I don't know why, but when everyone posts their pics in the same thread, it makes me reluctant to even start looking. I know I can continue another time - Anyone else feel this way?

Humm...I just look at the pretty ones.

caitlinsgarden, we started having a thread for "blooms" and a thread for "seedlings" for each month that everyone posts in because we quickly had so many members here on ATP that if each person had a thread of their own it became kind of jumble to find new people's questions, old threads that are brought to the top again… just a lot going on. I think we have been doing it this way since the first year of ATP, but not sure. Since Dave designed ATP to have thousands of posts in a thread without any issue, we make use of that and try to stick to one thread for named cultivars and one for seedlings for each of the months with the heaviest bloom. Just makes things easier to find, more tidy. It does get a bit overwhelming sometimes. I have my posts per page set to 500, and sometimes it takes quite a while to get to the bottom on a busy day!

edited to change my typo of "king" to kind….

I wish we would do a daily bloom thread like we used to have on Dave's Garden. That's just my preference.

I like having only one or two threads main threads in each of the forums I follow. It makes it easy to check them each day by just going to the first unread one. I know I often miss some of the other threads in the forums because I don't always have time to go to look at any of the other threads very often.

If we are conservative and say Bloom season starts beginning of May and runs till end of Sept. each year - doing a daily thread that would mean just over 150 threads per one bloom season. Doing it like we do now, there would be 12. Big difference. Lets say you are not experienced with daylilies, and want to find out how to divide your daylilies sometime in the late summer or early fall, when many people divide perennials. You start scrolling down through the threads. Are you more likely to stick around if you have to scroll down through 150 daily bloom threads? I think the person new to ATP would just move on and go to the next Google search and get their info there.

Not having a strong preference about it ... I wondered if a weekly bloom thread be a kind of a middle ground? Twenty threads by end of summer? Or even "fortnightly" at 10 threads? That might allow the previous bloom threads some time to drop to the less active bottom of the page...

I'm just thinking that ATP must be growing in member numbers over time ... and some threads may get longer internal strings with the growing number of us that own hundreds of cultivars to post from. I know it is taking my computer a much longer time to load the bloom thread as it goes on, so I am much less likely to enjoy seeing what people have to share.

As more people become members, including those with home-garden sized numbers of cultivars, could it perhaps help to encourage them to join in, too, if the threads were distributed over a little bit shorter time than monthly, even if it were just for peak bloom traffic time of June-July?

chalyse said: Not having a strong preference about it ... I wondered if a weekly bloom thread be a kind of a middle ground? Twenty threads by end of summer? Or even "fortnightly" at 10 threads? That might allow the previous bloom threads some time to drop to the less active bottom of the page...

I'm just thinking that ATP must be growing in member numbers over time ... and some threads may get longer internal strings with the growing number of us that own hundreds of cultivars to post from. I know it is taking my computer a much longer time to load the bloom thread as it goes on, so I am much less likely to enjoy seeing what people have to share.

As more people become members, including those with home-garden sized numbers of cultivars, could it perhaps help to encourage them to join in, too, if the threads were distributed over a little bit shorter time than monthly?

Tina,
Even though ATP is growing all the time, not everyone feels the need or desire to post a photo of every bloom of every cultivar that they grow. Many people only post a few of their best photos - or none at all - each year. As I said above, Dave designed ATP to have thousands of posts in a thread without any issue. He has programed the site to optimize photos that are loaded to make them load quickly. The policy here at ATP has been to encourage members to keep threads going, on topic, and for threads to continue on and on. Theoretically, these threads could continue into the tens of thousands of posts and everyone should be able to load them without issue. If you (or anyone else) are having issues with the pages loading, then I would encourage you to visit the Site Talk Forum and review threads there, or ask for help in resolving your computer or connection issues. It may be as simple as changing the number of posts that you view so that you are loading fewer posts per page, or changing your browser to Chrome. For another example of this policy, please see this thread in the Perennials Forum, which covers blooms for the entire year.
The thread "What's Blooming- - 2014 - - Photo's please!" in Perennials forum

Thanks, Juli! I am on Chrome, and not having any slowness in opening shorter or less-photo-filled posts, or other internet sites. I agree with you, and don't post in the bloom thread myself anymore; like as you say, I don't feel the need or desire to post a photo of every bloom of every cultivar.

I was just reminded of how some have innovated to post some photos weekly, or post directly to the database, instead. I'm totally contented just exploring around in the database when it comes to seeing blooms, and have the full range to enjoy through the search function. Was just mentioning as a discussion point to consider, for any who may be trying to voice possible intimidation with longer-running posts.

Thankful for your and the other admins amazing work, as usual, on behalf of everyone at ATP!

I'm so not very technical but it might help to point out when you open up a thread on ATP, if it is a new thread to you, only the first page will open. If you've been on the thread before, then it will skip to where you left off, so only one page at a time is loaded. It will be the first page or it will be the page where you left off, but the middle pages will not load.

If you've set your site preferences to view 100 posts per page and if that page has 10 images per post, then you see what you might run into, you'd be loading 1000 images. So on threads that I know will contain lots of images, I just go into my preferences and set my post number to 20 or even less. Normally I have it set to 200 posts if I know there will be few pictures.

That might make a difference if you are having 'slow' issues.

Hope this didn't muddy the waters, I'm not technical enough to know any other way to explain it.

Your explanation is wonderfully clear, Sharon! I'm sure that will be helpful for anyone having slow-loading forum issues, too, though I like to keep my site preferences at 500 so that I can utilize the database more efficiently (and the thumbnails there keep it fast and clean).

But I don't mean to assume that is what other's mean when they say their preference would be for shorter blooming threads. I can imagine there are different approaches for different folks, and seeing that you and others refresh the forums with new threads after they've gone long has always been admired.

More blooms the better, I say. Bring them on.

I think it's fine just the way it is, at my age I don't like dealing with change.

I also like it the way it is. Too many extra threads doing it the other way. This is much easier.

No problem, no hassle for me either. I love seeing all the blooms. Hurray for Dave and the moderators. Don't change a thing. It works beautifully.

I'm not sure what aspect would be so changed (?), as threads are already swapped out more frequently than each month. It wouldn't be different or need to be more frequent than what is done with OT and Weather threads that go long, for example, so I'm not sure why it might be seen by some as something negative. New thread breaks don't decrease or limit the number of pictures that can be posted, it just makes it much easier for all members, new or veteran, to access and see them.

I do hear your pain, though, at any change that is discussed if its something that people are used to on a particular topic, even when it would just be a duplication of what is already done elsewhere in the same forum.

The more pics the better and it doesn't matter to me where they are posted
I like to see them.

We all like to see pictures, in both threads and databases. I think that's the whole reason the question was asked.