I wish there was a way to - in an organized uncomplicated manner - have a useful thread / wall / series of posts showing photos of frames with a discussion on what’s going on in the frame.
Where there is a separate and specific post where the pros can submit their own photos and then everyone ask and comment on that particular topic. I get confusing following threads and the excellent sub topics within but it’s confusing.
Topics:
what varroa visible in drone cells looks like (scraping off and seeing it)
varroa crystals and other evidence
small hive beetles and evidence
healthy queen laying
evidence when you know you should intervene (?) and requeen
mold (and what’s going on why that happens)
tons more …
I have been using Pinterest for education purposes. Topic by topic I pin photos in folders of mine so I can study. What’s missing is healthy debate: the photo is just a photo.
Also, here in the forum, I have grabbed links as well as links from the general internet and created specific themes and sent messages to myself then archived them under specific topics. Each time I have a new link or something, I send a message to myself within that specific thread I started. This has been helpful even though I only just started this.
I would envision someone posting some photos for “classroom discussion” with a subject “Possible weak queen issues” etc. Within that key topic we could also post our own photos saying “like this”? And the chatter would help us to identify and then have comments on how to have prevented the issue or how to deal with it.
Keeping in mind that there are many diverse beekeeping perspectives.
Encouraging issues from around the world perhaps unique to latitudes and longitudes.
And trying to keep that particular thread on that one topic. If possible.
And there lies the problem.
This is a social forum with like interests and no matter how hard you try it is not going to change even if the mods take a hard line on topic diversion.
As you have noticed some threads go away from the topic to something completely or just onto social gossip.
I belong to a number of forums mainly technical ones and as soon as there is a crack down on going off topic people stop posting or post infrequently. Then when the pain eases people start posting again.
This forum has a great mix of technical stuff, basic help, advanced help and social chat. I like it just as it is, no matter how frustrating it can be tracking down the thread where you read something you want to revisit.
Mods do a great job keeping this balance.
Having said all that please start the process. Maybe even a new category rather than a topic in an existing category. “What happening in this photo” or “What is missing in this photo” or “Learning from Photos”.
Photo’s are worth a thousand words in explaining something simple but complex to explain in words. I like your thinking Cowgirl.
From you initial post I thought you wanted a sort of catalogue of reference photos. This would only happen in its own category.
The heading “Learning Tools: what do…” has already 13 posts and a lot of photos but how would you search for the information in these photos?
I’ve run out of ideas, as I think you are wanting a refinement of the status quo rather than a reference photo library (category).
A category would be good. But this is a fun free flowing forum so I don’t wanna force folks to stick to a topic. But I could see myself writing to one of the professionals on here every now and then and ask them to put up a photo for discussion. And that way I can save topics into a way that works for me and might also help others.