Posted by:
sheshanaga
at Sun Dec 31 19:03:15 2006 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by sheshanaga ]
Makes sense to me. Just one more fact to go into the never-ending knowldge base.
I was contemplating creating a wiki of some sort where little blurbs of info like this can be stored and searched. Sure, most everything can be answered in the forum, but for one, you have to wait for a response, and most likely you end up with several conflicting answers. Secondly, as constant reader of the Kingsnake forum, I can attest that you must weed through the "my cornsnake just barfed-what do I do" posts 5x a week. I'm not complaining, but it seems that a centralized reference is called for that might make way on the forum for newer topics.
I also realize that nearly everyone who sells corns has a care sheet available, but again you run into the missing data / conflicting data situation all over again. As a newbie, you tend to accept what you read as gospel, and as an educated newbie (the most dangerous kind) I can state as fact that everyone has both correct and startling incorrect information on their care sheets.
Books are no better. I have no less than seven books dedicated to only cornsnakes. They are all along the lines of "Keeping a happy pet" and few have little usefull information once you get past the "set up your tank" phase. True they all go as far as getting you through such complicated processes as breeding corns, but how many newbies even have that in mind?
I myself have recently gone through an ordeal of trying to figure out what to do about pinworms in an adult snow that I just got. Even my vet could come up with no definative answer. He pulled out two giant texts that he used in college, and each one contradicted the other. One said they were very common and needed no treatments, and the other said that they were rare and most likely would end in death. WTF? In this instance, I received my most valuable data from friends and the internets.
I think that an active, user-populated and moderated wiki might just be the answer. Data could be stored, debated and verified by any user at any time. Better still, the data could be searched at any time, eliminating the down time between posting a question and awaiting (a potentially) inaccurate response via the forum.
Sorry for the long post, but this lack of info thing in regards to herps has really got me po'd.
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Knowledge base wiki - cornsnakes - sheshanaga, Sun Dec 31 19:03:15 2006