Is forum activity decreasing?

I don't think we really have anything to worry about as long as this system stays up and running. (A number of us send Hanford a few bucks every year, but probably not what it really costs though...) Those who need and enjoy Facebook will use it. Others, who appreciate and who recognize what TC offers and "how" it offers it, will use it in addition to Facebook. But on the other hand too high of a message volume would be (and has been at times) a problem for me. This site is manageable on a daily or every-other-day basis.

The pendulum could swing back here at any time. But "less is more" if we write meaningful stuff. There were periods where there was some fluff on a daily basis. From that point it has gotten better here. The more transactional stuff which wasn't so deep has pretty much gone to Facebook, although there are some fine conversations to be had there as long as you're ok with them vaporizing into the ether at some not-too-distant point.

I think updated board/system software could help us, but that's pure speculation. I'm mostly fine with how it is but would love to be able to post photos from my smartphone, plus a few other things with how URLs and links to photos are encapsulated and not interpreted well by my email clients.

As others have said, there is great information stored here and its searchable.

My daughter looked in on me the other day and was astonished to recognize Tiki Central as the exact same message board software NeoPets was using a decade ago before it shuttered. The big trouble with upgrading the TC infrastructure (aside from cost) is how to port the existing content over to a new system? There are a lot of IT guys in tiki and I don't pretend to be one of them, but I know from past experience that smooth transitions are akin to unicorns.

TC continues to serve a role--especially to newcomers--and I find the old-school forum style kinda endearing.

On 2018-02-26 09:33, Prikli Pear wrote:
...and I find the old-school forum style kinda endearing.

Good point, and we're all fans of retro stuff, right? You made me think about it for a moment and then laugh.

Like Ace and a few others have said, to get images off these crappy phones would be it.
I think this place would significantly see a huge increase in useage if that changed on here. Everyone wants things faster and quicker and easier that I think there would be a huge change here and a lot of people would come back or start posting here.

I myself have got 50 pics on my hated phone that would be great on here. I'm a history guy mainly but would love to see some of the images that people have found and have on their devices. I don't have Facebook or any of that other crapola but I appreciate the ease and the communities that seem to be on those networks. For some people it's even a must to have.

That being said, What would it do to TC? I do not want this great place to change that much. Just want to see what else is out there.
TabooDan

On 2018-02-25 15:38, Thortiki wrote:
I still com here on a regular basis to see new posts. A lot of the old names here are gone, but a least the days of heavy negative posts have passed. Tiki seems to be a media & commercial bar theme flavor of the moment. Which I would agree with others hasn't translated into posting traffic here at TC. (-:

Always loved TC and still visit it every few days but got kinda burnt out on seeing all those negative posts here like a lot of others I'm sure...

I meet a lot of people at the shop I run here on Maui that tell me how crazy they are about Tiki once they see it.. Majority of them that I talk to got into Tiki probably within the last 1-3 years after a visiting Trader Sam's or one of the bars in there area where they live like Smuggler's Cove or Three Dot's and a Dash.. I always ask if they've seen or have the Book of Tiki and many have but many are like what's that? Also when it comes to Tiki Central, most haven't even heard of it.. I think Facebook and Instagram have a lot to do with it for sure. Still cool to see so many of the OG'ers still posting here, so much valuable information that you can't find anywhere else and plenty of Aloha. :wink:

"Everyone wants things faster and quicker and easier"

Damn as a old guy who used to have to... Buy film, take pics, take film to lab, wait a week for processing, pic up photos, take them manually to show other people or even mail to other people to show them, and you needed to get reprints to send pics if you wanted to send photos.
Plus you used to bracket your photos (Take 5 photos just to get one good one)Now you see it right after you take it.

I will say this LOTS of the pictures of "tiki" you see on Google images and other search engines Tiki images even instagram images came from here on TC as they are mine and that is the only place I post em.

Wow, just damn, for a generation that wants things to be "faster" it sure does take a lot of time to get your "fast" food or any other work done these days.

Sorry, old man rant you will be here one day.

http://imbibemagazine.com/home-tiki-bar-adrian-eustaquio/

Imbibe Magazine had a nice article here about how to decorate your home tiki bar by one of our old friends on TC, however no mention of Tiki Central anywhere. :(
We have been forgotten.

Interesting, and sad at the same time, that an article which starts out trying to inspire others omitted such a major resource. But Facebook got mentioned and it has NO repository of past and present tiki bar builds. Very strange.

Paul Clarke, who wrote the article, and Adrian, who is featured, both know of Tiki Central. So I wonder what they were thinking when they decided not to mention Tiki Central which is arguably the best resource on the web for home tiki bar builds.

But there is good news -- all our stuff is indexed in search engines and people who are looking will find us. The Book of Face can make no such claim for their short-term threads. Neener, neener...

On 2018-02-26 08:35, AceExplorer wrote:
A number of us send Hanford a few bucks every year

Thank you! I've been meaning to become a subscribing member for years but your post prompted me to finally make the commitment.

On 2018-02-28 15:07, AceExplorer wrote:
Interesting, and sad at the same time, that an article which starts out trying to inspire others omitted such a major resource. But Facebook got mentioned and it has NO repository of past and present tiki bar builds. Very strange.

Paul Clarke, who wrote the article, and Adrian, who is featured, both know of Tiki Central. So I wonder what they were thinking when they decided not to mention Tiki Central which is arguably the best resource on the web for home tiki bar builds.

I noticed the same lack of mention of Tiki Central. At one level, I'm annoyed at the lack of attribution Tiki Central could get but does not. At another level, I like that Tiki Central is not mainstream. I wish, however, that all tikiphiles would find it and not get sucked into the hole that is facebook.

On 2018-02-28 15:37, Scott McGerik wrote:
...I like that Tiki Central is not mainstream.

During my first 4 or 5 years here, there were times when there were several hundred "fluffy" posts a month here. Now we post less and we say much more.

Glad to hear you're going to contribute - all this fun is only one small bar tab per year.

Edit: Added "a month" to make my statement make more sense. Duh...

[ Edited by: AceExplorer 2018-02-28 15:43 ]

On 2018-02-28 03:41, tikiskip wrote:
"Everyone wants things faster and quicker and easier"

Damn as a old guy who used to have to... Buy film, take pics, take film to lab, wait a week for processing, pic up photos, take them manually to show other people or even mail to other people to show them, and you needed to get reprints to send pics if you wanted to send photos.
Plus you used to bracket your photos (Take 5 photos just to get one good one)Now you see it right after you take it.

I will say this LOTS of the pictures of "tiki" you see on Google images and other search engines Tiki images even instagram images came from here on TC as they are mine and that is the only place I post em.

Wow, just damn, for a generation that wants things to be "faster" it sure does take a lot of time to get your "fast" food or any other work done these days.

Sorry, old man rant you will be here one day.

Amen Skip!!! I’m right there with ya. I still take film pictures and wait for them.

As for history's sake this new computer age can also kill the photos.
Nobody prints out photos, well very few.

Do you think all this tiki central stuff will be here in 50 years?
Or even the rest of the internet info and photos.

There would be no book of Tiki if not for the old photos and postcards ect, and heck they almost never make a postcard these days.

And you can't beat a Cibachrome print, most here don't know what those are.

Got a E Christmas card this year, those blow!
But hey they are quick and easy.
What's worse than a picture of your family on your xmas card, an E card with your damn family on it.

The computer age was doing good and adding to many things and then it started going to far taking the fun out of it until the need to make money off every site and search you do took over.

People need to think now about 50 years from now and leave hard copy tiki stuff for the next wave (if there is one) of tiki to find.

Tiki central may not be here.

On 2018-02-28 16:55, tikiskip wrote:
As for history's sake this new computer age can also kill the photos.
Nobody prints out photos, well very few.

Bingo! My wife is a professional photographer, and one of her soapbox issues is that people don't print out hardcopy photos. USB drives and CD-Rs get lost or damaged or corrupted. Files on harddrives get deleted. They're misplaced and lost. And seriously, nobody sits down at the computer and regularly flips through photo files. Print them out and put then in an old-fashioned photo album.

As far as Tiki Central goes, there's two other factors at play: 1) TC resizes images to something like 400 pixel width, max, and 2) all web images are 72 or 96 dpi, which looks great on the screen, but is way too low resolution for a quality print. The interwebz are good for many things, but long-term archiving of print-quality images ain't one of them.

Just think of the Ansel Adams photos that are say 100 years old that would not last.
And they documented early America, Heaven knows if those photos would have ever been taken in this "damn that sure is a pain in the a$$ and a lot of work" society.

Heck he took that large format camera up and down mountains and deserts.

Try to make a 6x4 foot Gelatin Silver print with a digital photo today.

The great Ansel Adams would often say that his negatives were “the score” and the print was “the performance.” And one of his most famous “performances” of all time is Moonrise over Hernandez

We got no negatives, just thumb drives.
And a computer is thought to be out of date in three or four years today.

ts!

I've gotten accustomed to the photo upload thing, and its easy enough now. If I want bigger photos I just host them offsite and embed them here.

The only thing I'd still like to see (unless it exists and I missed it) is a better way to follow which threads I have replied to, not just the ones I started myself. I can't always pop on here daily so sometimes discussions get buried and I forget that I had commented on them.

On 2018-02-28 16:55, tikiskip wrote:

"There would be no book of Tiki if not for the old photos and postcards ect, and heck they almost never make a postcard these days."

etc. not ect ---- (pet peeve) contraction of etcetera----THE SPELLING POLICE

"going to far "

TOO far----you left off an O------THE SPELLING POLICE

You left off some commas and some other things could be fixed, but that's for the GRAMMAR POLICE.

GROG miss Tiki-Kate

[ Edited by: GROG 2018-03-01 07:49 ]

On 2018-03-01 07:20, tikitube wrote:

The only thing I'd still like to see (unless it exists and I missed it) is a better way to follow which threads I have replied to,

Go to your user profile and click on VIEW POSTS BY USER.

On 2018-03-01 07:53, GROG wrote:

On 2018-03-01 07:20, tikitube wrote:

The only thing I'd still like to see (unless it exists and I missed it) is a better way to follow which threads I have replied to,

Go to your user profile and click on VIEW POSTS BY USER.

Thanks so much!! I KNEW I had to be missing it somewhere.
:)

-Jeff

On 2018-02-28 16:55, tikiskip wrote:

People need to think now about 50 years from now and leave hard copy tiki stuff for the next wave (if there is one) of tiki to find.

Tiki central may not be here.

Yes, so 50 years from now a new generation can find cheap tiki items in thrift stores.

"etc. not ect"

Ha!
I do that one a lot.

Do you have that Grammarly app?
Always imagined your parents being teachers that beat you when you did bad grammar/ spelling.

"Yes, so 50 years from now a new generation can find cheap tiki items in thrift stores."

Not what I was talking about.
If you have a bar Commercial or home document that in hard copy, if you are not one of the people who have connections with the few that do document tiki these days your efforts will die with you.

If you make tiki art/carve document that, as the art may live, but the methods or info on what you did will die as well.

Would be nice to find this was done for Barney West.

Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things but it's what we do here.

I feel oddly intimidated posting by the spelling and grammar police now.

Glad we have moved on from the flame wars of the old days and advanced to passive aggressive.

Heil Webster!

[ Edited by: tikiskip 2018-03-01 11:51 ]

On 2018-03-01 10:34, tikiskip wrote:

Heil Webster!

Damn tiki torch Nazis.
:wink:

On 2018-03-01 10:34, tikiskip wrote:

Glad we have moved on from the flame wars of the old days and advanced to passive aggressive.

HA!!

I've been devouring info from this board since about 2005 / 2006 or so. I didn't sign up until a few years ago because of all of the flame war nonsense that seemed to just go on FOREVER. To be honest, I may never have if it wasn't for my appreciation of Dustycajun's continuous efforts to post stuff on the board and, in particular, Skip's lament that more people weren't contributing. I figured it was time to give something back and get off my arse and post.

Also, you should keep in mind that tiki groups on Fakebook tend to have a lot of the same members. In addition, there are TC / ex-TC members who take great pains to disparage this site when they get a chance. When your negative comments are hitting that size of an audience, over time it's going to have an impact, regardless of veracity.

The spelling and grammar police might be funny to some or a real concern, but doing a quick search of spelling police, And grammar police I found at least four people that Came onto TC got hit up by the spelling and grammar police and never came back.

Is forum activity decreasing?
Yes and I think the spelling and grammar police might be part of the cause.

Didn't even give any answer to the topic.

If you have a bar Commercial or home document that in hard copy, if you are not one of the people who have connections with the few that do document tiki these days your efforts will die with you.

If you make tiki art/carve document that, as the art may live, but the methods or info on what you did will die as well.

You know, there's a self-publishing platform, Blurb, that I've worked with in the past. Here's a link to the photo book I published with them, just for context: Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch. The books are on the pricey side, simply because they're print-on-demand and full-color printing ain't cheap. That aside, there are quite a few different formats and sizes available that can control costs if that's an issue. Given decent, high-resolution photographs, there's no reason anyone here couldn't put together a nice tome dedicated to a particular home bar in short order. Even a fairly lavish book would still cost less than a lot of tiki mugs I've seen.

The best thing about Blurb is that there are no up-front costs. The author's required to order a proof before the finished product can be offered for sale to the general public, but that's a far cry from vanity presses that demand thousands up front. I'd not considered this as a way of preserving the memory of home bars before, but Skip's always thinking a few steps ahead of the rest of us.

Found one on Blurb of interest to the crowd here: The Hula of Pele Tiki Hartman

You can save some bucks -- Blurb has a 35% off code at the top of the screen good through 3/5/2018. Code is "YUMMY35"

NEVER pay full price for a book from Blurb. They always have a coupon of some type active, and using coupons doesn't affect the author's take.

I didn't mention it before, but the quality of the Blurb books is quite good. Lulu is another well regarded self publishing platform, but it is geared more toward text ss opposed to photos.

On 2018-02-28 10:19, hiltiki wrote:
http://imbibemagazine.com/home-tiki-bar-adrian-eustaquio/

Imbibe Magazine had a nice article here about how to decorate your home tiki bar by one of our old friends on TC, however no mention of Tiki Central anywhere. :(
We have been forgotten.

To be fair to Adrian, he and his guests regularly bring up TC on “Inside the Desert Oasis Room.” And of course Adrian’s own FB group would get a mention in this article.

And Martin put a shoutout to TC in the Smuggler’s Cove book, so it’s not like they’re not trying to get the word out.

Very good points, Hamo. I had the thought of an editor having possibly cut out Tiki Central due to issues with word count, space, relevancy, and who knows what. Anything could have happened. I have been interviewed on more than one occasion and found that the writer or editor had taken some pretty wild liberties with the truth to make the story more exciting. I was left with a bit of explaining to do when friends, family, and co-workers read the articles.

On 2018-03-02 06:21, AceExplorer wrote:
Very good points, Hamo. I had the thought of an editor having possibly cut out Tiki Central due to issues with word count, space, relevancy, and who knows what. Anything could have happened. I have been interviewed on more than one occasion and found that the writer or editor had taken some pretty wild liberties with the truth to make the story more exciting. I was left with a bit of explaining to do when friends, family, and co-workers read the articles.

Yep, editors do this all the time! I've had interviews with print media journalists in which I was name-dropping sponsors for certain events, and the editor cropped out some (but not all) of them to save space, and it required some explanation to those sponsors who didn't appear in the article. Very frustrating!

Yep, editors do this all the time! I've had interviews with print media journalists in which I was name-dropping sponsors for certain events, and the editor cropped out some (but not all) of them to save space, and it required some explanation to those sponsors who didn't appear in the article. Very frustrating!

As a recovering journalist who's spent the past 15 years in media relations, I can say that media is in no way interested in running a list of sponsors. The thinking is that if those sponsors want advertising in the newspaper/radio/television broadcast, they can pay for it. Unless the event has the sponsor's name in it (think all the college bowl games) then you're pretty much SOL. I tell our people who come to me with programs and events, wanting their golden prose reprinted on the front page of the Austin American-Statesman unaltered, along with the bad grip-and-grin photo they're provided at a resolution too low for print use. I tell them all we can do is provide the media with the information. Unless someone comes up with a budget to buy advertising space, we have no say on how, or even if they use said information. That's the truth.

I've actually grown accustomed to journalists botching dates, times, locations, and other pertinent details of events, so the omission of sponsors is frustrating but not earth-shattering. If they have a "no sponsor" rule, it would just be nice if it was applied across the board.

Jeff

I wouldn't say it's a rule so much as an inclination.

Newsrooms have been hit with insane budget cuts over the past 20 years. Specialized beat reporters are an endangered species. Staffing is reduced. Workloads have increased while pay and hours remain awful. Quality control is erratic and online journalism is even more problematic as the siren song of cut-and-paste clickbait sucks more and more sites in. A lot of people smarter than me have recognized the problem, but as of yet nobody has come up with a workable solution.

All of which is, at best, tangential to tiki. The good news is that, for most of the country at least, tiki remains quirky and exotic. Print and broadcast media are as likely as not to offer coverage of tiki-related events simply because there are often good visuals to be had.

And yes, references to TC in Adrian's Imbibe piece were as likely to be cut for brevity as his simply forgetting to mention the site.

That makes sense, and also could explain the high turnover rate. It seems that I'm lucky to work with the same journalist or editor for two years in a row!

Jeff

"On 2018-03-02 06:21, AceExplorer wrote:
Very good points, Hamo. I had the thought of an editor having possibly cut out Tiki Central due to issues with word count, space, relevancy, and who knows what."

Tiki Mag cut a ton out of the Bill Sapp interview done many years ago.
I never understood that one.

I don't know what to think about this but I added to a thread in Locating Tiki a day and a half ago and there have already been more 250 views since I posted? That's way more than I usually see for new views in that amount of time.

View counts are funny on TC.
It could be 250 people looked at your post.

But it could also be it is one guy hitting it over and over,
that happens a lot on TC just to drive the views count up.

It was a good post so somebody could have posted a link to it on Facebook or something like that as well.

I used to visit weekly, post some finds, participate in the give and take, but I pretty much only come back about once per month now. Not that I have lost interest, just got a lot going on in life, and the finds have been less and less. Still love everything about mid-century modern, tiki culture, and vintage ephemera.

to keep people more interested...

one thing you could do is show new posts in a topic at the top of page 1 instead of the bottom of a multi page really old thread anyway

when i first joined it was like going through ten years of posts to get to the bottom...

i remember it was hard to post pictures so i stopped trying... i like the text style format though

some posts and topics are so old that they could just be irrelevant

putting new stuff at the top of the first page would really help

I generally dislike Facebook but I do like the liking of posts that Facebook offers. Often, I read posts here on Tiki Central that I like but I have nothing to add. I wish there was a way for me to uptick the article or in someway indicate my interest in it without posting a no-value-added post.

On 2018-04-01 18:43, Scott McGerik wrote:
I generally dislike Facebook but I do like the liking of posts that Facebook offers. Often, I read posts here on Tiki Central that I like but I have nothing to add. I wish there was a way for me to uptick the article or in someway indicate my interest in it without posting a no-value-added post.

Something like this 'like' button?

Swizzle does clicking on the like button actually DO anything worthwhile when you click on it? I know you already need to be logged on to Facebook to have it register a like on the comment but it's not like it shows up in your notifications on Facebook. I've "liked" a bunch of stuff but I don't think anyone even notices.

I was a bit miffed when on a tiki/rum Facebook group somebody replied to a long rum discussion, "I'm so glad to have a forum to discuss this stuff..."

But we've been here all along! And this is an actual forum! Haha. =\

On 2018-04-02 14:02, tikicoma wrote:
Swizzle does clicking on the like button actually DO anything worthwhile when you click on it? I know you already need to be logged on to Facebook to have it register a like on the comment but it's not like it shows up in your notifications on Facebook. I've "liked" a bunch of stuff but I don't think anyone even notices.

Good question. I wasn't aware that you had to be logged on to FB for it to register but i do know that when someone does 'like' a post here it will show up on FB and say, "X liked this post on Tiki Central" and will provide a link back to it. However i'm pretty sure you will only see that (on your feed) if the person who liked the post on TC you are actually friends with on FB to begin with.

And something i just noticed is that i can see my comment has a like but hovering over the button it doesn't actually say who the member is that liked it. I thought the point of having that 'like' button here was two pronged and worked like it does on FB. 1.) So you could see how many people and who actually liked your post, and 2.) So that people could show their appreciation for your post without having to actually log in and leave an actual comment, but obviously it doesn't work that way.

On 2018-04-02 01:26, swizzle wrote:
Something like this 'like' button?

Interesting. I didn't realize that button was there because I have an addon that blocks widgets from Facebook. FWIW, that button works only with Facebook but does nothing on this forum.

On 2018-04-03 18:21, Scott McGerik wrote:
FWIW, that button works only with Facebook but does nothing on this forum.

Maybe you need to read my comment again.

Look at those stats - it's 3:00pm ET on a Friday and there are 133 users online. If posting is declining, then browsing is not. The numbers at night must be even higher. Fugeddaboudit...