Hello everyone,
I have some news to share about this blog site, and it will affect everyone who is a follower, fan, or even a lurking rage-viewer. As you all know, for the last 7 years, I've been writing monthly blogs about the wonderful world of monarch science and posting them here at www.monarchscience.org. Then, after each of these gets written, I've always uploaded them to a Facebook version of the blog - facebook.com/monarchscience. This has always allowed people who read the blog to then share it, or comment on it as they see fit. For some reason, people seem more comfortable commenting within Facebook. However, I think there is room to improve on this system, which may end up helping or reaching even more people.
So, what I'm going to do (and I just did it), is to create a brand new facebook group with a new name, and which will hopefully be more than just a place where I dump these monthly blogs. What I'm envisioning is that this will be more of a forum for people to have discussions - real discussions. I'll explain more below.
Below is a picture, which is also the name of the new group. Catchy, right?
This link will take you to this new group on Facebook, where you can join - https://www.facebook.com/groups/565065511941624
As I said, I am envisioning this new facebook group to be more than just these monthly blogs. I'll still be writing them of course, and, I'll still post them there to stimulate discussion. But, I will no longer post to the monarchscience facebook site, and in fact, I'm going to delete the monarchscience facebook group, once people have time to migrate over and join the new one.
As the text in the picture indicates, I'm also envisioning this new group to be a place where there are real experts in the group, so as to be available to answer questions, or to have discussions. In fact, I'm going to make every effort to bring in some of my scientist friends, and graduate students, and anyone else who has real first-hand knowledge about monarchs. That is not to say that people can't join if they are not an expert, but, it means that if a question gets posted about monarchs, their conservation, or the science around them, you can be sure that there will be a real answer forthcoming from someone. This way, the group will be more than just a blog site, but a real forum.
For longtime fans of monarchs and social media, I suspect you can see how this could help. Right now, there are oodles of monarch-related facebook groups, and most of these are just places where pretty pictures are posted, or where people post questions, and then they get 20 different answers to them. This new group will not be that. In fact, the overarching mission will be to provide the most accurate answers, and to keep anyone from getting confused by opinion posts, or misinformation. There is already too much out there!
So, got a question about monarch biology? You can post it there. Want to know what is really going on with the status of the monarch population? You can post it there. Or, do you want to know the inside story about how the latest research study was conducted? Ask about it there. I'll hopefully have the very people in the group who conducted the research! Or if no one knows the answers, I or someone else can do our best to get them. In fact, in my office I have every book and scientific article ever written about monarchs. If I don't know the answer, I bet I could find it.
And finally, for the real monarch nerds, you might already be aware that the dplex email listserve is no longer what it used to be. In years past, this used to be THE place where monarch research, conservation ,etc., was discussed, and it had lots of scientists on board, who used to get into heated arguments each week (which was very entertaining to outsiders). Over the last couple of years, this forum has simply stopped being very useful, and has basically become dormant. Some of this is because people just left (like me!), or some scientists have retired (or passed away). Some people have migrated to newer forums like Facebook. For whatever the reason, the dplex seems to have had its day, and is no longer relevant. I'm telling you this because I see this new facebook group as "the new dplex".
So, I'm excited about this new direction, and I hope you will join me. Remember, here is the link to join - https://www.facebook.com/groups/565065511941624
That's all for now.
*****************************************************************************
Direct link to this blog entry:
*****************************************************************************
Comments