Forum update

[gavin]

Well folks, we've let things slide for too long. Me in particular. For the best part of a year we've had a wonderful, informative, hopefully sometimes entertaining, relaxed place where Scottish beekeepers and friends from elsewhere can exchange pleasantries and information on beekeeping. We are about to return to that ideal. The folk with their fingers on the buttons, including me, will now move posts that we regard as unsuitable to a new area as soon as we can. Posts that get too personal, are overly repetitive, with too much cutting and pasting, are pursuing campaigns not directly linked to beekeeping, or just seem to be trying to inflame things. Those posts will move to a special area within the 'Environmental issues' forum where people can go for such arguments if they wish. The main Environmental issues area will host sensible, rational, logical, polite discussion only.

This is the mildest level of control possible in the circumstances, apart from doing nothing which is not an option. No posts will be lost, no-one can make claims of
censorship, and the rules are clear. There are other things we can do if unpleasantness persists, but there is no need for that now.

The other suggestion of focussed discussion linked to the Scottish Beekeeper will be pursued separately a little later.

happy posting everyone, and please be nice!

Gavin

[Eric McArthur]

Hi Gavin
Gavin wrote:
This is the mildest level of control possible in the circumstances, apart from doing nothing which is not an option. No posts will be lost, no-one can make claims of censorship, and the rules are clear. There are other things we can do if unpleasantness persists, but there is no need for that now.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ::

I've been looking for "Yet Another Puzzle" Gavin - any ideas?

Eric

[gavin]

Yes Eric, it is in this area of the forum, 'Everything and Anything'. So, click on 'Everything and Anything' above, but then as that thread has been dormant it has slipped back to the second page (click number 2!). It had its last contribution on 15 December and you'll find them in date order.

all the best

Gavin

[Eric McArthur]

Hi Gavin

Many thanks for that!

eric

[GRIZZLY]

Gavin is it possible to have a collated "information" page in a similar format to that used by the Edinburg beekeepers.This is full of up to date useful info and articles but only available if you subscribe to their forum.????

[gavin]

Hi John

I do like their 'ezine' (even though my first experience of it was unfounded criticism of the initial response to the EFB outbreak which implied fingers being pointed at me!). Iain does a good job.

He probably wouldn't want it distributed through this forum as it links to his own one. Should we repeat the exercise? Not sure, it must be a lot of work collating those reports. Another thing we could do is try to update the 'Home' page more regularly which currently also draws on other media reports and adds the cream of the posts here and some SBA-related things. That may be a better way forward as Iain's reports are often a little dated by the time they get circulated.

Gavin

[GRIZZLY]

Right Gavin ,point taken.

[Jon]

Another thing we could do is try to update the 'Home' page more regularly which currently also draws on other media reports

That a good idea. The site users could PM you the link for perusal if something bee related appears in the media.

[gavin]

That a good idea. The site users could PM you the link for perusal if something bee related appears in the media.

That could work. Or maybe there is someone out there who would like some involvement in developing the site?

Is this one (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-13335327) to start us off?! As it happens my assistant saw something that might be relevant to the investigation so we've passed that on.

G.

[gavin]

Right folks! Nellie has kindly agreed to be 'Home page monitor'. He will look out for newsy items to add to the Home page so if anyone sees anything that you think may be worth pointing folk towards then send him a PM. I can do it too, but he will probably do it faster. Maybe we'll discuss some of them here too.

One more change: I'm going to add a forum area on Queen Raising, and hope that the 'Scaling Up' one provides a home for those interested in selling honey, making the transition to semi-commercial, or even discuss the issues of being fully commercial.

Perhaps it is also time to revive the idea of having a focussed discussion area.

Gavin

[Neils]

I'd also be interested i hearing of any events, workshops, shows etc that people might like to have plugged as well as bee related news items (like Gavin's bee poo one) that people spot that might be of interest.

I still like the idea of a focussed topic of the month to discuss. I even have a suggested topic having just scraped my Module 3. I had to describe a Varroa IPM programme, actually what I use at the moment with a few other things that I thought would be a good idea when I was doing the paper and I'd like to put that down in here so people can pull it apart etc and see how it goes.

[Neils]

I don't think many of us, including me, use them when posting new threads, but the more I look into and start using them when searching the forum the handier I'm starting to find them. So on an ad-hoc basis I'm starting to add Tags to threads that (I think) are useful to try and start building up the tags in use on the forum.

Tags?
If you look at the bottom of any Thread or Blog Post you'll see a section called "tags for this section" Which contains any tags that have been entered. In addition you can view the "tag cloud" which shows the top used tags and, by size, which tags are used the most.

A tag is simply a way of attaching keywords to your post for future searching and can be a handy way of categorising your post, blog etc, especially if the tag is different to the text within the post; ie you might use the tag "AMM" in a post in the native bees thread where you haven't actually referred to AMM in the thread text itself, anyone searching that Tag will still be taken to your post.

When Adding tags, there is an autocomplete feature on the text box, so if you type "Honey" You'll see a list of all existing tags that start (honey, Honeybee and Honeybees I think off the top of myhead) so that you can select an existing tag. If it doesn't exist you can simply create it and it'll then be available for future use.

If you click on "IPM" in the tag cloud, for example, you're shown a summary of all Articles, Threads and Blog posts that have that tag.

You can also search for specific Tags in the advanced search feature.

if other find them handy and do use them please let me know, I'll carry on building tags regardless but it would be nice to know that others find them useful too.

[Mellifera Crofter]

... if other find them handy and do use them please let me know, I'll carry on building tags regardless but it would be nice to know that others find them useful too.

Yes, thanks Nellie - I use them. Until now I thought one can only see them at the end of a thread and felt a bit frustrated by that - so it's useful to know that they're also visible in Advance Search.

[Neils]

ooo, didn't notice that in the advanced search, not only is the entire Tag Cloud visible, but you can see it prioritised by which ones are searched for the most

[Easy beesy]

Eh! Just when I thought i'd got the hang of this forum thingy you and start talking about tags and clouds - ill get there, just bear with me.
C

[gavin]

Cloud computing, it's the new best thing. You'd better believe it.

As for tags, are they talking about something like sheep tags? With all the miniaturisation going on these days, it will not be long before individually tagging our bees is mooted from some urban regulatory centre. The bees are all disappearing apparently so we'd best make sure that we register those left.

I might suggest that it should become SBA policy (just to wind up Drone Ranger .... )

[Neils]

Eh! Just when I thought i'd got the hang of this forum thingy you and start talking about tags and clouds - ill get there, just bear with me.
C

Don't worry Easy :) They're not essential to use, but if you search the forum a lot, especially if you only have a general notion of what you're looking for they can come in handy. I've added tags to a lot of the Varroa treatment and Integrated Pest Management threads for example, so if you wanted to find out what people were talking about in that area you could just click on the "Varroa Treatment" tag and all the related threads and blog posts would be shown. Compared to, say, searching the forum for "Apistan" and then "Apiguard", "thymol" etc etc.

It's just quite a handy way of being able to both categorise and display at a glance what categories threads come under. When a tag is small, there aren't many threads using it, when it's shown in big text, there are lots of different threads and posts.

[Bumble]

I've been trying to search the site but keep getting a "database error"

http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/search.php?searchid=117881

[gavin]

I suspect that anyone trying to do anything was getting a 'Database error'. I'm just back from checking the bees and my inbox was full (>200 messages) from the software warning me of a database error. It was like that for about an hour this afternoon and also for a period this morning.

It is due to the database that contains all the data in the forum being offline but the other server, the one that runs the forum software, still being active. Fasthosts, the company hosting the site, used to provide a dreadful service but these breakdowns have become infrequent in recent months.

[gavin]

Following a suggestion we're going with making the pictures loaded onto the site visible all and sundry. Even non-logged in members. If anyone would rather not, do let us know and we'll reconsider. Being an old fartie, I resisted at first but may grow to like it.

G.

[Jon]

You know it makes sense!

[prakel]

Following a suggestion we're going with making the pictures loaded onto the site visible all and sundry. Even non-logged in members. If anyone would rather not, do let us know and we'll reconsider. Being an old fartie, I resisted at first but may grow to like it.

G.

I was once told (but admit that I'm not sure if it's entirely true) that there's software available which allows the location at which digital photos are taken to be decoded... a possible security risk but anyone could sign up and use it so not specifically relevant to wider publication.

[gavin]

I've already tracked a whole pile of them to suburban Belfast, a dodgy area if ever there was one. Presumably that was an urban myth, but maybe young (ish!) Neil can put us right.

Sent from my BlackBerry 8520 using Tapatalk

[Neils]

I was once told (but admit that I'm not sure if it's entirely true) that there's software available which allows the location at which digital photos are taken to be decoded... a possible security risk but anyone could sign up and use it so not specifically relevant to wider publication.

Newer cameras and mobile phones that have GPS capability record this information in the metadata information in the photo file.

If you put photos on a hosting service like Flickr you can set whether you want to make that information in your photos available.

I don't honestly know how vbulletin treats photos other than it scales/resizes the image so if you're concerned about GPS location information being included you might want to wait until I've done some investigation. You can download applications that will strip metadata out of image files but I don't have a recommendation on a specific one.

[prakel]

Interesting stuff -I really don't know, way outside my techno-tolerance!

The story was originally related to me by a local bird watcher who frequents a bird watching forum. He reckoned that someone claiming to have photographed some unusal bird in his local area was caught out when the photo's data was analysed and found to have been taken abroad. It was a good story the way it was told!

[Neils]

Certainly possible, the photo management software I use has a feature where it overlays on a map where you've taken photos.

[gavin]

Do you have a camera that would allow you to try it out on images uploaded into vB?

On this vBulletin forum I came across a post regretting the apparent inability to preserve image metadata in vBulletin 4 whereas it is preserved on Facebook, Google, Flickr and Wordpress:

https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php/401144-Please-Vb-Import-Metadata-from-Lightroom

G.

[Bridget]

I don't think you need to worry too much about this Gavin. People who post images to a forum already know they are going to be seen by lots of people. I have checked an upload I made to the forum from my mobile phone and checked it in Adobe Photoshop (where you can see alot of info about a photo, and also you can add a lot of info as well - this is part of the embedded metadata) and there is no information given about the image apart from the actual time I screen grabbed it. I am going to upload another image in a minute from my digital camera to see how much information that retains and will let you know ( so please ignore a non relevant post to this thread). It maybe that the forum software strips all the infomation out so as to keep the image size tiny and not overload the system. The guy on the vbulletin forum who is complaining about headlines/descriptions being stripped out has used the Adobe software to put this information with the image and when its uploaded its no longer there. I don't think our guys will be adding lengthy descriptions, etc, more like a headline below the image and a few pithy remarks. :rolleyes:
As Neils says its possible to add a location via GPS and I can add default locations, times and dates on my digital camera, but never see the point of it really. Might be useful for a professional news photographer though.
I know some of this because I have a small photo library and still sell images through an online portal so adding information and keywording is something I'm often, and hate, doing.

[Bridget]

As I thought all the information from my digital camera has been stripped out. The images I uploaded have been reduced in size and I expect part of this reduction included the stripping out of the metadata. You will need to find out whether your forum software can be modified if you want to retain this information but imho I don't think you really need to.
Gavin perhaps you want to delete the above images etc:)

[gavin]

Excellent, thanks Bridget. If anyone wants pithy remarks to be visible as well as location data they'll just have to tell us in the usual way.

PS Nice pictures that are no longer there. I could tell that the skiing images weren't in Scotland!

[Jon]

If anyone wants pithy remarks to be visible as well as location data they'll just have to tell us in the usual way.

The usual pithy way in other words?

[gavin]

The usual pithy way in other words?

Pithiness and verbosity, all welcome here. Not too forceful though. Maybe not that side of pithiness.

[Jon]

Pithy in the nicest possible pithy way

[gavin]

I reckon that you're either on the sauce tonight, or affected by all that preparation for native bee meetings ..... (OK, I've had a glass too)

[Jon]

Still sober. Only had a couple of glasses.

[prakel]

Excellent, thanks Bridget.

Seconded.

[Neils]

Seconded.

Thirded, saved me a job, thanks Bridget :)