That's hardcore. I've noticed the lack of traffic too. Did you see greenprof's farewell post on the gallery page? So Sad. I wish we could keep this community together, but I agree to disagree with the changes being made here. I suggested to DH that he should set up a free forum with a similar format we could all visit. He said someone here should use some free forum code to do it--thats what I was suggesting DH do hahah. I only know of one other forum (the one dedicated to just orchid lovers) and it just doesn't interest me for some reason. It's hard to say what things will be like once it settles down.

And if GW is reading this, take the hint!

I'm a tich sick of it since I post on the roses forum too. I did join the 'other' site made promptly. I am sick of the ads and the logging in- that forum moves faster than this one does so loggin in constantly sux.

I find it interesting that IV said they were going to crack down on cussing in the forums- even the masked variety- but then lets an over 18 site be posted in the suggestion page for weeks. I don't know if it was posted by an IV sponsor or just a member/guest but that seemed odd to me.

There is supposed to be some big change at the end of the month and I'm guessing none of us will like it much. They don't really care, Newbies will pop in anyway. Its sad since I can't find another orchid site I like as much. I will lurk here- but I might not post as much because of that dang log in- and I don't trust these folks.

There are plenty of other forums to go to so wouldn't really miss this place, just some of the regulars I've kinda gotten to know. With any luck they'll show up somewhere else. Just today I went so far as to extinquish my membership and profile on another site that was seeing even less interesting content than GW. Is there a way to do that here? I wouldn't be popping in to check if I could just make a "clen break" and get on with life.

If I remember correctly, one of the reasons the people on flickr were really bent out of shape about yahoo taking over, is that at one point yahoo had also laid claim to all photos etc, posted. Of course, on flickr that wasn't acceptable. Evidently, I think, yahoo had done this several years ago and then stopped the practice of claiming rights to content.

I never post a photo on the internet that is high res and printable. Among other things, it's not necessary, computer monitors aren't that good. Secondly, if anyone wanted to get into a pissing match with me about whether a photo was truly mine or not, I do have the large, high res original that may or may not be a jpg (probably not). 99% of the time, I only post photos that are by photoshops standards, 0 or 1 in resolution. This size makes news print appear high res in comparison. You, me and our computer monitors are perfectly happy and don't know the difference.

yes IV could still use these photos on their web pages but no one is going to download them and claim them as their own, and they will never be used by IV in print advertising, if they even advertise like that.

One more reason why the MP isn't half as important as some would have you think. Anyone who is foolish enough to post photos on the internet that can be downloaded at 10 MP and high res, deserves to have the picture stolen and used as billboard advertising. Albeit, getting that down to less than 60k would take serious talent.

I don't think I got anything out of this site orchids- or gesneriads-wise in months and months.

With the other sites, though, it seems the online orchid grower population is so fragmented that none of them is that good.

I'm also wondering how you un-register - after all, if you disagree, shouldn't you be able to quit so they can't count you as a member? I'm haven't read the details of the new tos or pp - ugh, more legal reading.

In my opinion, it was one of the greatest beat ups i've ever seen. Things seem to have returned to normal and there is some interesting stuff in the music thread.

Why oh why do you guys go on about the adds. Do you think IVillage is Santa Claus? Somehow they have to pay the billls. Most of you live in the USA. The engine room of the world economy. Free enterprise has made you wealthy, yet you all keep complaining about free enterprise.

I looked at some of those other sites and i do not like them. This is the best site even with warts.

As for setting up your own forum. Good luck! That entails lots of lots of work and monitoring and you have to get traffic somehow.

As for getting helpful hints from this or other sites. If you are an experienced grower you will get few but just sometimes there is something in a post that will assist. But as an experienced grower, you should be ready to assist that newbie with the overwatered Phal.

I'll post a nice orchid picture in the gallery in a few minutes.

Arthur, I love your posts.

I'll do a little whining, but probably won't jump ship unless traffic halts altogether.

I guess my intent in doing this post wasn't to rehash all the hash we've been hashing all week, but that's OK I guess as long as it doesn't bore folks to death. A good ^&%*& session can be therapeutic at times.

My initial comment was more of an observation hoping someone had some insight as to whether or not lots of folks had just bailed out. I peek at some of the other places and do recognize names (found a new one to me with Shady on it), but just am not motivated to jump in and participate.

I can't imagine myself canceling my membership here though. I have way too much stuff to trade this spring. This still is the best place to do those.

K

Haven't jumped ship. Actually, I haven't noticed more ads. Just oblivious, I guess. Well that's what DW says. I haven't posted a lot in the past year, since I've been really busy with other stuff. I even missed 2 OS meetings in a row. That's the first time in 5 years! Maybe I'm getting burned out, you know the every 5 or 6 year syndrome. So I'm usually here every 3rd or 4th day unless I see something that really interests me. Anyways, hope everyone is well.

Oblivious Vince

Well, I just deleted all of my stuff from My Page. Until things settle out, I'm just not comfortable with iVillage knowing what I had there and then telling me that they will sell my personally identifiable information. The less they know about me, the less they can sell. Maybe I'm better off not having that out there on the web anyway. Although it was a convenient way for me to remember what orchids I have!

I'm not planning to jump ship, but I may more aggresively explore other forums. And I agree with Kevin abut the exchanges:) But I will miss many of the regulars will will/have jumped ship, and those on dial-up who can't tolerate the slow downloads of ads.

Plus, I have received so much help here that I would like to help out others who stumble across this forum- my way of giving back. And I'm sure I'll continue to have questions, or want to share stuff.

But, I will probably watermark any photos that I post in the gallery, although I have never stored my photos here at GW. I use tinypic. And I only post lo res web pics anyway.

And I think that Arthur has a very good point. Although I also admit that I was (and probably will continue to be) very outspoken against the ads, especially sice I *paid* as a a contributing member to have an ad free "experience" at GW. But I have very effective software blocking in place now, so it's not a practical problem to me now, just a pet peeve.

Carolyn

I have not posted a lot due to the log in problem , it seems fixed, also no ads . I did read or try to read the legal goo regarding the PP.
What I am not comfortable with was finding a program on my machine that was made to bypass the pop up blocker and allow under and over pop ups, it is gone now . Gin

I'm not comfortable at all with the new policies. So count me out on pics cause I don't have the desire to take the extra security measures. In fact, I'm thinking I may delete my page, too. I wonder if this vague "ownership" rule will extend to email addresses? They couldn't do that, could they?

I'm old school...what's mine is mine and whether or not I make it public, it's still MINE! Hear that ivillage?! Take it at your own risk.

It's painful to watch the death of something that's been so wonderful for so long......

Maggie

Maggie, if you are worried about security, use a hotmail address and reserve your personal email address for those you really trust.
I haven't had time to read all the blurb and you probably would need an lawyer to interpret anyway.
Just wonder about effective junk email is as a marketing tool and whether anyone ever buys anything after reading junk mail. Certainly scads of it come in to the local orchid Society site, but the spam filter traps most of it and i have the small daily task of ticking some boxes and pressing delete.

I use yahoo it trashes the spam , off and on some will come to my regular e mail addy , I add them to the block sender list, the only e mails I open are from people I have given it too . Gin

Hi ArthurM, regarding your comment on ads, I think what bothers most people including myself, is that these huge ads right in front of my face, and the xclose button is blended making it harder to find. They can run all the adds they want on the sides or on the top. I agree that any site needs sponspors to run them, but they should not annoy the users.

Personally, I would only patronize a pop-up advertiser if it were Wal*Mart.

LOL.

Hi,
I'm still here. I have been posting very little just because I am generally grumpy.
I think most people have stopped posting on the gallery because of the log in problem. I don't think people want to log in a second or third time just to say "ooh!!" or "ahh!" no matter how nice it is to do so.

Ugh. Gotta love corporations. This makes me sad for the mid nineties when the internet was still a new frontier and there was scads of creativity. It was a lovely thing to see all of these new sites going up, created by individuals with wonderful ideas and creative new technologies. Kind of reminds me of the old days when movies were original, not marketed to fourteen year old boys and did not have scads of product placement. Aaaahhhh, the good old days.

Anyway. I will probably keep hanging out here mute or not since this has been my home on the internet and I am an old dog who has a hard time learning new tricks.

Discussion topic: (I've been thinking about this one a lot). How different are we from reality TV? We come to this forum and air personal stuff about ourselves. There are the typical life stories (marriage, birth, divorce, sickness, and sometimes (god forbid) death). There is comaraderie and sometimes there are fights. This is a microcosm of society brought together by a love of flowers but it is put out there for the entertainment of others.
This topic is my gift to Ivillage before they can say it is 1/24/06 and all content is theirs. Before they become the producers of this reality show called garden web, lol!!

Happy Saturday,
Mimi

Arthur, Arthur, Arthur, now look, in your country you can put a sign on your mailbox stating you don't want to recieve junk mail and you question why we don't like all these ads? It's not so much the ads, as the fact that when you are paying for high speed internet access, and page loading slows to a crawl because of all the ads, it's rather irritating. Some sites seem to load the content first, and ads second, so at least you can read what is of interest while the ads load.

This site isn't half as bad as some when it comes to ads though. I really hate those sites that have so many ads that if you click to scroll inside the window, you can't help but click on an ad and get redirected. That really, really, really, really burns me up.

Yup, Mimi,a lot of days I really miss the days before the internet became flooded with, and marketed to the average person. Back when AOL was actually a good thing (hard to believe it ever was). On the other hand, it's spawned so much cool new technology, it's really hard to complain. What was life before google,flickr, iPods (them again) and my 24/7 commercial free streaming radio. Not to mention all the other cool gadgets we have hooked up to our computers and the plethora of new ones developed every day (now if we could just get rid of the myriad of wires that goes with it). You can even buy vibrators that run off USB. Who would have thought.

So, for my sanity, I'm going back to Macs for the internet. This way I can have my cake and eat it too. They process graphics faster than PC's, don't have active X, don't automatically run the macros that are viruses and most of all, don't use Windows that they are designed to attack (I stole this from Howard).

The only pop up I want to see is the b/f.

I would really miss the dark side here if we all go elswehwere. There is a nice dynamic here of ideas, convictions, tastes, intellect, experiences, etc. Makes for some interesting reading that is, for the most part, never annoying (i.e. we have no morons or 'group think').

uh bluh uh...run off of USB??! What the heck do you do with the cord? ...And why would it need to run off of USB? Oh my!! don't answer that!!! ... I think I need a cup of coffee to process that one...
-Mimi

You plug the cord in. Then you hit the on button.

Yes, when I think about it I would miss the dark side the most. That's where you really learn who everyone is and what they're all about. I don't think those kind of revelations come out as easily on other forums since there always seems to be one of those moderator types lurking in the background. They make me feel like mom or dad is watching and ready to pounce. Don't like that.

Another thought: It would be kind of dumb to bail on this place just because of the changes. I do hate the login problem, but since I'm using Firefox now for this site, the ads aren't a problem anymore. In fact, everything is much faster. In a way you could think of all this new stuff as a game. iV keeps making changes and someone out here figures out a way around it. There really were some good suggestions from a whole bunch of people when this stuff surfaced a week ago. That to me says there are still a whole lot of folks not wanting to jump ship quite yet.

And yes, it has been a good Saturday. A big kettle of lentil/tomato soup is done; my piecrust for tomorrowÂs pumpkin pie is done and everything is chopped and ready for Chicken with Lemon Grass & Ginger for dinner tonight.

Back to watching skating on the tube.

Isn't reality TV dead?

Here's an interesting read/blog from an MIT startup on web advertising, spamming, phishing, etc, why it's done (big money), how it is done and the fallout that arrives in your email box and/or mailbox. One site alone generated over 700 spam emails a day into the test email box. They have software that you can download that scans a site and/or google search resutls and lets you know how much garbage you might run into. They've scanned 90% of the most popular websites and have ranked them based on their findings as far as redirects, hijackings, phishing, spamming etc., that resulted from visiting a website.

Here is a link that might be useful: site advisor

I just thought of one more nasty thing iV could change - start charging people to list plants for trade like that other place does. Wouldn't that be a _______er? But......I know we would find a way around that too.

Geez, Kevin-

nothing like giving them ideas!

You seem desperate to trade this spring, so tempt us, what do you have lined up so far? It's gotten me thinking about what to trade, and there's a few that are getting penciled in. If they don't do something soon, they're outta here!

(I hope that scared them!)

carolyn

carolyn

I'm sure iV can come up with evil ideas on their own. Little old moi couldn't tell them anything they haven't already thought of.

OK, here's the list so far. Nothing is set in stone yet, so some things could come off, others added. It's not that these haven't done well for me, with some I have duplicates, some I just lost interest in, some are too big. You know - the constant changing ones mind about what to grow.

Angraecum sesquipedale
Ceratostylis retisquama
Dend aphyllum
Dend Jairak Pink
Dend Little Pixie (not a Pixie at all, a monster)
Encyclia chacaoensis
Encyclia Hereford Jewel (cordigera x bractescens) - 2 of these
Hawkinsara (Jamaica Red x Mahalo Jack) 'Carmela'
Max variabilis atropurpurea
Oncidium incurvum
Oncidium maculatum 'Paulo'
Paph delenatii - in bloom
Paph Pinocchio - in bud
Paph Spellbound x Black Brier - in bud
Pleuro restrepioides 'Dragonstone'
Trias Emily Clarkson - I can divide this one if there is interest

K

Tuez,,,,,pray tell might I be so bold as to ask where or how you found out about that item ? Me thinks it might be distracting to surfing or maybe it makes the ads less obtrusive ? My mind conjures all kinds of images . John

Kev-

I already want your Angraecum sesquipedale and your Paph delenatii. The Ceratostylis retisquama looks cool too. Oh dear, I have to start really looking at my plants. Spring will be here before you know it!

(Sorry, didn't mean to hijack this thread! But I like Kevin's plants.)

Carolyn

Ah Kev. You know I am interested in Kelly Clarkson's sister! I don't think I have anything to trade for her though....