12 replies to this topic

[Bcam43]

Check out the link below and tell us what your thoughts are on this?

 

Are there too many forums?

Edited by Bcam43, July 7 2016 - 5:56 AM.

[AntsMAN]

No, this is a good thing. The more information shared the better. And some people like a more laid back forum, some like forums that are more strict. So everybody is happy and we can all co-mingle as we please.

[Bcam43]

No, this is a good thing. The more information shared the better. And some people like a more laid back forum, some like forums that are more strict. So everybody is happy and we can all co-mingle as we please.

 

Great feedback. We value hearing people's opinions, even if they don't agree with us

Edited by Bcam43, July 7 2016 - 5:49 AM.

[AntsMAN]

After reading a bit more thoroughly, I have to change my view. I agree we need to centralize the information, and get the Identifying process nailed down. I didn't know there were that many places to get info on ants, I thought there was maybe a few or so. After seeing some of these I have to agree with your points. If we were to bring all of these people together on one forum/site we would be able to get more reliable information, and have it all in one place, that would be awesome.

Edited by AntsMAN, July 7 2016 - 6:14 AM.

[BrittonLS]

I think a central source of information is a good idea. And there should be a place that can be contributed to. Wiki's are usually the place on the internet where information like that can be congregated. I think forums are really more of a social thing and they can get pretty personal to people. Not to mention the logistics of no one wanting to give up their forum to someone else or not everyone liking the way a forum might be run. There's a lot of politics generated. 

 

Though for one, I've noticed on a lot of facebook groups, they do not allow outside links at all. So I can't so much as direct people to a key on AntWiki or to Formiculture's nuptial flight calendar. And plenty of these are run by ant supply providers, so don't want to open links I assume for exposing their consumers to other products. 

 

Also, I can't let it slide. "the ancient Romans had one central forum per city, it enabled them to centralise relevant information that needed to be conveyed to their citizens. In return the empire was able to flourish." Really? They had one forum so the Roman Empire came to power and flourished? The forum was the causation of the rise of the Roman Empire?  

 

I might also argue against the claims about Reef Central. I have no knowledge of the hobby whatsoever, I imagine the author may have internal knowledge of it, but searching "Maring Fishkeeping," "Fishkeeping Forum" and other types of searches didn't bring up any links at all to Reef Central on the first few pages of a Google search. (It did show up on the second page when searching "aquarium forum")

[AntsMAN]

I see where some people would get upset working with others, on a singular forum they had to share. But this hobby nothing without the people who care for it. So when we fight with each other over silly things like being the owner or admin it seems like we are degrading the hobby, and would rather have the most posts or be in control, rather than working to push it forward. I understand some will be negative towards the idea, but if we all work together and not compete for who forum is better, we can make the very best forum there can be. We should be looking at the best option for all, not the few.

Edited by AntsMAN, July 8 2016 - 11:38 AM.

[drtrmiller]

Without your naming specific forums or communities, any opinion I can offer is somewhat limited.

For example, I know certain forums with small membership counts exist because they are a close association of friends. Certain forums exist based on locality, be it language or geography (eg. queenant.proboards.com, antforum.nl, ameisenforum.de, etc). Finally, certain forums and communities are created by shop owners with the implied or express purpose being to preclude individuals or restrict discussion that doesn't advance the shop owner's commercial interests.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to various forums and communities being combined, is the megalomanic obstinance of the individuals who control them—regardless of the type of community. Upstanding members (including moderators and administrators) of this forum, for example, have been permanently banned from other communities where their views, ranging from hydrating a formicarium to politics, did not comport with those of the owner. As another example, I was personally banned from one of the aforementioned forums, simply for posting a short and simple opinion here in this forum about the outside group. Anyone who is a vendor or owns has a forum or other community-building platform of his or her own is strictly scrutinized when participating in external groups, if they are even allowed to join and participate at all.

With rules such as "Do not link to or mention any other ant forum," or "Do not link to, mention, or discuss any ant company or product outside of X," or "No discussions or comments regarding religion or politics are allowed," it would seem that those who are in power and own their own forums or communities, appear to have greater interest in maintaining power and a certain strict order of things, than in fostering diverse, inclusive communities where there is intense discussion and debate. Competing commercial interests further complicate that formula, often resulting in a cult-like following—no outside opinions allowed.

Formiculture is a bit unusual, because it is somewhat localized, with a large share, but by no means a majority, of active users coming from the Southern California area. Formiculture was started as a sort of protest against the leadership of the largest and oldest inclusive English-speaking forum at the time (Yuku), and still has remnants from when it was, for the first year, little more than a close association among like-minded friends, with many early members still quite active here. If this forum has ambitions of growth, then the following must occur:

• Reorganize content sections and subforums, especially to encourage extra-US membership from similar countries like the UK, Scandinavian countries, and Australia
• Improved chat functionality that doesn't take users away from the forum browsing
• Improved search functionality
• Add country flags inline under avatar in forum posts (to help showcase members from outside the US)
• Possibly refresh styling across site (now almost three years old)

Edited by drtrmiller, July 7 2016 - 7:19 PM.

[Reacker]

I can't speak for the ant keeping communities in the non-English-speaking world, but I believe that the problem in the English-speaking world has been that for whatever reason the people most inclined to start an ant forum have consistently been incompetent at it to varying degrees. So naturally the thing to do is start your own forum or Facebook group or whatever and hope for the best.

 

Old forums splinter into a diaspora of new forums as prominent users are put off from the old by the neurotic behavior of the previous owners, only to bring with them their own neurotic behaviors to their new forums and renew the cycle.

 

Even when the trap of neurotic behavior is avoided, the newly created forums are often low-effort cookie cutter free hosted templates with terrible design and overbearing ads. No focus on ants in particular can be found, and there are often many entirely unrelated subforums that overshadow the ants. These people lack the understanding or maturity required to run a proper forum of any kind. 

 

Recently there have been a proliferation of corporate based forums that exist entirely as part of the infrastructure of one ant store or another. These are generally better quality than the diaspora based forums, but they suffer from censorship and restrictions of otherwise harmless discussion whenever the topic wanders into territory that the store owner considers contrary to their financial interests. 

 

Because of these issues, I do not think that you could ever get the ant community to agree to centralize in one location as a conscious decision of all of our collective population centers. There is a mixture of neuroticism, well-meaning incompetence, and orthogonal commercial interest that plagues the English-speaking Ant keeping world and prevent intentional cooperation.

 

 

Fortunately, one of the diaspora forums has an owner in possession of the resources and mindset required to run a successful forum. The owner:

 

1) Has no detectable neuroticisms which are leaking out into their ability to administrate an online community.

2) Has the technical competency and resources to run a forum without relying on the horrible free hosted templates.

3) Has good design taste and focus, so that the forum is both focused on ants and not incredibly ugly.

4) Has high quality content of their own to contribute with regularity.

5) Has no significant commercial interests in the hobby.

 

I speak of course of this very forum! You cannot find a single instance on this forum where the owner or a moderator has abused their power. There has been no display of weird quirks, pointless covert drama, or conspiracies of one group of users versus another. Drew is consistently posting high quality content of his own, and contributes useful information to many discussions. He designs and runs the forums with his own time and resources, and does an excellent job of it. Part of the forum is dedicated to commercial interests, but Drew is not beholden to them and so the competing interests are allowed to be freely discussed. 

 

These are the condition required to gather the critical mass of users to become the long-term central hub in the English-speaking world. The factors listed above will cause users to individually recognize the higher-quality of this place and migrate on their own. Already less than 3 years after having been founded, this place is consistently active from a diverse group of increasingly international user base while the previously dominant English-speaking forum is bereft of new threads and comments despite it being the height of the anting season. 

 

As long as the current quality of the forum and its admin team is kept up, and there is no reason to believe that it will not be, I think that it is inevitable that the ant keeping population of the English world will coalesce on this forum. Some of the commercially based forums will still be active, but they will be comparative backwaters with very few experienced members answering the basic questions of the newest of the new ant keepers whose parents just bought them an ant farm. Other non-commercial forums will continue to exist, but they will also be irrelevant backwaters with only the admin and a few close friends to post journals that no one will read. 

 

So even though there is no way to get the ant keeping community to intentionally centralize, there is no need. The process needed to do it organically was already started 3 years ago and its already cannibalizing the other significant forums to a noticeable extent.  Just wait a few more years. 

Edited by Reacker, July 7 2016 - 9:24 AM.

[AntsMAN]

Very well put Reacker.

[Bcam43]

Thanks for the replies guys. You've raised some great points that we generally agree with. We like to raise awareness of these things so that we can have an open discussion about them and help move the industry forward.

 

Firstly I'd like to add that it was not the intent of this article to advertise our blog as an intended location for the consolidated information. Our blog relies on forums like this one to survive. We generally don't generate much content, we are simply summarising the information we find on the internet and reposting it. As a blog that is inclusive of all things related to ant keeping, we would actually benefit from having a fractured community. The point of this article was to raise awareness of the issue we've identified and either persuade the existing forum owners to consolidate with other forums, which we realise is unlikely, or at the very least be more inclusive and stop censoring the community. Or the more likely, to discourage other people from starting yet more forums that we don't need. This way both existing or new hobbyists will benefit. This course of action will have no effect on us directly, there'll still be information for us to post either way.

 

​We also remained impartial intentionally. Although it's fairly obvious which forum we prefer, we chose to keep this confidential as we didn't want to be accused of having an agenda. 

 

Terry, you raise some great points in regards to what is required to push this forum forward. I believe that formiculture has the potential to be great along with other international localised forums. At the moment the industry is shared by too few hobbyists between too many forums and facebook pages. It doesn't make sense. We also agree that one of the biggest issues is vendors that control community platforms that are placing restrictions on the community in order to benefit themselves and not the industry. Vendors should be embracing new products and ideas that will help to grow the industry so that the pie we all share is larger. A splintered community will only alienate new hobbyists.

 

Reacker, you've also raised a great point regarding the organic process of consolidation. While this is spot on the process is being lengthened by the constant creation and publication of new forums and facebook pages. If we can educate people to stop diluting the industry then this organic process will happen much faster.

 

Thanks for listening.

[Teleutotje]

You can't combine them. There are members on a few forums that don't like to hear what some researchers have to say about some things and even start some bad insults when those researchers come online (or even without them being online...). They do so even without knowing what those researchers have done... But maybe those researchers should start their own forum and don't care about amateurs any more... Let them do what they want if they think science sucks...

[Barristan]

You can't combine them. There are members on a few forums that don't like to hear what some researchers have to say about some things and even start some bad insults when those researchers come online (or even without them being online...). They do so even without knowing what those researchers have done... But maybe those researchers should start their own forum and don't care about amateurs any more... Let them do what they want if they think science sucks...

 

I could say the same for some researchers .

Yep start your own forum, it will be a huge success like this one: http://formicidae.darkbb.com/(Wasn't it started by an European researcher?). But don't forget to invite some plebs too. Without worship some (ex) European myrmocologists  won't be pleased for a long time.

How you react if someone isn't your opinion can be found here: http://www.myrmecos....-favorite-ants/

 

Please stop playing the victim card all the time it gets boring.

Edited by Barristan, July 8 2016 - 11:14 PM.

[Teleutotje]

Funny reaction.....

 

There are more forums and sites started by scientists that "failed" but that had nothing to do with the people starting the sites... There are even more sites that "failed" started by amateurs that I know of... And sadly, for worship myrmecology is not the science to follow... and these days respect for eachother is also far away for some "ant-lovers".

 

My reaction on that site.... My point of view is shared by more scientists (even Americans!), it's a friendly discussion without insults or treaths (correct spelling?), some of the points given on both sides are under investigation by a researcher around Ward (for the Tetramorium part),.... And yes, I still prefer the parasitic genera-names...

 

And victim... I'm not banned from any site and NO, the science myrmecology isn't boring... There is more to read and find out and not enough time...

Edited by Teleutotje, July 9 2016 - 4:56 AM.