New DG Release

Hello,

A new site release has been rolled out today. The bulk of this release are minor tweaks, and cleanup of the site.

The one that will be most apparent to you will be the recent removal of the "Contributions" sections of member profiles.

I know this will be an inconvenience for many of you and I'm sorry for that.

We are working on improving profiles but need to do this in small steps. Until then, changes and adjustments will be made over the next few releases.

Thank You,
Tyson

Can you explain in more detail what you mean by member contributions? I
This message was edited Feb 1, 2019 3:11 PM

This message was edited Feb 2, 2019 12:30 PM

Hello Tyson,

All of my photo records have gone from my Membership Page??? I use them as a constant reference, especially after having loaded up thousands of photos into the Plant/Bugs/Birds files. This is a real 'Buggar' to say the least, as I'm not a computor in which to hold all of this valuable knowledge. Please, restore. I've now got to go onto Google to bring up what I'm looking for on Dave's Garden! NOT PLEASED.

I would rather it had have been the 'View the posts you have made' - 100's of PAGES OF TEXT - on My Member Page that I would never have the time to scroll through - NOT the PHOTOS.

You have now made my MEMBER PAGE obsolete - it is now of NO use.

This change has obviously been made with very little thought, and no concern or consultation with long standing Members.

Dave's Garden is for people who are attracted to, and who are interested in the concepts by which it was originally started up. This is NOT an improvement to our site!
[HYPERLINK@davesgarden.com]

This message was edited Feb 2, 2019 7:07 PM

I agree Annette! I emailed Tyson 1 minute after they deleted the Contribution box and the Bloom of the Day photos from each Member's page. I use it constantly for so many reasons.

By deleting it from our page, it actually denies us access to our own photos.

I cannot figure out why it was done!

Absolutely, Kell. They are people with NO interest in this wonderful site of vast knowledge with worldwide membership! All about money...

LAS14 Albany, ME(Zone 4b) Jun 01, 2018
So, IBtyen, how many different websites do you help out with?

IBtyen El Segundo, CA Jun 26, 2018
Sorry for the late reply to this!
I currently manage about 8 sites including DG.

When asked what does IB (as in IBtyen) mean.
Anna_Z Monroe, WI(Zone 4b) Jun 01, 2018
I think it's "Internet Brands", the concern that "owns" DG now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Brands



This message was edited Feb 2, 2019 11:13 PM

I am in the middle of downloading photos into Garden Showcase. I accidently clicked wrongly, and have lost the link!!! I would normanly have gone straight onto my Member Page, clicked onto the last photo entered, and been able to carry on downloading more photos. Now I can not find the screen I was on! How can I carry on adding more photos to the Te Puna Quarry Park, Tauranga, NZ file??? Please, send me the link.

I can not access any of my photos that I have downloaded onto Dave's Garden.

"minor tweaks, and cleanup of the site" - You have totally destroyed and erased our data base photos.
We can now not access our own photos on our Membership Page.

"I know this will be an inconvenience for many of you and I'm sorry for that" - Really!! You have no idea what you have done. You've stuffed up the whole system.

"We are working on improving profiles but need to do this in small steps. Until then, changes and adjustments will be made over the next few releases." - We have put years of work into this site, and you have now made it totally unworkable, and all that material is lost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Brands


This message was edited Feb 2, 2019 11:10 PM

https://www.internetbrands.com/contact-us/

If we get a lot of members to send a complaint about this, maybe we will get
their attention.

Hardly anyone will be looking OR be able to find this thread!

This information - and the opinions of the Members above - need to go on a more prominent public space, where EVERY Member is informed of what has happened, and of what is going to be done to our site.

Rosina, you are absolutely correct! Major changes to this site should be announced at the top of the opening page so everyone is aware.

COPY sent to IB internet brands CONTACT US:-
Re: DAVE'S GARDEN
https://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1497377/
All of our copyright photos have been removed from our LIVE Membership Pages - without consultation of long standing Members. These are working reference photos which we need, and are using all the time. Please, re-instate the photos - of at least major contributors like myself.
I am now unable to access anything I download onto DG - photos, OR links that I am downloading into. I am now unable to continue to add photos to a previous screen that I was working on.
The removal of years of photography and vast collated knowledge have now made the site unworkable. What Tyson (IBtyen) and co have done is destroy our wonderful Dave's Garden Site.

Thank you for using our contact form! Your email was successfully sent!


This message was edited Feb 3, 2019 10:42 AM

Not able to get back into GARDEN SHOWCASE forum! Gone also?????

This is one good idea, June. Then at least ALL members get the opportunity to be informed!!

Annette, is this what you are looking for?
Yours
https://davesgarden.com/showcase/image/view/12701841
The forum
https://davesgarden.com/showcase/

All of us who pay the annual $20 membership fee need to be treated with more consideration. I doubt this is Tyson's fault because he takes direction from someone and isn't deliberately irking us.

Tyson didn't do this, you are correct, June.

"The CSRF token is invalid. Please try to resubmit the form." message keeps popping up, and won't let me continue to download photos into GARDEN SHOWCASE

Thank you, Kell.

In the 1st link you gave me - there is no facility to download photos.

I found the 2nd link, and started a new GARDEN SHOWCASE for the same garden, loaded up photos until "The CSRF token is invalid. Please try to resubmit the form." message keeps showing up stopped me from continuing.

Tyson is the only name in the firing line. He put out the message on this page. Perhaps there should have been a directive from someone higher up?

Is this the beginning of the end?

Thanks for your feedback everyone. It's clear the contributions section was helpful to you all and I'll be sure to bring this up with our product team.

It's true, that I'm only the messenger here, but that does work both ways so I'll be sure to get all your points across.

Tyson, don't think of yourself as "only the messenger". You actually are the only and the most responsive contact any of us have! The people who are making these decisions seem to have no understanding of what the Dave's Garden members expect, want and appreciate.

Tyson, I just do not get how deleting our access to our photos accomplishes "improving profiles" as you put it. It just makes no sense. Did you even have any complaints from anyone about their profiles? Why not fix search which is such a mess?

Today I realized I had been adding an incorrect tag (under "Please give a short (20 words or less) description of this picture:") to all the photos I have added to PlantFiles taken by someone other than myself to credit them as the photographer. Normally, I would just go to the PlantFile link on my home page click it and up would come all my photos. I would use the search box to search my photos that were taken by this person and correct my comment. But now I have absolutely no way to access these photos to correct them.

FRUSTRATING!!!!!!!!!!!

Ref: The deletion of our photo contributions - I totally concur with rosinaBloom who stated above: "These are working reference photos which we need, and are using all the time. Please, re-instate the photos - of at least major contributors like myself.
I am now unable to access anything I download onto DG - photos, OR links that I am downloading into. I am now unable to continue to add photos to a previous screen that I was working on.
The removal of years of photography and vast collated knowledge have now made the site unworkable."

Today, I was attempting to locate a photo of a tree bloom for someone and could not remember the tree's name. So, I knew (or so I thought) I could find it by pulling up my photos. Oops! Not there anymore. I have used this list constantly for many years and for many reasons. I, too, am very bewildered. Please restore this function.

Although I don't have an update today on this. Just wanted to chime in to say I'm still listening and appreciate feedback from veteran DG members. Please keep the feedback incoming!

Thank you, Tyson. It means a lot to know that someone actually is listening!

'Dave' would have never made a move like this...

http://garden.org/

Dosetaker, unfortunately Dave made the worst move of all and left us!

While it is nice, June that after years of being totally ignored by Terry, someone actually is responding to us but what good does that do if no corrective action is taken? It took 1 second to delete our access to our own photos and it would take 1 second to restore it.

Terry was a daily presence on DG, a voice then and now in comparison to anyone currently. Years and years. Anyone who follows would be well served to look back at how she managed the site for Dave. She was the flack catcher persona now passed on to someone who apparently has less clout to make a difference. If members, and Kell, have had past personal issues with her then so be it. We've talked about it and, as I have told you, she always responded to my DM promptly and was well loved by every DG member that I know. She came to my 4th GA RU with her husband to make sure we were safe when it was threatened by a crazy TN gun toting member who was banned for publishing my private info on several other sites. It was truly scary, and yes, nuts are part of opening your life and home to DG but we already knew that. Who bothers to host RU's today? She worked way more and way late for the part time position she was paid for by Dave. Go back and look at her time stamps. She did it, often answering late at night, because it allowed her to be there after school and late late at night with a young family. If someone else had a different experience with Terry then I am willing to listen but this chronic trashing of Terry, an early founder and much more present voice than Dave, took on DG's b.s. after he had already sold the site, and then briefly became the bridge between DG and IB. It was at this point that she was accused of everything wrong here.

During my tenure at DG I met Terry and her family. She has visited and stayed in both my homes with family. She is lovely, her family is lovely, and she was earnestly committed to DG for many years. We had many late night emails about her commitment to Dave and DG. She suffered the pangs of resolution to move on when DG entered its next iteration (which might be taken literally since it's same old same old broken site). Dave was all in for Dave and anyone who doesn't get that at this point is really lost. If all caps were acceptable on the last statement I would. But moving on to subscriber comments...

I have a far out rewarded membership, minus gifted time to others, due to certain participation in contests over the years. I was locked out for almost four months and had no response from anyone here despite repeated mails to the site and Internet Brands. Melanie finally responded after several friends, aware of my situation, threatened to cancel their membership. What is her roll? She used to be Terry's second. Whatever outcomes here don't let those people who are a part of the history, and helped build this site, be diminished.

I don't fully understand the Plant Files peoples' situation, but if there are hamperings I am sympathetic. It is an internationally recognizable resource. I stopped posting pics of my 400+ species orchid collection, and those of my friends and regional American Orchid Society judges, on a subscriber only forum when I became aware that DG had an arrangement with Google to farm photos and posts from subscriber only sites. Very shocking revelation to Google info on an unusual orchid I own and find a pic of me and post that came from a subscriber only thread (Orchid Forum).

You should know that if you post a photo you will get credit, a trademark stamp/watermark or whatever but DG owns your photos regardless of whether you are the select few who contribute wonderful posts each day, or those who contribute such as RosinaBloom and Kell. Read the fine print. They can buy, sell or trade your photo wherever they can to make a dime. Yes, you "own" a copyright or watermark for your pics but you signed over ownership with the understanding that you will get a copy acknowledgement once you post here. They own it.

I'm amused by folks who continue to pay less than $00.055 cents a day for the $20.00 p year membership and demand service. There can't be many, certainly not enough to support a site, and they who complain the most are not to be seen on any forum involving gardening. This site was supposed to be first and foremost about gardening and secondarily about other common interests. I love to read, quilt, cook, renovate, etc. but this site should not bend from its original mission statement to accommodate those who have moved on from gardening to gossip Disclaimer added in that I can bend an ear for gossip. Only human.

Not really sure I have answers to the problems Dave's Garden currently is undergoing but Tyson will not be able to fix the social dynamic of what is a tired format and I'm not sure what happens to an encyclopedic informational internet site when it shuts down. Is this not a concern of you Plant Files folks? What happens to Plant Files if IB takes the site down?

Actually I have no personal issues at all with Terry.  I do not know her at all. I have only ever interacted with her about PlantFiles and Bloom of the Day issues. 

But I, like you btw, resented that she totally stopped interacting with anyone on this site for a long time. She presided over its demise. People were begging for Admin to just answer their questions and help them. For months and months! Many of my dmails to her went unanswered, totally ignored.

No one could get Terry to respond to them. Members finally resorted to trying to reach her thru Facebook. It was horrible and demeaning to us. Many people just left in disgust.

You too had a huge issue.

MaypopLaurel Cleveland,GA/Atlanta, GA(Zone 7b) Oct 21, 2017
"I have not added my orchid collection to Plant Files since early attempts were qued, awaiting approval, and no one ever confirmed approval. Nor was there indication they ever were entered in Plant Files. But if I Google some of my orchids, where photos were posted on a subscriber only forum here, I see my photos. So I've been told by Terry that photos posted are open to Google.

As for Admin issues, I logged out on all my devices to travel in May and found I couldn't log back in. The site would not recognize my password, which I had used frequently and without issue. Three months later and many attempts to contact Admin went unanswered. Several private emails resulted in folks Facebook notifying Admin they wanted something done on my behalf and then posting they were not renewing membership. I could read posts on subscriber only fora, not logged in, but could not post. That was a revelation! I finally heard from Melody with apologies."

As you can read here, you and many others were so unhappy with the state of things!
https://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1413860/?page=5

MaypopLaurel, you can defend Terry to the end of time. The fact is that any form of administration contact was met with silence. Dead silence for years. No matter what the problem was the site's owner and employees decided to just ignore their users. I do think most of us would have understood if there was a lack of help but there was just dead silence. And if Terry and Melody's jobs had changed then I think they both needed to inform us of that - but they didn't.

Good for you for never - well almost never had this kind of problem. Must be nice.

And just for y our information it is none of your business where subscribers wish to congregate. As long as we are civil and follow the rules - oh that's right there is no one who really cares what we do.

Since you don't have any issues with DG maybe you shouldn't join in on this. Oh and by the way I for one am just so thrilled to have amused you.

I find the exclusion of contributions to be very short sighted. I was using that to do uploads of more photos. Now I don't know where I was in the images. Whoever decided this was a good idea has no understanding what importance it had for users. Sorry to hear this all went down as it did.

Dear Members,
Let's just stay on track to see if we can get our photos back to our Membership Pages. That's all that's important at the moment. We don't won't to be wasting our energy here on a battlefield. It does no good.

To the owners/administrators of DG: Please, please, PLEASE listen to the members who use this site! I can see no earthly reason for the changes made to the Membership pages!!

The priority for attention from IB goes to growin, RosinaBloom, Kell and Flapdoodle, all of whom are important reasons to be here. They reflect the mission statement of the site. I am grateful for the fact-based information they share.

Kell, as RosinaBloom said, lets stay on track. I know you did not get along.with Terry. I can go back and post your DM quotes to me, saying as much, but since I consider DM personal I won't. Terry was way long gone before any of my issues you sited from personal mail during our very brief exchanges. While everybody was jumping up and down about why Terry was not answering or taking care of things she had been gone for many months. That her exit was unannounced by IB is not part of the discussion. That she went from being an early on unpaid employee, to a part time paid employee of Dave, who then worked full time and more without additional compensation, is something she is not here to tell. And so now absent to those who were used to having every issue resolved 24/7, she may have irked some (or many) who were used to her voice of reason and her instant resolution. If anyone cares, she has opened a successful local business with friends, to upscale furniture and antiques because she always loved upscaling finds. Way better than dealing with other aggravation. People here had expectations that were not met and, since she had always been Dave's wizard behind the curtain she was unfairly excoriated. After IB bought the site, and before Terry left, there was no one at the Help Desk and they had a dearth of folks for Plant Files Admin roles. Thus the hangup in communication and for Plant Files entries. At that time everything had to be passed through a Plant Files admin or a person otherwise approved. I was asked to be a Help Desk person and later a Plant Files Admin.. A t-shirt, mug and membership was not incentive.

My understanding is the site was sold because the format was so dated there were ongoing repair problems way back then. Dave moved on to program a newer, supposedly better iteration (program-wise) which has now turned into a chat forum as well. DG worked well for then, and what it was, but every time they diddle with this and that to try to bring it into the now...well we can all see what happens. You know what happens when your phone, tablet or computer become obsolete and you can't upgrade? Why is it so hard to understand here? No individual is at fault or favor for a dated system. I have nothing more to add to this discussion.

Thank you all for your comments and critiques.

MaypopLaurel -- Thank You!

Thanks all who have chimed in - I had a meeting with our product team and tech team. Although I can't make any promises, I believe things are heading in the right direction.

IBtyen -- the very fact that you listened and did something is admirable. Thank you!!

YES, Tyson is my Hero!!!
👌

Geezzzzzzzzzzzzz I would love to stay on track if only you would stop dragging me in Maypoplaurie!!!   
 
I had no need to deep dive into Terry here but MaypopLaurie evidently has the need.  Rewriting history does no one any good.
 
I am of the belief that if you decide for whatever reasons that you do not want to do your job anymore, you quit not just in deed but in fact. 

Terry quit DG the week of November 17, 2017 so she was in fact here the entire time people were in such distress begging for some response from Admin. Her last post was on DG Site Updates Discussion Forum seems to be on  Oct 12, 2016 
 
I get that you were a personal friend of hers but demonizing me for expecting Admin to do their job is a bit much.
 
You, yourself, dated your problems with Admin happening in May 2017, 7 months before Terry left DG and lasting 3 months before your issue was acknowledged and corrected according to you.
 
https://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=10329871
 
And btw, your posted that to everyone on DG about the failure of admin not to me in a personal dmail!!!!!!!!!!!!  https://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=10329871
 
MaypopLaurel Cleveland,GA/Atlanta, GA(Zone 7b) Oct 21, 2017 
(BEFORE Terry left DG.)
" As for Admin issues, I logged out on all my devices to travel in May and found I couldn't log back in. The site would not recognize my password, which I had used frequently and without issue. Three months later and many attempts to contact Admin went unanswered. Several private emails resulted in folks Facebook notifying Admin they wanted something done on my behalf and then posting they were not renewing membership. I could read posts on subscriber only fora, not logged in, but could not post. That was a revelation! I finally heard from Melody with apologies."  

So you dated your problems with Admin happening in May 2017, 7 months before Terry left DG and lasting 3 months before your issue was acknowledged and corrected.
https://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=10329871
  https://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1413860/?page=5

And for the record, I never discussed or mentioned our emails as everyone can see, I only quoted what you wrote on Dave's Garden for all to read.  Once again you demonize me using incorrect facts while it was you eluding to our dmails to state things that are not true.  https://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1413860/?page=5

So I agree lets all keep on track and await DG to once again allow us access to our own photos.
 

Kell, this seems an appropriate time perhaps to take your own advice to keep on track. None of your personal issues with another subscriber has anything to do with the current problem and is of no interest to those subscribers who simply would like a problem solved. It is being worked on and we can hope for a good outcome.