depends whether Nathan wants and is able to go down this route. A full time job and new baby seem to be quite enough commitment without site development on a large scale, and I have no idea how much it all costs...

 

No problem Liz - none of us can know all that is posted here. If we can get out photos organised then they should be picked up by Google images too. That should bring in some new members.

 

How can anyone use up the space allowed in Photobucket? I thought I was overdoing it with 110 pictures and I think I've less than a tenth of my capacity! :confused: but then, that's me! :rolleyes: