Disease Journal Sub Forum?

[Miss Wiggle]

was talking with another member about this so thought i'd post it and see what you guys think.

as your all probably sick of hearing i'm currently struggling with HITH, I had thought if I manage to treat it sucesfully I was going to write up a sort of journal of what I did each day, how the treatment went etc and post it in the cichlids section as cichlids are susceptible to it and I thought it'd be useful info for the people in that forum or newbies browsing when considering keeping cichlids. anyway we got to thinking if that could be expanded into some sort of searchable database with other people sharing they're experiences with certain diseases this could be really useful to people.

we all know that not many people post in the emergencies forum and I think enhancing the information we have on diseases on the site could reduce the number of threads and questions and reduce the burden on those who diligently wade through every thread.

the easiest way i could think of it to be done is as a sub forum in emergencies, mod controlled as the fish profiles are so each new entry is checked by a mod before it's posted and then it's posted as a closed topic. So the only moderation required would be checking new journals that are put forward for it, and maybe answering reports if people dispute information (although they shouldn't really as I would intend this to be people reflecting they're own experiences not talking about scientific facts or what is right/wrong, just what they did and what the outcome was). If it's a sub forum it'd be easily searchable just on the regular forum search, then people could search using the symptoms they've seen in they're fish etc. Not sure if it would be nescessary to have a set standard format but maybe some standard information that must be included like common and scientific names of the disease, name/active ingredient in the medication used, list of symptoms, basically anything that people would be wanting to search for.

with everything on my plate right now I haven't much time to put into this or much experience with diseases, if I manage to treat oscar I could write something up for HITH however that's about all I've time for so I'd have to leave this up to you guys if you wanted to persue it.

 

[andywg]

This seems a pretty good idea.

It would be great if the journals could be tagged in some way with common symptoms, so someone can search in the symptoms and then see the most common diseases. They can then read through a history of the ailment and see if it pans out how their problem is going and compare it to other problems with similar symptoms.

But I do like it. If someone posts in the emergency thread, most times they get some advie and you never hear what happened next, so the journal thing is a good idea.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

It would be great if the journals could be tagged in some way with common symptoms, so someone can search in the symptoms and then see the most common diseases. They can then read through a history of the ailment and see if it pans out how their problem is going and compare it to other problems with similar symptoms.

if that's possible it would be great, all i thought is if you do a journal list the common symptoms (or at least the ones you had) and then they would be picked up just by a standard forum search.

alteratively if the posts were structured with the title being the common and scientific name of the disease and the sub title could be a list of symptoms so you can see at a glance looking at the forum and open the journals for the likely diseases.

 

[geo7x]

good idea wiggle i know there have been a few "A-Z of diseases" threads but none of them really did very well plus the disease youre looking for can be hard to find as it has a lot of chatty bits.

But with this it would give an in depth journal of a disease and someone could just search for "whitespot" or something in the sub-forum and it would come up with a load.

Also andys idea of the tagging thing would make it even better, so if people are unsure of whats wrong with their fish they can just go by the symptoms.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

thanks Geo,

I think the main reasons a-z's don't work all that well are that you can't cover each disease in enough detail without making the thread so long it's hard to work with, and that you can't search within them. This is why a sub forum that is searchable, gives plenty of information but isn't so hard to trawl through would work better IMO.

anyway 40 views and only 2 people think it's worthy of a comment?

think back to the last time you had a sick fish, would you have appreciated something like this or not?

 

[geo7x]

thanks Geo,

I think the main reasons a-z's don't work all that well are that you can't cover each disease in enough detail without making the thread so long it's hard to work with, and that you can't search within them. This is why a sub forum that is searchable, gives plenty of information but isn't so hard to trawl through would work better IMO.

anyway 40 views and only 2 people think it's worthy of a comment?

think back to the last time you had a sick fish, would you have appreciated something like this or not?

i agree, at the moment if i had a sick fish the first thing i would do (besides asking someone in chat) is to run a search in the emergencies forum, the trouble with this is that there are alot of useless threads to go through and most of them either end up with "ok i will try that tomorrow" and then no further comment, or if there is any kind of conclusion, its someone just saying that "it died".

And for the above reason i do think that more people should be praising this idea

I think the only thing would be to make sure that the members who make the journals are commited, we dont want any journals with not enough info or no conclusion, however i dont think this would be a problem since i think the members on this forum are generally quite commited if they make a journal, take the planted journals, you dont really see people fed up with their own journal. So, as long as people stay commited (which im sure they would) i think it would do wonders for the members.

Another thing, is that i think if someone started an in-depth journal, then it be more helpful for them as well as others who are searching for symptoms. imo, if someone is to start a journal, then they are far more inclined to list all the details, all to often in the emergency section there are threads started by people with hardly any details, and sadly, by the time they have provided the correct info through prompt from other members, their fish are getting worse, and sometimes have already died.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

my thoughts would be that someone would write a sort of journal after they have finished they're treatment of the disease, when looking through threads in emergencies you do have to wade through a lot of repeated questions on tank sizes, symptoms etc before you get to the real important info. Just to take the example of my problems with oscar at the moment, i've got a current thread running in emergencies with replies and advice from everyone and a fair bit of me getting in a flap and upset as I don't know what to do. That's not a whole lot of use to anyone else dealing with the same problem. However once treatment has finished I can go through that thread, copy and paste the useful bits and edit it into just one thread detailing the syptoms, the treatment, how he responded on different days etc etc. So I don't mean them to be on-going (and therefore have the chances of being inconclusuve) rather that they would be single posts, closed immediately after posting so you don't have chat and questions to go through, just the facts of one persons experiences with the disease.

anyway people don't seem to fussed by this suggestion, i guess aside from the few people who go in there day after day to help others out most people don't care about the emergency forum except when they have to use it.

I'm dissapointed but I won't carry on hounding the point, if it's not wanted it's not wanted!

 

[stang1]

I think it's a great idea.
A lot of people end up with fish emergencies but don't always get the help straight away, sometimes resulting in losing a fish before any help has been given.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

I think it's a great idea.
A lot of people end up with fish emergencies but don't always get the help straight away, sometimes resulting in losing a fish before any help has been given.

thanks

this is what i thought, there's not many people who regularly post in emergencies helping people and they can't be there 24/7, with people from all over the world posting you do find people sometimes won't get a good answer straight away, I've had to wait a day or so to get a decent response before, in that time problems can worsen significantly so i think by increasing the amount and quality of information available to people before they even post we can help.

 

[stang1]

Totally agree!
There's nothing worse than having a poorly fish but not being able to get the help, makes you feel incredibly helpless.
I think it's a great idea to kep the journal as people can also read about successful treatments. One, it gives hope and two, it's nice to know that the owner hasn't lost their fish.

 

[Underwurlde]

Gets my thumbs up.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

thanks andy

mod input anyone?

 

[Arfie]

I'll join the bandwagon too It's a great idea Miss Wiggle

One other benefit would be that there are various methods of treating the same disease and which is best can vary dependant on the tank setup and inhabitants. For example, if every Whitespot (or fungus etc) journal was clumped together in some way, we could all see how other members battled it, what worked for them and what needed changing to fit with our own tanks or simply to make it more effective, it could even give a clue as to the more effective medications out there.

Anything that makes finding vital information easier is a good thing

Arfie

 

[WILDER]

I back it up too, upsets me when you never get to hear if the fish made it or not.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

thanks

any mods looked at this? good idea or rubbish?