Shutting down of BC Forums

Some time towards the end of last year, I was toying with the idea of shutting down the BC forums. This is because there seems to be more activity in the BC FaceBook group, and fewer people posting here.

However, during my trip to Langkawi, Antonio made some valid points for the continuation of this forum. Firstly, the photos here are much bigger and more attractive to display BC members' work, when compared to FB, which cannot increase the size of the photos when viewed generally.

A more important point that I agree with Antonio, was the ability to search for past threads and keywords to find photos or discussions. In FB, the effect is one of "temporary display" and to search for a photo that someone posted is quite a difficult exercise. The organisation and search capability of VBulletin for past threads, posts and archives is of course much better.

FB on the other hand, has a wider audience and the more spontaneous "likes" from friends and friends of friends alike.

What do the others think? Do we shut down this BC forum or not? :thinking:

I am currently paying about $600 per annum for the VB licence, domain name & website hosting. Not that I mind, but if the activity here doesn't justify the expenditure, then we may as well shut the forums down.

Your views are welcomed. :)

Have you thought of moving it to a cheaper & off shore host instead?

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Originally Posted by Elbowed Pierrot

Have you thought of moving it to a cheaper & off shore host instead?

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Like I said.. I don't mind the expenditure. It's not the cost that's the issue. :)

ok, then perhaps we take a different approach, the existence of FB is beyond control. if one fine day, someone decides to put the plug or rewrite their policy unfavorable to the user.. then what happens? We can't back up the data on FB and move else where. A platform such as FB is just too violatile.

Something like Instagram? :)

Ok, besides those that Antonio mentioned to me, you just added another point in favour of forums software vs FB. :thumbsup:

Yap agreed with both Antonio and Simon's point.

Basically facebook has the following limitations:


Unstructure or single thread in facebook
This makes things difficult to search. Holding a proper discussion is probably not a good idea as your post will quickly push down to oblivion.

Copyrights issues
Well, today the photos or contents are yours but there is no guarantee the t&c won't change. Just look at Instagram saga. Besides, through years of discussions, BC has accumulated wealth of butterfly content and knowledge. This shouldn't go to waste.

Facebook content is not really search able from outside.
If you want someone to reach you by google search, you need to have a homepage. Most company have a face in facebook for viral marketing and also as additional channel to reach out to wider audience.

And not all of us are on facebook.

Just my 2 cents.

Anyway, the score is 8-0 now.

plus ownership of the information. BC have been up for 6 years at least?, we have many valuable info and photos. Something not money can buy.

FB, the triumph of the transitory against the lasting information of a forum.

The first place where I post my pictures is Flickr, my archive, cloud, showroom, portfolio; followed by BC, because is where a bunch of friends of my stay, where I can find a real expertise and appreciation of my new discoveries, or nice pictures; and last is FB, a real time connection with hundred of people with our passion from many different countries.

But a suggestion for the webmaster of BC. As in the forum of Thailand expats (www.Thaivisa.com), every post have the chance to be 'liked' and all the 'likes' are calculated in the personal profile of the member. This might titillate a little bit the ego of some of us :whistle: .

And, as I said to Khew back in Langkawi, the chance to find your post, pictures and information you give, also after a few years by a search engine, is something of the biggest importance.

BTW I'm ready to pay an annual membership fee, or make a contribution, or buy some share, or any other way, to support in any way Butterflycircle

http://images.pcworld.com/news/graph...0_original.jpg

:bsmile: :bsmile: :bsmile: :bsmile:


Edit: children around :bsmile:

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Originally Posted by Angiud

BTW I'm ready to pay an annual membership fee, or make a contribution, or buy some share, or any other way, to support in any way Butterflycircle

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No problem with that, my friend. Like I said, the cost is not an issue here. Just that the forums must serve its purpose and continue to help everyone share their photos and discuss butterflies and photography. Otherwise it'll just be a waste to run an empty forum.

No middle fingers here! There are children around, you know... :bsmile:

But thanks to all who have given your views. :thumbsup:

the fact that you can search and insert large images in the discussion thread here are important reasons why the forum should continue. :)

Here are my reasons for why you should not shut down this forum or your domain or everything that you've built all these years:
1) The recent trend is that platforms for short attention span people are gaining popularity. At first we had blogs, we had forums, then we have Facebook which shows transitory posts, something to read about and probably forget later. Then we had Twitter where people post one sentence liners. Maybe soon we'll have Grunter where people just grunt one word posts like "eeps!", "yay!", "burp!" Just like their posts, these platforms are transient and very much like Peplum skirts and the Twiggy fashion of cutting of the eye crease, they will come and go like fads. But the platforms which you can build on... advice, articles, sharing that is more than a grunt, these won't go out of fashion.
2) BC to me has more sentimental reasons than you can imagine. For some it is a place to search for information. For others it is platform for sharing their pride and joy at finding new butterflies. For me, it was a place to deposit good memories and make good, lasting friends. It was a place to reach out and find people with like-minded interests and passions who are willing to say more than one paragraph of their adventures and their lives. Although I admit I have not been logging in more frequently than I should, sometimes I don't really know what to say after being in love with butterflies for more than 5 years now. It may not be anything compared to the number of years some of you have been in love with butterflies but still, sometimes I do run out of things to say. If any of you know me well enough, I'm not a very technical person! I don't really know how to expound the virtues of shooting at F8. But in spite of that, I guess I have not been expressive enough of how much I do appreciate your sharing, no matter what it is that you are sharing.

Imagine David Fisher's amazing photographs in sadly passing Facebook posts, or never being able to find that photo of Antonio posing with a butterfly on his hand, or not being able to find photos of how skinny Nelson and I used to be when we were younger. Haha. What a waste.

So I do hope that we never have to come to a place like this where we have to decide whether we want to let a few fads take the place of this virtual meeting place of friends, lovers and photographers from all over the world.

I know this post is a long time coming but I hope it's not too late. :)

All:

I like the in-depth analysis, banter, feed-back, and images of the Forums vs the useful features of Facebook... which includes a lot of first-timers who may never choose to become really serious about butterflies. I find the Forums as quite serious and thus I support it. William

I have just logged on to see this thread, which was something I was dreading. I am delighted at the responses so far.

I recently joined facebook, against my better judgement, but my hand was forced when Pisuth closed his forum, and I just can not use it, if feels so messy to me, no structure!

The forums here are a lifeline to me, with its excellent structure, the ability to search old posts, and being able to get into deeper discussions, when necessary.

I have noticed that other forums have a 'donate' box, where users can help with the costs if they want. I would be happy to see (and use) that.

I share the same sentiment as Khew, it is not a question of cost , to me whether the forum could survive is more tied to the level of "participation" that will decide whether it is worth the while.

Maintaining the vibrancy of a forum is the crux of the problem facing all the forums, and resisting the advant of more popular media like facebook etc in a Smartphone world will be furtile.

Facebook has its limitations, it will never be able to replace a properly structured forum . To me, facebook is a tool for ButterflyCircle to ink-up with like minded butterfly lovers on a wider stage and to project/create exposure to both the Blog and the forum. We have to change with the time or we will be left behind and died like many forums.

Due to the lack of active participating in the forum , in the last 6 months my posts are mainly channel towards ButterflyCircle Facebook group and my personal Facebook, and where appropriate dircect "eyeball interest" to the Blogspot and Forum.

The Forum , Blogspot and Facebook Group all have their place, hopefully some software will surface to tie/manipulate all their contents to create a virtual forum in the future.

All 17 votes so far favour to have the forum to meet the " Needs" of all the voters, however what the " Forum's Need(ed) " most is to have your active participation to keep it alive so that it can serve you !:)

Cheers!

Thanks everyone for their views and support to maintain this forum up and running. I think the decision is quite unanimous that we keep it going. :thumbsup:

As Sunny said, everyone needs to chip in to make the forums active. Otherwise there is very little point for us to come in here and see no new posts, discussions or otherwise. So we need everyone's support here.

Those who have any more suggestions and views, please feel free to air your opinions. :cheers:

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Originally Posted by Commander

Thanks everyone for their views and support to maintain this forum up and running. I think the decision is quite unanimous that we keep it going. :thumbsup:
As Sunny said, everyone needs to chip in to make the forums active. Otherwise there is very little point for us to come in here and see no new posts, discussions or otherwise. So we need everyone's support here.
Those who have any more suggestions and views, please feel free to air your opinions. :cheers:

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As the forum becomes "mature" and there is only a small group of members who are genuinely keen on butterfly-sighting and photography, we should be glad to see there are still some new posts weekly. Everyone has different priorities/problems to focus on at different stage of his/her life, so it is very natural that some of us become less active during certain period of time.

Haha I guess only the active members are voting. Hence you got 100% support to keep it.

As me, it is a place for serious butterflyers. Looking for ID and getting opinion from expert is quick. Not like FB, just mainly post for "like". :bsmile: FB is messy and you can never find your picture if you post it in other Group. Enough say, keep BC I voted. :cheers:

I'm one of those who became less active here :embrass: especially for the past few months due to my new job and lots of travelling, not due to lost of interest. Anyway, I consider myself not a very active member in the forum - abt 1000 post compare to some of you having a few thousand ;P haha. FB provides me quicker and easier access to our members latest outing photos and those of non BC members from other parts of the world. But the real butterfly stuffs are in the blog and forum, not FB. It will be a real pity and sad to close down this forum. :cheers:

I believe most of the positives about maintaining the forum have been put forward by members here.
The forum has been a good source of information for like-minded butterfly enthusiast here and around the region.
New and rare finds does create a buzz and makes those on the forum excitable.

I have gain a lot of insight into the behavioral, scientific and photographic aspect of butterflies from this forum and had made many good friends as well.

I do agree that the activities have simmered down in recent months and I am also guilty in contributing less on the local front.
I tend to post more on the trips that I have made overseas. I believe this does add more flavors and diversity to the board as we are able to
showcase different butterflies from different countries and regions.
Anyone for Kenya in 2014? :)


But I still need my daily dose of BC surfing to make my day whole. I need my coffee :)



:cheers:

Thanks to everyone who voted in favour of keeping the forums and also sharing your comments and personal views. No one need to feel guilty or anything. This is, after all, a hobby site, and we are just doing this as a past-time and personal interest.

We all have our priorities - work/business, family, other personal commitments, etc. To sustain our online community, however, will need a little bit of effort and time from everyone to keep the forums active. Otherwise it will go the way of many forums out there in cyberspace - where people just move on and the forums become as quiet as a ghost town. We have seen many nature and photography websites fall into that state.

Whilst social media is convenient and probably easier to check and post things on the move (with smartphone technology and who knows what the next hi-tec gadget will be!), sites like FB and so on are transient snapshots of current flavours of the day. As many of you have shared, looking for a past post or picture is next to impossible on FB. If you remember something that someone posted a year back for example, you would probably not be able to find it. ;P

So, thanks and special appreciation to Simon, Ellen, Fed, Nelson, Antonio, Les, Keyang, Sunny, William, LC, Chng and Loke who have penned your thoughts in support of keeping the forums alive, and hopefully, for many more years to come!

:cheers:

Nelson : Kenya?? :sweat:

I'm voting no to shutting the forums down. Facebook may have all the hype and popularity now, but then again, who knows what will happen a couple of years down the road? Maybe there will be a new trend in the social web, then, are we still able to migrate the data across different platforms? I doubt so. We've seen the shutting down of geocities; facebook may do the same once it loses its consumer base.

When I took over the maintenance of the website in 2008, the forums have more than tripled in terms of raw data, we did run out of space a sometime back and had to increase our data storage. The BC forums and blog contain a wealth of knowledge, and I would think it would be a great pity if BC forums were to shut down. I would beg to differ on the part where activity is low, the website served 22.93GB of data last month in Dec, which is the years all time high!

Getting off tangent, mobile version of the forums can be made available, although the forum software needs to be upgraded, for those who are not aware, the next upgrade is a major overhaul of the software. And of course, they do come with those fancy 4.0 social plugins.

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I would beg to differ on the part where activity is low, the website served 22.93GB of data last month in Dec, which is the years all time high!

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Statistic can be loaded depending on how it is used.

The 22.93GB showed total usage of data by "users", a combination of drawing / adding to the data base of both "lurkers" and "active members" who posted , a breakdown to show passive / additive data would be more meaningful in deriving the participative aspect of the forum IMHO.

Even a forum without a single post, but with lots of lurker that use its database will show a high data been served.

Please correct me if I am wrong .:)

I'd be devastated if the forums shut down because it is such a great platform for people who share similar interests to interact especially since the forum is quite unique (in ways that have alr been mentioned.

Also, i (personally) prefer to keep my FB activities and BC activity separate and the BC facebook group just cannot quite serve the same purpose as the forum.

Thanks for your views, Anthony and Aaron. Glad to hear that you guys find the forums useful.

Unker Sunny and I observed that Ellen has a lot of nice photos in her own blog that she doesn't share over here at BC. Perhaps she should start letting everyone here see her shots as well, after writing such a passionate plea to keep BC forums alive. :)

And thanks to all these 25 members who took the effort to vote in support to keep BC forums. What about the rest of our members here? Doesn't matter to you if BC forums were alive or not? Or just go elsewhere? :)

Alfa, Angiud, atronox, Blue Jay, Blue Nawab, Bluebottle, bluefin, butterfly_effect, Cruiser, Elbowed Pierrot, Glorious Begum, Grass Demon, Great Mormon, Green Imperial, henrykoh, horace2264, Ichoker, Leopard Lacewing, Painted Jezebel, Peacock Royal, Sailfish, Silverstreak, The Plane, Wanderer, WillFolsom

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Originally Posted by Commander

Nelson : Kenya?? :sweat:

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Yep, Kenya butts are exotica. :)

My photos nice ar? I think the ones you saw are Nelson's ones lei. Hahaha! I sometimes use his photos on my blog. My photos.... Er .... Same standard as last time wor ^_^

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Originally Posted by bluefin

Yep, Kenya butts are exotica. :)

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Can shoot elephant, giraffe and zebra butts as well! :thumbsup:

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Originally Posted by butterfly_effect

My photos nice ar? I think the ones you saw are Nelson's ones lei. Hahaha! I sometimes use his photos on my blog. My photos.... Er .... Same standard as last time wor ^_^

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Nice la. Exotic butts we don't have here mah. Never mind standard or no standard. Helps to keep the forums active and also share with the rest of us here, other species that we don't get to see locally. And I do like some of your shots.. I mean yours, not Nelson's. :)

Unker Sunny said you went to Krabi ah?

We haven't gone yet. :) planning. We asked unker sunny but he can't get away at the moment.

The forum should stay!

It has seen so many interesting discussions and is loaded with the valuable knowledge and experiences (as well as the pictures ) that have accumulated over the years. And Facebook is, after all, still just a social networking service that won't ever live up to this forum.:)

This discussion for sure has already achieved something important: a much more presence of BC members with more posts and more pics than last month.

:) :bsmile: :cheers: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Jonathan's message is to the point! William

I am very happy to have this forum, I do not know how else to exhort IDs of my critters from the trusted and tried helpers (especially Les and Seow - but others too!), I have found here!