I think the short answer (for me) is NO. But yes I did pose the question.
There is another Site, not very far from this one (actually next door my Chrome Bookmarks), that is smooth, reliable, constantly being updated and supported Worldwide by many thousands of very active users. Adding an Observation there is as easy as here and far safer if you are impatient. It displays well, with few delays and a good facility to enlarge illustrations. It is not as ‘cool’ as here in many ways and the community not, quite, as helpful (as it used to be here). The forum, in that site, is very well attended but questions sometimes do NOT get responses. It is the site of preference now for Google searches and often comes up with the goods far more regularly.
Why am I saying this? It’s free and it has ALL you want and more.
Why am I still here? Hard to explain but I might be in a rut. I like it here but I am liking less and less as the difficulties mount and promises die.
To pay for anything, means value for money.
…
Just to reiterate then (not a single direct response from Admin) -
This is from New year 'solutions?
SOME IMPROVEMENTS needed to make the site much more pleasant to use.
In no special Order of importance then -
1 Improve Track Changes - REMOVE our own entries from CHANGES TRACKER, which are duplicated in ACTIVITY TRACKER. Only display the last change to the same Observation (if there are several) 1a. Retain Yellow marker until the specific post has been visited
2 Allow Edit of Comments - until locked by Reply
3 Refresh the Home Page - Add a running Welcome banner which changes when ‘things’ are not right. Add strong links to RECENT OBS and START HERE (New Pages?). Tidy up and remove stale notices. Add a large Picture of the Month (NOT competitive?).
4 Update all Help Pages - create an Index
5 Rationalise Global - currently, it means two things in iSpot, ALL Communities or those not UK.
EXCLUDE Other named Communities from GLOBAL or include them all - make it plain which.
6 Retain Locations somehow - allow users to creature their own Index (Home, Mill, Foxton Wood, etc) thus saving the laborious need to enter location details every single time.
7 Allow HTML Text to be retained in descriptions (projects mostly) through Edits. Allow restricted HTML text in comments and Ob. descriptions, but particularly <a ref and so avoid terribly, sometimes over-spillingly long, URLs
8 Improve Search - allow a specific search for Observations (find all Obs (only) of Phytolacca acinosa for example) And for precise occurrences like “gooseneck”
9 Update dictionaries - this is imperative as we observe more and more rare varieties
10 Bring back Social Points shows those who engage with users or the system or add agreements to be seen as ‘valuable’ as those with high Score Icons
11 Sort Enlarge Picture remove Zoom? Allow Cycling through Observation pictures when enlarged
12 Next & Previous buttons - bring back Next and Previous clicks when browsing Carousels
13 Fix the Reputations algorithm. Where sometimes the score rating is not balanced - may apply mostly to Experts and Knowledgeables
14 Modify quizzes, REMOVE, test, revise and replace the Quizzes
15 Allow Pages search in Gallery view - ;‘Go to Page 9’, say. Some galleries have 40 pages. We must start only at the beginning and then allowed only First, Next and Previous
16 Allow us to Follow (and UNfollow, a user
17 Allow PREVIEW of Observation detail before ‘publishing’
18 Devise ways to nurture newcomers - linked to Items 3 and 16 (above)
19 Review the way Changes links take us to Comments, so that the link takes us TO the comment.
Perhaps Colour the relevant Panel in the old way.
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