Are Applestar's threads and posts hard to read/follow?

NO - everything is fine the way they are
75%
6
YES
No votes
0
Collages are too confusing - no collages, one photo each
13%
1
- better when labeled within the collage in addition to descriptions in text
No votes
0
- better when less than 6 photos per collage
No votes
0
Acronyms need to be explained/written out in each post
13%
1
Acronyms should be explained at beginning of the thread or first use
No votes
0
I have other issues to point out (please add a brief comment)
No votes
0
 
Total votes: 8
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applestar
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Are Applestar's threads and posts difficult to read?

ARE Applestar's threads and posts difficult to read?

I have been receiving some comments and constructive criticisms about my posts.

While I appreciate that they have been made with good will and intentions, to my knowledge, this is the first time these issues have been brought up in all the years I have been posting here. (Well, actually I have heard about the Collage not being understandable before, but I do kind of think of them as pictographical snapshots -- zoom in and examine more closely if interested, but just glance over the thumbnails if not.... I HAVE started using the Markup feature of iOS Photo app to directly label stuff in the collage).

However, if there is room for improvements to be made that majority of the members who are interested in reading my threads agree on, then I would certainly think about how they might be accomplished, and will make the suggested changes if my home tech situation allows it -- currently file storage space is at a premium....

So if you have been holding back about issues that have been on your mind, PLEASE let me know. I would also appreciate positive feedback as well, if you have them. ...Gee what if everyone said it's been a NIGHTMARE! :shock:

OK, I shall brace myself. But my philosophy is that there is ALWAYS room to evolve for improvement so fire away! :wink:

I'm going to split the comments that have already been made -- and subsequent discussions about the issues that were raised -- from existing threads and merge them to here.

In case you are not up to posting comments but would like to contribute, I will first start with a poll about issues that have been raised, and hopefully will create sufficient categories to vote in.




Subject: STALK BORER in my Tomato and Potato
KitchenGardener wrote:I'm so sorry that happened. Just an fyi: even after enlarging, I find your photo collages frustrating because most of the time I cannot see what you are showing us - this case is a good example. Perhaps you might want to do a few less photos collages? I'd be more inclined to follow your threads if you did... :)
Oh, I didn't know that. On my iPad, I can tap to enlarge, then two-finger zoom....
--maybe more captions or clearer descriptions to point out what I'm showing? In this case, The first photo on the left shows a pile of sawdust frass/pellets at the base of the stem, 2nd photo shows the wire, bottom photo the nursery pot secured and filled with potting mix to mound around the stem....

I want to show so many photos that if I didn't collage them, each post would take up the entire page, I thought that would be even more daunting.... :>

---

Subject: STALK BORER in my Tomato and Potato
KitchenGardener wrote:Thank you! Yes, I enlarge them, and then zoom even more, but sometimes its just hard to follow, is all.

I think its disgusting that those creatures can get away with that. One ill placed stupid big caterpillar or whatever and he destroys so much of your hard work. Those and the SVBs seem totally unfair to me!
Subject: STALK BORER in my Tomato and Potato
ID jit wrote:So you speared the evil worm with a wire and then basically buried the plant up to where there was solid stalk? The idea being that the buried stem will root?

(Have the same problem with your collages. They are pretty, but kind of confusing. Am an idjit and do better with one thing at a time. A vertical stack of images would be much easier to follow. If I do the figer stretch thing on the images, when I close the image I have H U G E text when I get back to the page.)

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ID jit
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More compost is never a bad thing.... come to think of it, I don't thing there is suxh a thing as too much compost.

Okay, what is AACT, for those of not so good with spoonfuls of alphabet soup?

Tried googling it and I am guessing you are not talking about the theater groups nor the Access Advisory Committee to the MBTA | Boston Region MPO nor the American Academy of Clinical Toxicology.

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KitchenGardener
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Yes, I too would like to know. You tend to use abbreviations. I would suggest that the majority of us have not followed your substantial posts sufficiently to recall what your acronyms and abbreviations mean, and as a result, are a bit less likely to be able to follow your threads...

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applestar
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Don't bother with google. Try the forum search at top left of the page. It really works. :wink:

You can also search all of MY posts from here: list of applestar's posts

Aw alright -- one more time (all together now, if you know it) -- Actively Aerated Compost Tea :lol: :kidding:


...kitchengardener, you need to catch up -- according to that link, there are 22,012 posts you can read --- but rainbowgardener holds the title for most number of posts :-() ...sorry I'm getting punchy. I'll log off and go to sleep now. :>

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applestar
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...I got worried and asked my teenager if I had sounded too mean or rude in the last post, and she said "I don't know how other people will read it, but to me, that sounds very YOU." So there you are, a glimpse of me without my "make-up" on. Image

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ID jit
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C&G
SMH IDK AISI @TEOTD it is just ADIP - WWNC
WDYT
GTG WTD

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applestar
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Hahaha! I got the browser and iPad iOS to look up most of that by highlighting and clicking "search" or "Look up" -- couldn't find all of it though? Is it me or does this sound like lyrics from a song? Too bad searching C&G doesn't yield anything useful and WWNC is a radio station in North Carolina ... :lol:

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ID jit
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Eschewing obfuscation:

(C&G) Chuckle and Grin

(SMH IDK AISI @TEOTD it is just ADIP - WWNC) Shakes my head, I don't know. At the end of the day it is just another day in Paradise - When will wonders cease.

(WDYT) What do you think?

(GTG WTD) Got to go. Work to do.

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KitchenGardener
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I guess I don't care enough to read all your posts to figure it out, lol. I actually just skim over your posts because yours definitely read more like you're keeping a journal for yourself with your acronyms - but I'm sure you know that already! :wink:

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applestar
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What I'm actually doing -- at least in my mind, is sharing my experiences. I try different things because that's my temperament. Sometimes, they are not what convention dictates and I suppose other people wouldn't. People tell me I can't do Things that way all the time. But I'm not convinced until I experience the failure for myself, especially when my intuitive leap says otherwise.

I learn a lot from other people trying different things. I collect nuggets of information and apply them. I want to pay that forward and show how I did something and how it turned out -- very often in blogs and vlogs, people post about how they did something for the first time as though they were instructing others, and never come back to say what happened -- which I find disconcerting. I feel like I wasted my time reading about their newbie trial with no conclusion. I actually try as much as I can to specifically indicate when things don't work out when I start something off as a project. And even if I don't continue reporting about it, if someone were to ask, I would supply the result.

I can understand your interpreting my posts as simply my personal journal, because that's how I described it myself. But actually, that was a little white lie. I don't have to copy everything over to the forum, I keep my own journal and I keep my scattered notes in different apps that to me are perfectly understandable and give me overview of trends and records. I summarize and write them up. I take multiple photos and organize them into collages to reduce file size and clutter. Upload them to photo hosting sites and copy over the links. The journaling and record keeping process in itself has been an evolving process that I report with updates in a dedicated thread.

I said that -- that creating threads about your garden and posting the seasonal activity on this forum is a great way to keep a garden journal, because I do find it a handy way to reference summaries, and because I think of this particular activity as a successful experiment in a working technique for gardening. I'm urging everyone else to TRY IT, you see?

As for the acronyms -- You probably don't know because you don't and haven't read all my entries, but I start out each season explaining what each acronym means with almost every entry in the beginning paragraph or first sentence it is used -- tediously, ad nauseum. I repeat myself until I'm blue in the face. Because I hate it when people use lingo that I don't understand and don't explain anywhere. Then when I suppose I've said it often enough, I let it go. In a long thread, it's understandable that you might not want to go back and find out what an acronym means, but it really was explained back in the first pages or first time it was used. And this is why I described how you CAN LOOK IT UP using the forum search. I know because I've tried it and used it and often to make sure.

Something's like AACT has been mentioned quite often by other people, too, and it's thrown around a lot here. Familiarity, I guess.

I never realized some members thought my threads are hard to read and not worth reading. Kind of bummed me out.

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lakngulf
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YBNN......Yall Be Nice Now

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applestar
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Image

...thanks for reining us in...

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KitchenGardener
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Hmm, I did think I said it nicely - I'm sorry if it didn't come across that way. Applestar: you are clearly a wealth of information. I gave you feedback on your photo collages (which some others seemed to agree with) as well as your abbreviations regarding your gardening beds and varietals because I thought you might want to know how it reads to a serious, interested gardener like me. I thought I was giving you feedback you didn't know, and that might help make your threads more easily read, imo, and therefore give you a greater audience to help. Admittedly, I am not one to go read research papers on gardening (unless forced to because I can't find my answer anywhere else) because I find them dry and the many abbreviations test my patience! But that is me - I was only speaking for myself. I have seen your beginning threads where you outline your acronyms, but I don't make a habit of looking them up and would just find it easier if you spelled things out in your posts. I won't provide any further feedback as you seem to have a style and are not looking to change it. Just know that I was offering my feedback in a good way - trying to offer ways I thought might make your information more accessible to a greater number of readers. Carry on!

For what its worth, I love how you co-mingle things, constantly move things around and try new things. I also enjoy your documentation and photos of everything, including whatever you have to show for your daily harvest, even if its only 6 blueberries and a few other things. I am still back at the stage of embarrassment that I have so little to show, so don't bother showing it!

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ID jit
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Is this a new thread or a renamed thread.... looks like I posted in a thread that seems to have changed.

There is a wealth of info in your threads and posts, but for me, it is not so easy to extract it sometimes.

I get the stream-of-consciousness style, and it is fine. It is on me that it doesn't work with my pragmatic thought processes, and I will own that 100%; that is all mine.

The collages are confusing to me and difficult to manipulate on my computer. I stretch them out to see what is there, figure out which section corresponds to what I just read then click out of it to come back to a screen with HUGE text on it. Again, that come back to me and my tech here.

Have been using forums and how too sites for a very long time, everything from fly tying to how the hammer weld specific patterns into pattern welded steel, to how to manipulate the flame front in a combustion chamber by manipulating and polishing the cylinder head to how to restore and nickle plate small, obsolete car parts.

What I am used to and works for me is a vertical stack of images with a description of what is important in the image typed below it, with one thing per image most of the time. Again, that is all me and what I am used to encountering and using as source information.

The acronyms.... you stated to use the search here before using google. I tried that with no success. Tried using the various filters and still no success. Was reading through one of your threads and came across "VG bed" and "VGA Bed". Search here looped me right back into the same 18 page thread with no clarity provided. Google didn't associate either of those acronyms with gardening. Was curious, but not curious enough to go back to page one and start looking for an explanation. Again, that is all me and my short comings.

You do what you do for your own reasons and it is fine just the way it is. I read your responses to other's questions carefully because you are very knowledgeable.

thanrose
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Applestar, loving you and your breadth and depth of interests. While I occasionally play Guess the Acronym, it's because I want to get it through context or that I know I can look it up here if so inclined. And I'm not always. Since I can be pretty intense and sometimes quite complicated in my online communication, I tend to figure people like you and rainbowgardener are similar to me. Maybe not.

Gotta say, photos at all, videos at all, collaged or not, are not my thing. Sometimes I really want to see what someone's talking about and will zoom in on a feature of a plant, or try and figure out what lakngulf or you are growing in the background, but usually I'm kinda Monet-ing it. Or Van Gogh. Seriously bad eyesight. I know sometimes people visiting here will think that three photos of the same view of a plant are useful, same as anywhere else, but I just 'blow past' that. When someone posts a series of photos that really illustrate what they are saying in a clear manner, I'm 'blown away' in a positive manner.

I would not fret about this if I were you. You are an intelligent and caring young woman with a very healthy interest in all that surrounds you it seems. Just keep in mind that online communications are fraught with difficulty no matter how many poop emojis someone uses. (I hate emoticons. Even old school text based ones. I understand why others like them, though. All except for the poop emoji, or maybe the eggplant one. Ah, context would be important.)

Don't know how I missed this thread earlier, but I don't read most of them from anyone.

As the kids say these days, "You do you."

thanrose
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applestar wrote: very often in blogs and vlogs, people post about how they did something for the first time as though they were instructing others, and never come back to say what happened -- which I find disconcerting. I feel like I wasted my time reading about their newbie trial with no conclusion.
Totally get this. I kinda research stuff all the time all over 'teh interwebs.' (Man, spellcheck did not want me to write that!) So I might find an undated blog post on soil solarization, then scholarly articles or references, then a test of opaque black plastic vs. clear, and then another blog post, but I'm still left wondering. (Actually, I wasn't. Black plastic better than clear, absolutely. Soil temperature tests just under the plastic, and by descending increments into the soil.)

Still people love to leave awful and inaccurate information out in the ether without context of time or intent or any other variables. Critical thinking: it's a job, not an adventure. I'm getting to be a cranky old cuss.

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ElizabethB
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Apple -

You are the BOMB!

If I do not understand your acronyms shame on me. If I need elaboration I will ask you.

You are the queen of tomatoes and indoor gardening.

Be like Patin's Duck (pot an's) - Don't give a quack, let it roll off your back.

Love ya girl.

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applestar
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Thank you for your encouragements IDjit, thanrose, ElizabethB :D
I appreciate your kind words. I have tendency to self review so I don't mind changing things for the better, but not because just one or two people prefer things one way or the other, you know? I really feel better after what you all said.

I forged this thread out of the comments and input that were made and received to enable us to discuss these issues. So yes, I did copy and move your posts here IDjit. I hope you don't mind.

I thought about what you said about zooming and text staying zoomed after clearing/closing the photo. I tried it on the iPad and realized what might be different. On the touch-screen you zoom by two finger pinch and spread. But after zooming to fill the screen with the image, to close the photo, I have to tap/click outside of it (no keyboard shortcut), so I have to shrink the image frame back down to do that. So each time, I open and zoom the photo, the shrink back down before closing. I tried intentionally zooming but leaving just enough of the frame on the screen to be able to tap out, and you are right, the rest of the browser window remains zoomed with huge text.

Acronyms -- Most of them are shortcut labels to longer names -- as acronyms are. Meaning might not always be vital to the discussion? I actually think of the things thus described by the acronym and not by their long names -- actually in my head I think in the long name but visually/written in the acronym. Does that make sense? But VGA bed is just one of the beds. I don't even think of it as anything else -- like locker 1-A.... in the VG Garden area ( and that's how I think of that area) there are/were VGA-VGE (VG.SIP occupies what used to be VGE). I think DWARF and write DWF though, Potato Leaf and PL, Indeterminate and IND.... I suppose I could write up a list of definitions and sticky it somewhere, but does that make sense?

I will have to think more about the collage -- I need the way consolidating several photos into one allows me to minimize file size and duplicated photos. It's not as easy to tell each one's file type and size on the iPad, and no real subdirectories, so it's harder to organize reduced size/resolution photo files. I also do like the way related photos can be organized together and be viewed at a glance. For the time being, I will try to think of ways to make the collages easier to understand.

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!potatoes!
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No problems on my end. I've been around long enough to be used to the acronyms though-I could see how some of those might be confusing...but if they're related to a topic I'm interested in then I see them frequently enough that they get remembered pretty quickly.

You definitely don't need to change on my account.

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ID jit
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I think you are looking at is actually two question.
How much of this do I write for myself and how much of it do I write to for others?
With the latter half of that, I think you are looking at how to best "write for the audience".

The acronym rich environment.... short story on that is that it is all in group continuity stuff. If you are part of the in group it works well, and if you are not, go do your homework or stay out side.

Good luck with it all.

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ElizabethB
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Apple,

Regarding the acronyms - pot a list with their definitions. Other members can add to it if they wish. I am not sure which forum to post it in but give that a thought.

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applestar
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Thanks !potatoes! It's good to hear that from someone who has been here a while. :D

ELizabethB, the more I think about it, the more I agree a definition list is the answer here. And I thought of making it accessible in every post without clutter -- I will put the link to it in my sig. that way it really won't matter WHERE the actual list is, but if you want to go look something up, you can just click on the link, or even have it open on another tab or window. I can start working on that right away. (Love it when I see a viable solution/course of action)

Others who want to add to the list can do the same.... it can be shared thread or individuals can create their own thread... we'll have to think about that. I can go back and edit anytime, but that won't be the case for everyone else.... but I could edit their list for others.

Not ignoring you IDjit, mulling over what you said.....

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ID jit
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Don't fret the in group continuity stuff... It happens whenever you put two humans with the same specialized knowledge together with some other humans who lack that same specialized knowledge. Doesn't matter if it is gardening, aerospace design, chemistry or antiquated bosch engine management systems - jargon and acronyms happen. Sadly, it always comes across as "do your homework first or get out".

I seriously doubt your were attempting to exclude anyone.

ButterflyLady29
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Your posts are fine for me. But one thing on the acronyms, usually if the words are spelled out at the beginning of the post then readers might understand them better. Just one of the tips I was taught years ago in another life.

Sometimes I love your collages. The only time I don't is when you are mentioning something that is really tiny in one of the pictures. I don't have a tablet or a touch screen and can't always zoom in on photos. But I really liked the ones in your pond thread and the ones of your peppers indoors.



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