Monster Fish Keepers Book

[esoxlucius]

For an exercise I put my complete newbie hat on. I did a mock search on "bala shark". It came up with just shy of 9000 instances of threads with "bala shark" in the title of the thread, or that "bala shark" was mentioned in the thread.

Now threads with "bala shark" in the title are pretty much going to be about bala sharks and some good info could be gleaned by a newbie on such threads. But threads which just mention "bala shark" within them, for example, a sentence within the thread might say "can my ORNATE BICHIR (subject of thread) be kept with "bala sharks", those type of threads are about predominantly other species and basically muddy the water somewhat, and let's face it add to an already huge reference list of posts. I mean 9000 threads, for a newbie to wade through?

I went through several dozen random posts and from the few I looked at, again putting my newbie hat on, I found out that balas can be jumpers and need a good sturdy lid. I also found out they can be glass bangers if the tank isn't suitably large for this species. There was some diet information too. All good info for a newbie.

But if a newbie searches "bala shark" and is faced with 9000 historic posts, lazy or otherwise, they are just going to jack it off and post a new thread with their question. The same question that is probably buried somewhere within the archive.

 

[Stanzzzz7]

I'm not entirely sure what the ultimate goal is here.
If the goal is to try to minimise bad fishkeeping practices. We won't succeed. Every sport has its injuries. Ignorance will always exist. I believe this to be much more personality based than through lack of information.
I'm not sure why we keep addressing newbies as the sole concern for forum traffic. They are already more than catered for as far as I can tell.
Maybe we need to focus more on the accomplished fishkeers? Keep the members we have instead of losing them through boredom.
Deeper information on a given species would appeal more to me.
More natural habitat info, stomach analysis of wild fish. What plants do these fish live with, what sand, rock, water flow, temp range, relations with other species in the wild, regional variant differences etc etc.
I love the hobby and the forum and hate bad practice by newbies. We won't teach everyone good practice but maybe we can give the solid members more to chew on instead of always worrying about the newbie.

 

[Galantspeedz]

you always need new blood, new traffic to sustain a website....

 

[Stanzzzz7]

you always need new blood, new traffic to sustain a website....

Granted I do believe that too. Keeping old members is also important though I feel

 

[Galantspeedz]

Granted I do believe that too. Keeping old members is also important though I feel

That's easy.. give them a long service award lol

 

[RD.]

Now threads with "bala shark" in the title are pretty much going to be about bala sharks and some good info could be gleaned by a newbie on such threads. But threads which just mention "bala shark" within them, for example, a sentence within the thread might say "can my ORNATE BICHIR (subject of thread) be kept with "bala sharks", those type of threads are about predominantly other species and basically muddy the water somewhat, and let's face it add to an already huge reference list of posts. I mean 9000 threads, for a newbie to wade through?

LOL, this site has been running for almost 15 years, what did you expect? First off, I would think that if one wants to get to the real meat & potatoes, they would Search Titles Only. That tends to narrow things down drastically. Now the new user just has to skim the Marketplace ads, and the rest of the info is right on point. No need to read 9,000 comments, just the ones that are interesting to the person searching the titles.

And no one is stopping anyone from asking redundant questions - it's expected, and is the norm, on a forum.

The question remains - is the Search function broken?

So much so that we need to change the forum, and how data is collected, and shared with old & new alike? I mean I just don't get it.

Search works, perhaps with some tweaks Rob could make the Search feature even more user friendly, with some new parameters?

in other forums, it can be observed that many people would rather post a thread and just wait for replies instead or for someone to link them an answer aka spoonfeed.

this is not something that happen in mfk only.

Agreed. I don't have a problem with this, but it seems that some feel that we need to do more, as though the search feature doesn't work, or work well enough, for the newer members.

I'm not entirely sure what the ultimate goal is here.
If the goal is to try to minimise bad fishkeeping practices. We won't succeed. Every sport has its injuries. Ignorance will always exist. I believe this to be much more personality based than through lack of information.
I'm not sure why we keep addressing newbies as the sole concern for forum traffic. They are already more than catered for as far as I can tell.
Maybe we need to focus more on the accomplished fishkeers? Keep the members we have instead of losing them through boredom.
Deeper information on a given species would appeal more to me.
More natural habitat info, stomach analysis of wild fish. What plants do these fish live with, what sand, rock, water flow, temp range, relations with other species in the wild, regional variant differences etc etc.
I love the hobby and the forum and hate bad practice by newbies. We won't teach everyone good practice but maybe we can give the solid members more to chew on instead of always worrying about the newbie.

I agree, and I have always tried to do my part in that area, but I'm afraid that I put some folks to sleep. lol
IMO we already have the book, a book that took 15 yrs to write. I'm not sure why we need to start a new book?

 

[RD.]

5] This would take a long time and a consistent, responsible, and dedicated effort from everyone,

Viktor, in another week, count the number of members that have taken the time to post in this discussion - then ask yourself if this is going to be the village to raise this new child? I personally don't think so.

And again, this is just my opinion, but I also don't believe that MFK should be in the tropical fish care sheet business, or promote themselves as the new care sheet capital of the free world. There are enough care sheets out there to choke a horse. Boring.

I guess in a nutshell I believe that anyone that is serious enough, and dedicated enough, young, or old, can already find all of the tools that they need to be a successful fish keeper, here on MFK.

Deeper information on a given species would appeal more to me.
More natural habitat info, stomach analysis of wild fish. What plants do these fish live with, what sand, rock, water flow, temp range, relations with other species in the wild, regional variant differences etc etc.

IMO it is precisely this type of information that sets MFK apart from the rest, and I agree, we need more of this.

 

[Oompa Loompa]

which bring me back to my original question... what's the final objective of these discussions?

To make the forum more search friendly?
To get more people interested in fish keeping?
To make mfk a better place (i.e forumers)?
To gain more traffic to mfk?

This is a really good point and something only the staff can ultimately answer... C Chicxulub ?

 

[Chicxulub]

Maybe we need to focus more on the accomplished fishkeers? Keep the members we have instead of losing them through boredom.
Deeper information on a given species would appeal more to me.
More natural habitat info, stomach analysis of wild fish. What plants do these fish live with, what sand, rock, water flow, temp range, relations with other species in the wild, regional variant differences etc etc.
I love the hobby and the forum and hate bad practice by newbies. We won't teach everyone good practice but maybe we can give the solid members more to chew on instead of always worrying about the newbie.

This is where my headspace is as well.

My primary goal in running this forum is to steer the forum onto a more academic mentality than a sensationalist one. I've been saying for years now that a MFKer is a mindset, not a tank size. I truly believe that.

As such, this discussion has been quite informative.

The changes I've attempted to implement and the tenor I've tried to bring to this community has been to facilitate the MFKer mindset. I think I've met with some measure of success in getting the focus back on the fish. But what comes next? Frankly, I'm not entirely certain. Seeing where all of your heads are at is useful so that I can attempt to give the community what it wants.

As we move forward into next year, I should have quite a bit more free time. With that time, hopefully we can iron out what the needs of this community are, and address them.

The profound culture shift that has already taken place in 2019 is already quite evident, and imo a gigantic step in the right direction.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

I agree with the above going to a large extent.

[1] RD, I don't see the journal section as not policed or not peer reviewed. It can and should easily be a part of it, just not in the form of a free discussion from anyone who wants to chime into that journal thread. The policing, reviewing, I imagine, could be done in the background and be invisible OR, as I suggested, even better be in a satellite thread attached to each journal thread, where the peer input from everyone is used by the OP to edit their journal thread. For that, the OP could be made enabled to edit, delete etc. any and all of their journal posts.

One could or rather should, if I may turn things a bit upside down, think of the journal thread as being the satellite, or the subjugated thread, if you wish. The main thread will remain just as the MFK threads have always been. The journal satellite thread would then be the distillate, the juice, the meat of the main thread - only meat and visuals, summaries, facts, things that Stanzz had listed, explanations, hypotheses, important facts, fun facts, all 100% relevant to the fish at hand, etc.

When an OP comes across a cool, fitting, and needed piece of info from the 15 years of data, which happens often, it can be cited with a proper credit and a link in the journal thread, further strengthening the value of the journal thread and slowly over years providing the Table of Content of sorts that had been mentioned several times here.

I don't see this making the 15 years of "databasing" obsolete, if this is another worry.

[2] Stanzz, on my end at least, I have been speaking of everyone inclusively, but especially the experienced MFKers to lead the way and making mutual learning easier on each other, old and new, boys and girls, experts and newbies. Am I lazy? Should we forsake the cars and go back to horses? IDK. Seriously.

[3] Everyone, maybe the Search is fine and should not be used as the reason for any proposed site and methodology justification. All I can say, if we wanted to change anything, an attempt towards something like I have been proposing would, IMHO and IMHO alone, be the most effective and potentially, if done done wisely and diligently by all of us, in some 10 years found to be revolutionizing to the worldwide state of the art. Just as Chicx is saying - rigorous, scientific, yet easy to read and understand and also fun.