(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
Loading ...I haven’t been on ReefCentral much in the last few weeks. I was a pretty heavy lurker there for about 3 years, but now I can’t bring myself to poke around. I guess I’m tired of seeing the same posts over and over. Stuff like “What is this brown stuff?” and “Show me your….” threads have burned me out. Many interesting threads tend to devolve into argument.
This isn’t limited to RC. Smaller boards are just as susceptible to arguing, ignorance and megalomania.
I haven’t been on Marine Depot’s forums much, but from what I’ve seen it seems to be well as well run as a forum can be. Those forums however, are what I’d classify as a medium sized boards. Larger boards attract the trolls, and as MD gets larger, I’d suspect we’d be back with ReefCentral’s problems.
Forums have been the gold standard for online reef discussion. Most sites take a pre-built package, slap a theme on it and call it a reef forum. There is very little customization for our hobby. There are no user generated sites that are geared specifically towards reefers. (I acknowledge the irony of calling out forum sites when I took WordPress and slapped a custom theme.)
It’s a shame really. Reef forums and ReefCentral in particular are full of valuable information, but the information is difficult to come by. I find it difficult to find information once a topic leaves the first few pages. The search functionality isn’t very good (on RC it’s just plain broken) and finding information in a thread that’s 100+ pages long isn’t an effective use of my time.
It’s a maturing process. The web has gone through this process before and now it’s time for the marine hobbyist community to catch up. Web 1.0 was the first generation of web applications that didn’t allow a lot of user interaction. Web 2.0 gave us sites that were user driven. ReefCentral is a Web 1.0 site. Flickr, YouTube, Wikipedia and FaceBook are all examples of Web 2.0.
Reef websites have made some tentative steps in a Web 2.0 direction. Most notably would be ReefPedia. Aquarists Online have made a social portion to their website, but it’s very poorly implemented. (How? Check out this link. You mean I need to be logged in to view your video? Forget it.)
So, what would you want to see in a site built specifically for reefers? I’m not proposing to build it, but let’s get the discussion going.
My ideal features? Easy to find information. A simple way to share my tank and build discussion about it. An easy way to get help.
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In the hobby since 2001, and has seen all kinds of fads come and go. As he gets older, Jeff is developing more and more of a conscience towards environmental concerns, especially towards reefs. Currently, he writes from Ontario, Canada, but would rather be snorkeling on a reef.
Thanks for the love. I personally like the wiki/knowledgebase idea, somewhere hobbyists could pool their knowledge in an easy-to-use and participate fashion plus reference the source material. It would be helpful if users could rate posts/contributions, as well. I could see this tying in with forums, blogs and photosharing … perhaps on a platform like Community Server. The search functionality and navigation would need to be strong, though, which I see is lacking with most forums because it doesn’t necessarily search all areas of the site. Some people debate the importance of user profiles and points, but I find them both interesting and helpful; I like knowing who I’m talking to and their credibility.
I agree. I think ReefPedia is on its way to becoming very useful. It’s certainly not there yet and needs bigger community support. Perhaps we (bloggers) can start promoting ReefPedia as the place to go for information.
For a hobby that owes so much to knowledge, it’s surprising that there’s no centralized online encyclopedia. There’s so much to learn in this hobby and for people to be successful long term, we need a touchstone for it. ReefPedia isn’t perfect, but it’s a start.
I agree with your comments on profiles. I’m a bit wary of credibility, however. If done right, it could work well (a la digg.com or reddit.com style). I’ve seen it done extremely poorly (on one of the boards I frequent) and it turns into a tool for administrators to ‘punish’ users.
Let’s keep the discussion going.
Interesting comment and one that has been taken on board (the part concerning having to sign in to see videos on aquaristsonline.com). Always ready to improve, the need to sign in is gone.
Just shows how debate can improve things – nothings ever perfect and never will be.
Glad that we could help troubleshoot your site! We need to advance the hobby in many ways, including networking and collaborating with fellow businesses.
Hi,
Great article and one that I personally agree 100% with.
As you say there are many forums over the internet. Some which are popular and others which are quite quiet. I frequented quite a few boards however as you rightly say when they get big a certain amount of politics comes in and there is certainly a lot of repetition. Nowadays I do not go onto these forums for that very reason.
Great find on Reefpedia. That is a site I did not know about and I personally think that this is a great concept. Hopefully a lot of people will use it and benefit from it.
As John has already said we have removed our ‘oversight’ of non-members not being able to access the video section of our Social area. The aspect of membership is purely to prevent spam. There are some great sites which get started but then they get attacked and unfortunately a lot close down.
Apologies if this annoyed you – it was certainly not intended.
I’d agree with pretty much everything you said. There’s been little innovation lately within the online reefkeeping community both within the online forums and with the individual reefkeepers. I’ve really been amazed that more individual reefkeepers haven’t significantly used services like Flickr, del.icio.us, Twitter, Wordpress.com, etc. I’ve seen some use YouTube but that’s about it.
Since I’m an administrator over at Reefs.org and AdvancedAquarist.com, I’ve played around a bit with Twitter and del.icio.us to see what comes of it. I put together a couple Twitter feeds:
Forum posts from Reefs.org’s more popular forums:
http://twitter.com/reefs_org
News and articles from Advanced Aquarist’s Online Magazine:
http://twitter.com/aaolm
Online marine news from major news sources:
http://twitter.com/reefnews
I wanted to see if anyone would use them. I’ve also searched through Twitter for other aquarium folk but really don’t see many in the grand scheme of things.
We’ve tried implementing some more “advanced features” such as RSS and posting to social bookmarking sites, but it’s been a bit limited.
It could be that reefkeepers in general are somewhat ‘inexperienced’ with Web 2.0 and they’re happy to find someplace that they can ask their questions and go on their merry way. Heh, I remember one instance where an individual asked a question on our forum and I did a quick search and found it and posted the thread for the person. They said something to the effect “Hey, thanks! I just didn’t want to do a search for it.” A lot of times it seems as though the masses want to be spoon fed. :shrug:
The one common theme that I see from Web 2.0 is that the Web 2.0 websites focus on one application and try to do it as best they can. Digg –> news sharing. del.icio.us –> bookmark sharing. YouTube –> video sharing. Flickr –> photo sharing. Twitter –> social updates. You get the idea. I think that whatever reefkeeping Web 2.0 website comes into being will focus on one application and do it well so that people can either get into a social circle or easily be able to find and extract information from the website. It remains to be seen what that application is though.
At one time I toyed with making an application to remind people of upcoming maintenance to their tanks, but then I found Remember The Milk (http://www.rememberthemilk.com/) and forgot about that idea as they did it just too well. I’ve been searching for some webapp to create, but haven’t come up with anything specific for reefkeepers (yet). Pretty much what I’ve seen them want to be able to do is to ask questions, get responses, share photos of their animals, etc.
This is turning out to be an interesting discussion. Let’s keep it up!
John & Peter – Thanks for listening. I love the change. Now, I’m able to post a link to your videos on my site without readers needing to log in. That helps the community a lot.
Shane – Interesting comments. I added your twitter feed. It doesn’t look like you have a lot of followers, indicating that maybe reefers aren’t ready for those sort of technologies yet. I was considering adding a twitter feed to this blog, but I’m not sure I see the point. I’ve found some reef related content on digg, reddit and flickr, but it seems to get drowned out by the other content. I don’t think they’re the right medium for this message. It’s like those sites are too general for the small-ish reefing community.
I think part of the solution is in your post. You talk about how much people want to be spoon fed information either because of laziness, inertia or techno-fear. With that in mind, I don’t believe that a general site like Remember the Milk is specific enough for most people.
I think that as web applications get more specific, they need to become more robust. So, a specific app for reefers would need to do a lot of things. I’m thinking something closer to FaceBook than Flickr.
One more thing. I don’t believe that forums should be designed around those people too lazy/fearful to use the search. It should be built for those who want to use the full functionality. Having said that, it should be easy to use. A fine line to walk, but an important one.
I started thinking about this a bit more after I posted and I wonder if part of the reason that Web 2.0 hasn’t really taken off within the reefkeeping community is that it doesn’t “scratch the itch” that reefkeepers have on a day-to-day basis. I think the trick will be finding out what that itch is and designing something around it and someone may have a winner. So far online forums suffice but I wonder if there isn’t something that’s being completely overlooked that might be the next big advance in the online reefkeeping community. I’m trying to think about what core thing I do that could be spun off into some sort of online presence. I toy around with Django and Plone and I wonder if there’s something that I could develop on one of these two platforms that might be interesting to people…