Tropical Fish Forum

Think Fish Website => What's going on at Thinkfish => Topic started by: SteveS on September 27, 2012, 02:54:15 AM

Title: Fish Profiles
Post by: SteveS on September 27, 2012, 02:54:15 AM
Intro

God... headings, this must a long post.  Yeah, I know what you're thinking.

The points I will raise here are intended to be positive and constructive, if they do not come across as such, it's my lack of talent with written English that is to blame.  I have no intention of upsetting anyone or of treading upon anyone's toes.  If I do upset anyone, my apologies in advance.

In the old forum, this section was a general questions or suggestions area for the website, I guess mostly aimed at you Peter.  Forgive me if that is unwanted this time around, but...

Fish Profiles

I have included this first because this display, or something very similar was used in the old Community Creator and possibly the new one too.  There are a number of points I would like to raise about this part of the site.
Main Page
Code: [Select]
#dropList ul#menu div.col3 {
    width: 440px;  /*make the menu box wider */
}
#dropList ul.atoz {
    background: none repeat scroll 0 0 #FFFFFF;
    height: 24px;
    list-style: none outside none;
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
    width: 100%; /* fill the menu box with the items */
}
Note for future.  Using px as a size is not a good idea.  It is too dependent upon screen size.  The better way is to use em, this relates the size to the default font-size.  But I am not for a minute suggesting you go around altering it, it would be too much effort.

Content

In the past, the contents of this site, apart from the forum, have been pretty static.  This has been due, I think, to your desire to not be involved on any sort of regular basis.  I have no issue with this, it's your site, you can be as involved or as uninvolved as you wish; [creep] Although you seem to be knowledgeable, even allowing for your history in retail :), and your involvement would be an asset [/creep]

You seem to be more involved now, but it's a new site and given your desire to start up ThinkDog, ThinkCat, ThinkRabbit and ThinkSnake I feel, sadly, that this won't last indefinitely.

I would like to suggest that you allow us, the community, to submit articles and fish profiles for the site.  I don't have a firm idea how this could be done, but an initial idea might be to set up areas in the forum where we could post articles and profiles for submission;  The forum users would suggest changes and discuss the suitability of the item and finally using the facilities of the forum software submit it to a community vote.  If it passes, the profile or article would be submitted to you, who would have the final say obviously.  This would keep the involvement required of you to a minimum.

I know that there are items that could be included;  Sue's articles on cycling for example, and I have some articles on lighting I have been dying to write.
Title: Re: Fish Profiles
Post by: Chucklett on September 28, 2012, 08:20:35 AM
Quote
I would like to suggest that you allow us, the community, to submit articles and fish profiles for the site
Good idea. I notice a few of my fish aren't on the database this time - though I put that down to the site still being set up. But even on the old site, there were a couple of species that I would have liked to have been there - I (and other people) would have to substitute for something similar in the CC, which I found a bit annoying.

Quote
I know that there are items that could be included;  Sue's articles on cycling for example, and I have some articles on lighting I have been dying to write
Another good idea. We had to keep "bumping" Sues cycling threads in order to keep them near the top of the list so they didnt get deleted after time - couldnt they just be stickied? And an article from SteveS on lighting would also be beneficial - another subject that cropped up a lot so again could be stickied.
Title: Re: Fish Profiles
Post by: Think Fish (Peter) on September 28, 2012, 02:11:12 PM
Some good points and suggestions - I will formulate a proper response when I get a bit more time over the next few days
In the meantime I have spent the best part of today tidying up the fish profiles. Still got a few extra bits to do but have at least sorted out the units and got rid of any non-sensical stats  :)
Title: Re: Fish Profiles
Post by: DARRELL on September 28, 2012, 06:35:04 PM
to be fair to Peter, there is already an article up on cycling tanks which mentions both fishless and fish-in cycling
Title: Re: Fish Profiles
Post by: SteveS on September 28, 2012, 07:34:58 PM
to be fair to Peter, there is already an article up on cycling tanks which mentions both fishless and fish-in cycling
There is indeed, but they are complementary;  Peter's gives an introduction to cycling and the cycling methods available, Sue's guides are detailed step by step instructions on HOW to cycle a tank.

I never intended the examples to be critical, they were, after all, examples.  It was to point out that, perhaps, the articles could be a valuable addition to the site.  Another pitfall may be that Sue has no desire for her articles to be included more formally, I have not discussed this matter with her.
Title: Re: Fish Profiles
Post by: Sue on September 28, 2012, 09:12:02 PM
I wrote those 'how to' thread on the old forum to save me typing it out over and over again   :)  They were pinned at one time, then Peter had a big tidy up and removed a lot of pinned threads, not just those. So I reposted them as ordinary threads, which were bumped up the page at regular intervals. Keen eyed members might have spotted that I rewrote them while the site was down -  I had to do something to keep myself occupied  ;D

As for what should happen (or not) with those threads, the decision is Peter's. He may not want threads of this type as anything other than a standard thread. He may decide that the content should be updated as new knowledge is discovered, so they need to be kept in a format that I can edit - there is such an update at the bottom of the fishless cycling thread, for instance.

I did check that it was OK to post those threads when the forum came back, and received the go-ahead  :)


Title: Re: Fish Profiles
Post by: DARRELL on September 29, 2012, 07:40:06 PM
i have no idea how easy this would be to do but maybe a link could be included in Peter's article to Sue's entrys in the forum... that could be another way to do it