How many bonsai enthusiasts visit bonsai sites on the Internet?

[Vance Wood]

I have learned alot from this thread. But this thread has NOTHING to do with bonsai. So, it's off topic, maybe trivial, sometimes rude, with a little bit of sillyiness thrown in.

But I learned from it.

If you have learned a lot from this thread then is is neither trivial, unless what you seek to learn is trivial, or rude, unless being rude is your cup of tea, or silly because things you may not understand might seem silly to you. It is however not off topic. Growing bonsai can be and is often as much about the people that grow them, why they grow them, and how they interact with other members of the same community, as the trees themselves. In a discussion about art you will find the more you study the subject that sometimes you cannot separate the art from the artist. When you understand this and you couple it with an open forum like Bnut's the conversation can often journey away from the specifics of trees and dwell on the particulars of the people that grow them.

Not wishing to stir the pot but only wanting to point something out to you. As much as you claim to abhor postings like this it would seem it is these very same postings that light a fire under your response reaction. I have gone through the current active list of subjects up on this forum and found that you have not responded to all or most of them more than once if at all. With this one you have been here complaining about it from the beginning. Now I don't expect you to post a reply to everything that is put up, I don't because a lot of stuff does not interest me.

I hate Lima Beans so I do not eat Lima Beans. I will not go out and buy a can of Lima Beans so that I can open the can of Lima Beans, warm up the Lima Beans, serve up the Lima Beans sit down with a bowl of Lima Beans in front of me and proceed to eat Lima Beans just so I can complain about how nasty I think they taste. Personally I think you are still driven by a third party resentment toward an individual; so much so that you are not able to see it for yourself.

 

[PaulStokes]

A wise man once said

"God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference."

 

[Bonsai Nut]

A wise man once said

"God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference."

A wise old owl live in an oak.
The more he heard, the less he spoke.
The less he spoke, the more he heard.
Now why can't we all be like that wise old bird?

 

[PaulStokes]

A wise old owl live in an oak.
The more he heard, the less he spoke.
The less he spoke, the more he heard.
Now why can't we all be like that wise old bird?

Love it!!

 

[FlyBri]

Be a Mod! Be a Mod! Don't you know all the world loves a Mod?!!

I...have come to the conclusion that many of these moderators often confuse authority with knowledge and experience. I have noticed that if someone contradicts some of them on advice it can get very ugly quick. Couple this sad state of affairs with the common occurrence that you mentioned above of the moderators posting very often on all threads and that they are usually the first to respond to questions asked or the first to offer advice and you have a serious problem of dilution. It is my personal opinion that moderators should spend their time moderating when needed, I have rarely seen moderators that contribute much to discussions.

Gday Will, BonsaiNut and Co!

Interesting discussion you have going here. I can't say that I agree with all of the opinions here, but some have made very good points - points which may help me as a Moderator at bonsaiTALK. Thanks to all who posted regarding the evil that Mods do.

I've just done some number crunching. Interesting results, I must say... As of this morning:

bonsaiTALK Community Total Posts: 187,138
bonsaiTALK Moderators' Posts at bT: 21,151

bonsaiTALK Moderators' Posts as a % of Total: 11.3%

Divided by 6 Mods gives an average of 1.88% of Total Posts per Mod.

___

FlyBri's Posts at bonsaiTALK: 1204
FlyBri's Posts as a % of Total: 0.6%

___


BonsaiNut Community Total Posts: 3292
Will Heath's Posts at BNut: 316

Will Heath's Posts as a % of Total: 9.6%

---

Now, at both BonsaiNut and bonsaiTALK, the site Administrators (BonsaiNut and TreeBay respectively) are prodigious posters. Many would argue that this is their right, given that the sites belong to them. Suppose then, that we remove the site Admins from the equations:

bonsaiTALK Community Total Posts (minus Posts by TreeBay): 177,501
bonsaiTALK Moderators' Posts at bonsaiTALK (minus Posts by TreeBay): 11,514

bonsaiTALK Moderators' Posts as a % of Total (minus Posts by TreeBay): 6.5%

Divided by 5 Mods gives an average of 1.3% of Total Posts per Mod.

___

BonsaiNut Total Posts (minus Posts by BonsaiNut): 2855
Will Heath's Posts at BonsaiNut as a % of the Total (minus posts by BonsaiNut): 11%

---

If I take 900 millilitres of water, and add 100 millilitres of pure hydrochloric acid, I get a 10% solution. At 10%, HCl is strong enough to dissolve concrete and flesh. Most of us would refer to such a solution as "hydrochloric acid", and not "water with acid in it". Now, what of Internet Bonsai Forums? Did somebody mention dilution?

Peace.

Fly.

 

[Anonymous User]

Ah a moderator from Bt joins us with statistics concerning myself, no surprise that I somehow am included in the percentages.

Here are some more statistics from bonsaiTalk.

I was banned about two years ago. My record of financial contribution seems to have been erased, I am often criticized there (where I can't respond or defend myself) for various reasons, real or imagined, yet every single article I wrote still remains on the forum.

The following are derived from sorting threads in various forum sections by number of views (or reads), ignoring anything that doesn't appear on the first page of results and ignoring stickys. These numbers are as recent as this post and represent placement of my articles or threads I started by number of views.


Articles
number 3
number 18
number 20
out of 72 total articles posted

General
number 12
number 24
out of 6605 threads posted

Show and Tell
number 2
number 8
number 17
out of 4182 threads posted

Opinion
number 3
number 9
number 12
out of 111 posts

I could go on, but why be redundant? The point is that it has to be strange that after two years of absence and all the crap said, my small contributions there still rank high in the number of people who read them. Why have they remained, if I am all that bad, why not remove them, erase them, make me a unperson?

Could it be that the threads about me are as productive as far as creating activity? Considering that I never included such in the numbers above, this may well be true.

Not bragging, just returning statistic for statistics... you can't have it both ways, if my contributions are valueless, please remove them from your forum.

Now that AoB and BT have been compared in this thread and the general concensus seems to be that AoB is somehow slower and less read, let's look at a few more numbers.

The highest view count for an article at BT is 16,282 but the highest post count for an article at AoB is 20200, interesting for a two year old forum, to say the least.


Will

 

[nsmar4211]

I took Fly's statistics as simply pointing out that singling out a contributor because they are a mod and saying they dilute the forum is leaving oneself open to someone pointing out other people who contribute a lot and thereby "dilute the forum". I did not see it as a personal attack, nor a call to start parading around. Last time I checked there were not any threads about any one person on any of the forums either.........

Fly has a good point, I find that the mods and site owners don't post that much and in my opinion, always contribute when they do. I'm also one of the IBC lurkers who won't post due to the chilliness that came up, directly attributable to the mods.... thus far, none of the other sites have had that happen (and I hope it never does). I like all of the sites for different reasons, and none of my dislikes have to do with the site owners posting and diluting .






Keep in mind...........the beginners you deride are the future of bonsai................

 

[Anonymous User]

Good alternative point of view, thank you.

Keep in mind...........the beginners you deride are the future of bonsai................

I never deride beginners, or ride them for that matter.


Will

 

[nsmar4211]

"You" meaning anyone, not you personally . I find that people tend to forget that the "sticks in pots" crowd will be the future and dismiss them, and a reminder is good. The great bonsai people I personally deal with are the ones that show the s-i-p person how much nicer and easier a "real" bonsai is and get them going in the right direction without making them feel, well, dumb. Takes a lot of patience....and a source of good prebonsai helps.

 

[zelk]

A wise man once said

"God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference."

um..... yeah

 

[Rusty Harris]

Never have I seen so many people have so much to say about nuttin.The dogwoods are blooming here, all my trees are popping, leafing out and I am pretty much pi$$ed at myself for taking the time to read this, I will now take Rockms advice and change the channel, better yet, I wet will turn the boob tube off. Talk about your looney tunes channel,jeesh.

 

[bonsai barry]

"You" meaning anyone, not you personally . I find that people tend to forget that the "sticks in pots" crowd will be the future and dismiss them, and a reminder is good. The great bonsai people I personally deal with are the ones that show the s-i-p person how much nicer and easier a "real" bonsai is and get them going in the right direction without making them feel, well, dumb. Takes a lot of patience....and a source of good prebonsai helps.

I would have to state that I started visiting BT shortly after I began to practice Bonsai. Will was one of the regulars that I could count on to answer many of my questions.

 

[Bonsai Nut]

I am going to close this thread. I think we have beaten the original subject to a pulp, and have gotten into shallower waters elsewhere.

For the record, BonsaiNut supports ALL bonsai web sites. It is not our policy to speak negatively about any other site, when we know there is so much we could do better here. If you do not enjoy or have not had a favorable experience at another bonsai web site, I would appreciate it if you maintained a neutral silence. Thanks!