Open clogging up news threads

[CGSwans]

Can we perhaps reconsider what sort of news gets an update on here? This is just a Zoo press release designed to generate some local media coverage. It's not a significant birth, a new species or exhibit or anything of the sort.

I'm not looking to criticise any individuals - my suggestion applies to us all. I just think we should avoid filling up threads about zoos with meaningless updates, or it becomes increasingly pointless trying to follow them at all.


NOTE by Chlidonias: I split this thread from the Melbourne Zoo news 2017 thread.

 

[Zoofan15]

I personally feel that one of the disadvantages of having these general news threads for a zoo is not only the potential for diagreement among members about what qualifies as news, but the fact not everything that goes into the thread will be of interest to everyone. While I enjoyed the article posted above, as I am a fan of primates among other animals, I would be much less interested to learn the toilets were being upgraded or a tarantula was off display this week. I also do not care about Wellington Zoo giving away free ice cream (unless I happen to be visiting Wellington Zoo that day) or Auckland Zoo's music events.

For high profile births (Elephant or Gorillas) or subjects which may lead to extended discussion, I believe in creating specific threads. I did this for Frala's infant (2015) and Thond Dee's calf (2016) so regular updates could be posted rather than filling up the thread of TZ/TWPZ. A thread regarding Taronga's chimpanzees enjoys/endures frequent posts from myself as I know people clicking on TZ news may not be interested in my posts on chimps.

In my opinion, general news threads should be left in the forums of Europe and the USA where there are hundreds of zoo and they are a neccesity. At least that way, we'll know what the thread is concerning from the title, and have only ourselves to blame for reading it, if it proves to be of no interest.

 

[CGSwans]

I personally feel that one of the disadvantages of having these general news threads for a zoo is not only the potential for diagreement among members about what qualifies as news, but the fact not everything that goes into the thread will be of interest to everyone. While I enjoyed the article posted above, as I am a fan of primates among other animals, I would be much less interested to learn the toilets were being upgraded or a tarantula was off display this week. I also do not care about Wellington Zoo giving away free ice cream (unless I happen to be visiting Wellington Zoo that day) or Auckland Zoo's music events.

For high profile births (Elephant or Gorillas) or subjects which may lead to extended discussion, I believe in creating specific threads. I did this for Frala's infant (2015) and Thond Dee's calf (2016) so regular updates could be posted rather than filling up the thread of TZ/TWPZ. A thread regarding Taronga's chimpanzees enjoys/endures frequent posts from myself as I know people clicking on TZ news may not be interested in my posts on chimps.

In my opinion, general news threads should be left in the forums of Europe and the USA where there are hundreds of zoo and they are a neccesity. At least that way, we'll know what the thread is concerning from the title, and have only ourselves to blame for reading it, if it proves to be of no interest.

There's certainly a lot of benefit to this approach, but there still needs to be some discernment to keep the site usable. I wouldn't like to see the forums filled up with threads announcing the latest pygmy hippo birthday either. And I'm not sure that there's a good reason to keep news about Thong Dee's calf separate from news about other elephant breeding in Australia. The guiding principle should be whether the topics complement each other in a way that facilitates discussion; if so, they should be a single thread, but if not they should be separate.

Perhaps we can also agree on a set of guidelines for 'newsworthy' news that warrants their own discussion threads, and then anything outside that might fit into an 'Australian zoos minor news' thread - I'm not sure separate threads are even needed for different zoos.

News that might qualify as thread-worthy might be:
- Births, deaths and marriages of managed or rare species, but these might best be consolidated into regional threads anyway ('great apes in Australasia, elephants in Australasia and so on). If people are interested in the Taronga chimp troop it is quite reasonable to imagine they will also be interested in news about Monarto's group.
- New or redeveloped exhibits.
- New species arriving at collections (although again, a 'collection updates in Australia' thread might be more useful.

Things that I suggest are not likely to be of general interest include:
- Endless reports of births of routinely-bred species. Obviously this is subjective but I would argue some births are inherently more interesting than others. Does anybody truly care that another fallow deer has been born at Altina, for instance?
- News that is more PR than it is news. An Australian-first breeding is news, but Facebook posts of an orangutan with a birthday cake is marketing.

Perhaps these latter things, if there is sufficient interest, could be consolidated into an 'Australian zoos small news' thread. I suggest consolidation because I suspect people who are interested in such tidbits from Taronga are going to tend to be the same people interested in the same stuff from Melbourne or Adelaide. It might be conceived as the forum's spam folder: there if anybody wants it, but not in a way that makes it harder to find more relevant information.

If we go down the path of adopting these or similar guidelines we would simultaneously be able to keep the number of threads from excessively proliferating *and* make what threads we have more usable. Ideally I'd like to see a few dozen key threads that we keep returning to over time, which I think makes navigating the forum and locating the topics we want much easier.

I do want to reiterate, BennettL, that this isn't intended as a dig at you or anybody else.

 

[Zoofan15]

You make some good points. I think one of the issues you describe, stems from people posting 'news' directly from the zoo's social media sites. A lot of this is just publicity related info, lacking facts or any sort of infromation that would be considered useful or interesting to ZooChatters.

This had lead to the forums being primarily a place of people posting 'news' with people asking questions, or having discussions very much taking a backseat to this.

I agree threads like 'Great Apes of Australasia' and 'Elephants of Australasia' are a good way to go, but would disagree merging the 'Chimpanzee Troop of Taronga Zoo' thread into a general thread for Great Apes. The chimpanzee community at Taronga Zoo is the largest in Australasia and the origin of many of the communities found in other zoos. This thread has been the source of much discussion in the last two years as I have undertaken a research project into the history of the community and in the last year, the intorductions of three new females has led to much discussion, all specific to this thread.

Maybe the way to go would be a thread for small news as you suggest. Any news not considered especially important could be relegated to this thread. Of course this would be subject to people's opinion as to what qualifies as 'news' but I mostly agree with your opinion on what is 'news' and what is not, as I'm sure would most people.

 

[CGSwans]

You make some good points. I think one of the issues you describe, stems from people posting 'news' directly from the zoo's social media sites. A lot of this is just publicity related info, lacking facts or any sort of infromation that would be considered useful or interesting to ZooChatters.

This had lead to the forums being primarily a place of people posting 'news' with people asking questions, or having discussions very much taking a backseat to this.

I think this is a real problem. I'm loathe to suggest that I or anybody else should be an arbiter of what others should post, but we are being drowned in a flood of basically unimportant news. Virtually every thread outside the general Zoo discussion board has become a glorified, disorganised RSS feed.

It's not limited to Australia - we now get an update when a giant anteater moves from Stuttgart to Planckendael or whatever. I might be wrong but is anybody actually keen to track all of this? Is this what people want the forum to be? Does anybody remember the next week that they read that a giant anteater has moved from Stuttgart to Planckendael?

I agree that transcription of posts from Facebook is the likely source of the trouble. It's the easiest thing in the world to see a tidbit posted there and change tabs over to share it on Zoochat.

I agree threads like 'Great Apes of Australasia' and 'Elephants of Australasia' are a good way to go, but would disagree merging the 'Chimpanzee Troop of Taronga Zoo' thread into a general thread for Great Apes. The chimpanzee community at Taronga Zoo is the largest in Australasia and the origin of many of the communities found in other zoos. This thread has been the source of much discussion in the last two years as I have undertaken a research project into the history of the community and in the last year, the intorductions of three new females has led to much discussion, all specific to this thread.

I'm not suggesting that extant, functioning threads be merged for no good purpose, that would simply exacerbate confusion. But had this discussion occurred before the creation of that thread I would have advocated that it be part of a consolidated thread. We can quibble over where the line be drawn - chimpanzees? great apes? primates? - but I don't think incorporating future happenings at Monarto would make that thread less usable. And if we want to combat the proliferation of non-news through thread consolidation, then we do need a framework for how we do it, or we're all going to advocate that our pet projects are of unique significance.

Maybe the way to go would be a thread for small news as you suggest. Any news not considered especially important could be relegated to this thread. Of course this would be subject to people's opinion as to what qualifies as 'news' but I mostly agree with your opinion on what is 'news' and what is not, as I'm sure would most people.

Yes. What we need is a filtering mechanism that lets people post about birthdays or Halloween promotions or wallaby births or whatever to their heart's content, without it overwhelming everything else. The only way to do that, I think, is through new guidelines about what goes where.

Mods: might this discussion be moved to the site feedback forum to encourage wider input?

If I'm in the minority then fair enough, but I do want to open the discussion. I doubt I'm the only one who finds the newsfeedification of Zoochat troubling.

 

[CGSwans]

By way of context 49 of the 100 most recently updated threads are zoo-specific threads, all of which are used to a greater or lesser extent as rolling update threads and many of which are explicitly labelled as being for that purpose. So we really are talking about what is now a very large proportion of content on this site.

Some of them have some interesting discussions hidden within them, but when there's so much else to flick through it's not hard to imagine that many - like myself - are simply by-passing such threads altogether. I suspect an analysis would find that the proportion of 'update' to 'discussion' posts increase in a given thread as it increases in length. There's just too much to scroll through.

 

[Zoofan15]

I have taken the liberty of creating a thread for minor news in Australian zoos, which will hopefully help address this problem. Maybe we could all trial it for a while and see if we notice an improvement within the Australian forum?

 

[Jabiru96]

Even though I feel that it is ironic having this whole discussion in a news thread when in itself it is adding nothing newsworthy whatsoever, but surely any bit of news in the Australian section is meaningful nowadays, especially as so many Aussie posters have left this site over the years. If all we talked about was births and deaths then each thread would only get updated once a month for the smaller collections and just a bit more for the larger zoos considering that our species diversity in Australia is terrible. Now i'm not saying that posting news of an animal's birthday adds great contribution to a thread (and I admittedly do the same when news is a bit quiet for a particular zoo, which is quit alot when not many species are breeding), but IMO the news of species moving collections, going off/on display, etc. is just as meaningful as annoucning a birth or death?

 

[CGSwans]

Even though I feel that it is ironic having this whole discussion in a news thread when in itself it is adding nothing newsworthy whatsoever,

It's not ironic - it's a direct response to the posts being discussed.

but surely any bit of news in the Australian section is meaningful nowadays, especially as so many Aussie posters have left this site over the years. If all we talked about was births and deaths then each thread would only get updated once a month for the smaller collections and just a bit more for the larger zoos considering that our species diversity in Australia is terrible. Now i'm not saying that posting news of an animal's birthday adds great contribution to a thread (and I admittedly do the same when news is a bit quiet for a particular zoo, which is quit alot when not many species are breeding), but IMO the news of species moving collections, going off/on display, etc. is just as meaningful as annoucning a birth or death?

But is it not perhaps a chicken and egg thing? Could it not be that the dearth of real discussion is what has caused people to drop away? Or that at the very least they are mutually reinforcing trends?

I'm not suggesting, and have made it clear multiple times that I'm not suggesting, that there is no place for such posts. Only that they need to be made in such a way that allows us to filter through them. Yes, in a way, the fennec foxes being taken off display at Taronga is 'news'. But if it's not leading to discussion about Taronga or about fennec foxes, then it's not adding anything to the forum and is potentially getting in the way.

I also don't think, as written above, that all births and deaths are meaningful. If an Indian rhino is born at Dubbo that's a big deal: they are relatively rare in captivity globally and only exist in one zoo here in Australia. No, there is no hard and fast definition of what is and isn't important, but use the self-reflective question of 'is this likely to prompt further discussion'? If not, why post about it?

And posting something known to be inconsequential, simply because the zoo's thread has otherwise been quiet, is literally posting just for posting's sake. What other purpose to it is there?

Think of it like any news room: they receive hundreds of press releases, news alerts and press agency content every day. Not all of it makes it into the newspaper because not all of it is important enough to pique the interest of readers.

Ultimately if people want to know about everything a zoo posts on its Facebook page then they can follow the zoo on Facebook themselves.

 

[Hix]

If I'm in the minority then fair enough, but I do want to open the discussion. I doubt I'm the only one who finds the newsfeedification of Zoochat troubling.

You're not the only one.

I've considered joining in the discussion, but I think once I open my mouth I just won't stop. So I'm biting my tongue.

I think at 53 I'm becoming a grumpy old man.



Hix

 

[Jabiru96]

It's not ironic - it's a direct response to the posts being discussed.



But is it not perhaps a chicken and egg thing? Could it not be that the dearth of real discussion is what has caused people to drop away? Or that at the very least they are mutually reinforcing trends?

I'm not suggesting, and have made it clear multiple times that I'm not suggesting, that there is no place for such posts. Only that they need to be made in such a way that allows us to filter through them. Yes, in a way, the fennec foxes being taken off display at Taronga is 'news'. But if it's not leading to discussion about Taronga or about fennec foxes, then it's not adding anything to the forum and is potentially getting in the way.

I also don't think, as written above, that all births and deaths are meaningful. If an Indian rhino is born at Dubbo that's a big deal: they are relatively rare in captivity globally and only exist in one zoo here in Australia. No, there is no hard and fast definition of what is and isn't important, but use the self-reflective question of 'is this likely to prompt further discussion'? If not, why post about it?

And posting something known to be inconsequential, simply because the zoo's thread has otherwise been quiet, is literally posting just for posting's sake. What other purpose to it is there?

Think of it like any news room: they receive hundreds of press releases, news alerts and press agency content every day. Not all of it makes it into the newspaper because not all of it is important enough to pique the interest of readers.

Ultimately if people want to know about everything a zoo posts on its Facebook page then they can follow the zoo on Facebook themselves.

This will be my last post about the issue. I'm not really sure what your issue is in regards to various posts flooding the forum, so I would just like to raise a few points of my own.

To start off with, there is usually a single news thread for each major zoo in Australia. If a fennec fox has been taken off display at Taronga, that would be posted in the 'Taronga Zoo news 2017' thread for example. That is news isn't it?

All of the open range zoos, as well as Altina, regularly breed hoofstock anually (such as eland, zebra, addax, etc.). Are you saying that announcing these births isn't 'newsworthy'? Announcing a birth doesn't necessarily have to lead to further discussion does it? I could equally post the birth of a red panda, ring-tailed lemur or Goodfellow's tree kangaroo (all endangered species) and they seemingly generate zero discussion as well.

I think you're possibly being too over the top regarding this 'issue' considering there is a search bar which can easily be navigated to find particular news going back since the site started. The fact that this discussion is taking place in the 'Melbpurne Zoo news 2017' thread without adding any news seems highly ironic to me (and I admittedly am partly responsible for this).

 

[CGSwans]

To start off with, there is usually a single news thread for each major zoo in Australia. If a fennec fox has been taken off display at Taronga, that would be posted in the 'Taronga Zoo news 2017' thread for example. That is news isn't it?

You've missed the point. Yes, that is what has become 'usual'. I don't think that's a good thing.

All of the open range zoos, as well as Altina, regularly breed hoofstock anually (such as eland, zebra, addax, etc.). Are you saying that announcing these births isn't 'newsworthy'? Announcing a birth doesn't necessarily have to lead to further discussion does it? I could equally post the birth of a red panda, ring-tailed lemur or Goodfellow's tree kangaroo (all endangered species) and they seemingly generate zero discussion as well.

Essentially yes, that is what I am saying. Altina breed dozens of animals every year. Coming here and typing '1.0 blackbuck born' on the Altina thread isn't a meaningful contribution. What it does achieve is forcing anybody actually interesting in talking about Altina to wade through large numbers of posts to maintain a discussion. I just can't be bothered doing that, and as a result I've largely restricted my Zoochat use to the general zoo discussion board, which is the last one not substantially affected by this trend.

I think you're possibly being too over the top regarding this 'issue' considering there is a search bar which can easily be navigated to find particular news going back since the site started.

Again, missing the point, which is that people who are fatigued with the endless barrage of minor news updates are missing those opportunities for discussion in the first place, because they are not reading the threads anymore. This actually has the self-fulfilling consequence that the discussions don't happen in the first place.

Essentially, the forum has become less usable. I have not advocated preventing the sorts of posts I have described, but simply re-structuring how the forum is used to advantage everybody.

The fact that this discussion is taking place in the 'Melbpurne Zoo news 2017' thread without adding any news seems highly ironic to me (and I admittedly am partly responsible for this).

Again, something is not ironic if it is a logical progression from something else. My initial post was in response to a post on this thread.

 

[CGSwans]

You're not the only one.

I've considered joining in the discussion, but I think once I open my mouth I just won't stop. So I'm biting my tongue.

I think at 53 I'm becoming a grumpy old man.



Hix

Well, I don't think anything is likely to change if I continue playing a lone hand.

 

[Hix]

Well, I don't think anything is likely to change if I continue playing a lone hand.

And if I get started you may wish I hadn't!

Bu let me just say this in response to

If a fennec fox has been taken off display at Taronga, that would be posted in the 'Taronga Zoo news 2017' thread for example. That is news isn't it?

In my opinion, no it's not newsworthy. If the entire group had been removed from display and couldn't be seen, then that might be newsworthy. But one Fennec out of a group? Unless there is further details that make it newsworthy (eg, it sat on a cactus and need spines removed from it's butt), then it's not really worth it. And a lot of the posts CGSwans is complaining about don't actually provide any further details.

And why is there such a focus on mammals? With the exception of Patrick, the Victoria Crowned Pigeon, when was the last you heard a bird at Taronga had died, or hatched out some eggs, or had been taken off display? The aviaries opposite the Corroboree frogs have all been demolished - what happened to all the birds? Where have they gone? Surely that constitutes news?

Let me also state that I'm not attacking Jabiru96 or anyone else here, just the statement I disagreed with.

I'll pull my head in now.



Hix

 

[MRJ]

The aviaries opposite the Corroboree frogs have all been demolished - what happened to all the birds? Where have they gone? Surely that constitutes news?

That is indeed news, even more so the policies behind it which could affect the diversity of bird species to be found across the region.

 

[Zoofan15]

And if I get started you may wish I hadn't!

Bu let me just say this in response to



In my opinion, no it's not newsworthy. If the entire group had been removed from display and couldn't be seen, then that might be newsworthy. But one Fennec out of a group? Unless there is further details that make it newsworthy (eg, it sat on a cactus and need spines removed from it's butt), then it's not really worth it. And a lot of the posts CGSwans is complaining about don't actually provide any further details.

And why is there such a focus on mammals? With the exception of Patrick, the Victoria Crowned Pigeon, when was the last you heard a bird at Taronga had died, or hatched out some eggs, or had been taken off display? The aviaries opposite the Corroboree frogs have all been demolished - what happened to all the birds? Where have they gone? Surely that constitutes news?

Let me also state that I'm not attacking Jabiru96 or anyone else here, just the statement I disagreed with.

I'll pull my head in now.



Hix

There was a good discussion recently on the Andean Condors. It started off as a discussion on the Taronga Zoo pair I believe, but since the discussion expanded to talk of Andean Condors at other Australian Zoos, the discussion was moved to the general bird thread. While I'm more interested in mammals, I do have an interest in the condors and flamingos and enjoy hearing news about them.

You and CGSwans both suggest good definitions of what qualifies as news, news which has sufficient detail to be of interest to people, or news that is significant and likely to be of interest to people or lead to further discussion. Anything else is just posting for the sake of posting, which is fine for the Minor News in Australian Zoos thread, where we expect to read more trivial news/updates.

I also agree that posting inconsequentual news has been the death of good quality discussions. I can't count the number of times that somebody has has asked a good question about giraffes etc., somebody has replied and a discussion has started. A few posts in, somebody interupts to announce the zoo's stick insect has laid some eggs. Somebody asks if the stick insect is still housed in the insect house (No, it shares a pool with a King Penguin) and the discussion is relegated to the previous page of the thread, lost behind a sea of small news updates.

 

[FunkyGibbon]

Can a mod move this discussion to somewhere more visible? I only stumbled across it because I check the Melbourne thread occasionally, but it seems relevant to the whole site and I suspect the US and EU users are completely oblivious to it.

 

[Riley]

I think that threads are designed for posting news for a specific zoo, like this thread, should used only for posting news, whatever we decide is considered newsworthy. After all they are news threads. There should be specific threads for the use of discussion, like the Great Apes of Australasia and Taronga's Chimpanzee troop etc. That way the discussions and all the information they uncover are somewhere that they can easily accessed.

As for what is newsworthy, I think that movements of animals between zoos, new species and exhibits should be posted in the news forums. Births for commonly bred animals can be updated with a number of births in one post, ie; 5 eland, 7 fallow deer, 3 zebra born etc, for zoos such as Altina and Dubbo. They should still have a place in the news forums as some of the people on the forum, myself included,find these species and updates just as interesting as the gorillas,but if the news and discussion are kept separate then this information, which may not be of interest to some, can still be posted without interrupting the flow of conversation.

 

[devilfish]

This is a concern some members have had for some time, and has been voiced here: Where are all the zoo nerds?

I feel similarly, although perhaps not so extremely. It's becoming much more difficult to identify the nuggets of interesting new information.

My proposal is that we create threads for a specific region or country just for the news which has limited interest. This would be limited to:
- naming of animals
- births
- transfers

Such information would need to be pretty exceptional (e.g. a breeding record, or an incredibly rare species) to be posted in the zoo's own news thread. Acquiring/losing new species is still fair game for the news threads. Of course these wouldn't be set rules and we'd need a degree of flexibility (for instance, I don't think the Chester forums - which I struggle to read at all - would be able to change so easily).

 

[FunkyGibbon]

This is a concern some members have had for some time, and has been voiced here: Where are all the zoo nerds?

My proposal is that we create threads for a specific region or country just for the news which has limited interest. This would be limited to:
- naming of animals
- births
- transfers

Such information would need to be pretty exceptional (e.g. a breeding record, or an incredibly rare species) to be posted in the zoo's own news thread. Acquiring/losing new species is still fair game for the news threads. Of course these wouldn't be set rules and we'd need a degree of flexibility (for instance, I don't think the Chester forums - which I struggle to read at all - would be able to change so easily).

I recently said, in regards to the new news threads with no news, that ZooChat is many things to many people and we should adopt a live and let live attitude. However, this particular issue has struck a chord. I keep track of lots of news threads: everything in the UK, everything in China, and anywhere else I've visited or plan to visit. It is deeply dissatisfying when you see the Berlin Zoo news thread has a new post, and you click on it expecting some delightful titbit about some rarity, and instead you see: 'A guanaco was born'. Similarly sharing articles from sites like ZooBorns also feels pointless to me.

The posting guidelines for ZooChat suggest that every post should 'add value'. This is problematic because it's so subjective. I agree with devilfish about what doesn't really represent news, but I think a lot of people would reject such a harsh definition. It's tempting to say that no one cares about Meerkat births, and that the people who do want to know about a new Elephant calf can just get that information from an Elephants in Europe thread, but I don't think either of those things is realistic.

There's a huge disparity between zoos and how they are covered on ZooChat. Look at the difference in the number of pages generated about Chester in a year compared to Prague for example. Any attempt to provide a one size fits all policy will inevitably fail when faced with this. I would suggest that for the zoos that do generate a lot of traffic (your Chesters or San Diegos or Torontos) then pretty much anything should be acceptable (except the lifted straight from Facebook PR stuff) as it will be of interest to someone. However for a major zoo like Duisburg which seems to have no regulars then only the larger news items might be necessary.

I don't really think having a separate thread for minor news in a region is a good idea. It will be mostly ignored or become basically unusable if it is actually used regularly. I would go so far as to say that the consensus that was developed that lead to the creation of the 'Minor news in Australian zoos' thread was somewhat unilateral and premature.

Lastly, I think this whole issue is hugely exacerbated by the fact that the photo comments section has basically become unusable for discussions. I think before the site changed half of all interaction happened there, and the percentage would have been much higher for discussions [citation needed]. I know people aren't saying this because it seems really impolite and ungrateful to Sim for the work he has done, and I don't want to be either of those things, but I think it is a huge problem with the site right now. Over 1000 pictures have been added in the last few days and any gems amongst them will likely be underappreciated because there's no recent comments or recent likes functionality to push the good ones forward. If and when this is solved I think it will reduce some pressure on threads to be both news and discussion based.