Lately I go here before checking e-mail. This and NAFEX have been game-changers for me.
Fan mail should arrive any day now, Scott. Many thanks.
2 Likes
Thank you for providing this venue. I will mail you some cash. May this forum stay strong and your lands flourish.
3 Likes
Thank you for all your work! Just sent a donation via PayPal.
1 Like
I am sorry. My PayPal is empty since it has no bank attachment. I can mail cash tomorrow.
Gosh I love this site so much!!! Of all the things I spend my money on, this absolutely without question is the thing that has the highest value per dollar spent. The people put up with my verbose, meandering posts, I learn something new almost every time I come here, I feel like I occasionally get to help others with my own knowledge, I have made true friendships with people I met here that exist outside GF , org, and this site is absolutely my go-to reference resource. Thanks to the search feature, almost anything I come up against in my orchard, I can look it up here and 99% of the time there will be 1 or more threads discussing it and answering my questions.
Can I also say how much I appreciate @scottfsmith 's transparency with the financials. Of course we all know he’s incredibly honest and isn’t in this for a profit (though I for one wouldn’t begrudge him if he did put a line item in the budget to reasonably compensate himself for the time, effort, and expertise he contributes to make this all work). But I still like the transparency because it just explains how the money is used and I think its natural to be curious about such things even if you are certain that no maleficence exists. I mean, to me its just interesting to know how much server space and email services cost for a site of this size and activity level.
Speaking of my blathering posts that you all tolerate…this is becoming one. ha But I just had to say that I for one think this is a magnificent web site filled with great people and organized, operated, and overseen by a man who clearly has a servants heart and desire to help make this hobby better for all of us. I also offer a word of thanks and encouragement to all the moderators. They are unsung heroes who have meetings, discussions, create rules and policies, and sometimes have to take enforcement actions. Can you imagine how much they dread having to step in when things go too far- knowing that whatever they do will anger some, and doing nothing will anger others? Even I don’t always agree with their positions, but they have to answer to a very large number of people from all social and political backgrounds and views- yikes that has to be SO HARD. So thanks to them and thanks to Scott and thanks, even, to all the users who contribute so much valuable information every single day… and put up with my long-winded posts like this one! ha.
BTW… @scottfsmith, I’m very curious…may I ask approximately how many members we have now? Of course I know that is a tricky question because the number probably has to include anyone who ever signed up- several who may have only came here a couple times. It would be interesting to know if there is also a number reflecting how many people who have been active in the last year, or who have posted 3 times or more, or whatever. However such things are measured, it would be fun to know how we’ve grown and where we are.
15 Likes
Here! Here! City-man! Well said!
7 Likes
Hi Cityman,
I think I can answer some of those questions for you.
The forum has roughly 3000 members. The forum currently has about an average of 400-450 logged in members visiting the forum daily.
It looks like from the page views, there is an additional 1/2 of people visiting the forum on a daily basis who have not set up an account (account setup is quick, free, and no signup info is sold to anyone, btw). That would mean there is roughly 700 people using the forum daily.
The forum continues to grow. There were 91 new members who signed up for the forum in the last month.
Thanks Cityman. It is a bit of a thankless job (but no moderator is forced to do it). I think all the moderators do it because they care about the forum. And you are a correct, we moderators have a lot of discussion about flagged posts, or if a member insults another, etc. Each moderator has a different personality he/she brings to moderator discussions. But Scott’s more laissez faire personality definitely sets the tone. In most cases (unless it’s something obvious) we don’t take action until someone flags something, or we get a complaint via PM. As moderators, we aren’t looking for posts to delete, most of it is community driven.
The exception was when politics seemed to be really taking the fruit forum to a negative direction. So for a while, moderators removed any post with a political reference. But that has loosened up a bit since most members post a lot less about politics.
I consider moderating in the same light as helping people learn to grow fruit. It’s sort of a ministry for me. I use the word ministry very loosely. That is, anytime someone volunteers their time to help other people, it’s a sort of ministry.
10 Likes
Click on the “hamburger” menu icon in the top right corner. Then click on “Users”, that will give you the current number of forum members, (presently 4900+).
3 Likes
Hmm, that’s strange. On the page for admin metrics, it shows users by user level. That shows 1800 level 1 users, 864 level 2 users, 262 level 3 users, 5 level 4 (admin) users.
I’m not sure why there is such a big difference in the two numbers. Perhaps the admin number is for active users? I dunno.
1 Like
Perhaps it does not rank users that have been inactive for a lengthy period of time. I believe in the discourse admin console you can set inactive users to be excluded from the current members total. I’m really not that familiar with using the admin functions, although I do use them occasionally.
Mark you missed the level 0 users, there are 2000 of them. It is interesting how steeply things drop off, level 0 means an hour or less of activity more or less.
Thanks for the kind words @thecityman !
7 Likes
There is one more thing to appreciate. Remember what happened to Garden Web? Thankfully, this is not happening to this forum. And I am sure there is a lot of interest around to buy and convert this forum into a selling machine. @scottfsmith , thank you for not letting this to happen!
8 Likes
I spend so time here it’s worth every dollar. Thanks Scott for hosting. I assume you got my PayPal contribution.
I am pretty sure all the contributions make it as long as you typed my email address correctly. I can confirm if anyone is concerned.
Anyways I think we can declare victory in this round of fund raising, we made it all the way up to $4415! We were $274 in the red as per the top of this post so now we are $4141 in the black!!
Thanks to all for the generous contributions, this should give us enough for $4141 / approx. $90 per month = 46 months or 3.8 years! So it will be something like spring 2027 when we will need to raise money again, assuming the fees don’t go up too much.
Thank You!!
32 Likes
That’s awesome news, just goes to show how much people enjoy your forum. Kudos to you for not turning the site into a commercialized annoying popup travesty.
3 Likes
Thank you Scott!
2 Likes
Bears repeating, so there you have it.
Not only that, Scott is our IT person. If we had to pay for his talents I think our we’d need a lot more fundraisers!
11 Likes
Thank you so much Scott 
2 Likes
Thank you so much Scott!! Because of you we are learning so much about fruits and other stuffs.
1 Like
pitched in my little. thanks for this place
3 Likes