Aquarium Fish Magazine

[JamesL]

(This was also posted on nano-reef ... just wanted to catch the opinions of people here that might not be on the other forum)

Years back, I ran a web site called the Aquarium Fish Magazine Index which provided an index of all the articles in said magazine spanning it's publishing history (1988-2001 at the time). People would use the index to find past articles on particular subjects (like Angelfish or what-not). I even had the publishers of the magazine semi-supporting me by giving me free subscriptions to give away for anniversaries and such.

(Now I think that magazine has been renamed to Aquarium Fish International, but that is besides the point.)

I took down the web site a few years back when I was totally out of the freshwater/saltwater/pond hobbies.

Well I am back into the hobbies again, and am posting to see if all that index information would be useful to anyone these days. If it is, then I have some ideas to bring it back to the world wide webs.

Since the time of the index, web searches and forum's (like this one) have supplanted the need to use written references quite a lot. I personally do not refer to books much any more for information on questions I have for fish (that is why I am on this site!). But maybe there still are peoples out there that do

Thanks for the feedback!

[Headless_donkey]

My initial reaction was to bring it back ASAP. Information is no good unless it is organized. Then I thought we could some how host it here on ARC like RC does with some articles. Possibly attracting more traffic to our site.

You bring up a good point about printed material and this hobby. I rarely turn to magazines unless they are brand new for information. The problem is the opinions of what techniques are best and the acceptable methods of implementation change. It is hard for print media to keep up with the latest trends. The big question here is, can people even find the magazine you are indexing?

I still think you should talk to starfire, Andrew, about making the index at least a sticky in a forum if not a full fledged page here on ARC.

[+ACampbell]

Years back, I ran a web site called the Aquarium Fish Magazine Index which provided an index of all the articles in said magazine spanning it's publishing history (1988-2001 at the time).

(Now I think that magazine has been renamed to Aquarium Fish International, but that is besides the point.)

My main concern would be is the information still accurate? I found a marine aquarium book that I had when I was going up, and when I was reading through it, I was baffled at how much information was wrong. The hobby has come a log ways since 1988 and we are continually learning more information and better practices.

Also, you mentioned that the publication has been renamed. Does this mean that they are still producing the magazine? Do you have the rights to post the articles from 88-01?

If so, go for it.

[JamesL]

My initial reaction was to bring it back ASAP. Information is no good unless it is organized. Then I thought we could some how host it here on ARC like RC does with some articles. Possibly attracting more traffic to our site.

....

I still think you should talk to starfire, Andrew, about making the index at least a sticky in a forum if not a full fledged page here on ARC.

Good ideas .. and this sorta ties in with some ideas I have for this. While I was not looking for a place to host it (I already have a company to host my software business web site), I was thinking about expanding on the information to include links to web sites (ARC, nano-reef, etc) that also relate to specific "index entries". So say there is a discussion here about how to drill fish tanks. Well then a link to that discussion would be in the index under "Fish Tank Drilling" (or something like that). Thus it would drive traffic towards this site.

In the grand scheme of things I would imagine this being a user driven web site, where people could submit pointers to such things. But the more I type this out, almost sounds like a wikipedia site Which just begs the question would this be a lot of duplication of material already on the web.

Take all of this with a grain of salt .... just ideas I have rumbling around in my head. This could amount to a bunch of time to do that I might not have

You bring up a good point about printed material and this hobby. I rarely turn to magazines unless they are brand new for information. The problem is the opinions of what techniques are best and the acceptable methods of implementation change. It is hard for print media to keep up with the latest trends.

Agreed.

The big question here is, can people even find the magazine you are indexing?

And that is the big catch there. I used to own all those issues I had index... but I have since gotten rid of them. AFM used to have some of their articles on-line, but I can't find them now (in the brief search I did) since that have changed names/web site to Aquarium Fish International. I think the lack of people being able get the magazine also prompted me to think on what other resources could be "indexed".

[JamesL]

My main concern would be is the information still accurate? I found a marine aquarium book that I had when I was going up, and when I was reading through it, I was baffled at how much information was wrong. The hobby has come a log ways since 1988 and we are continually learning more information and better practices.

Also, you mentioned that the publication has been renamed. Does this mean that they are still producing the magazine? Do you have the rights to post the articles from 88-01?

If so, go for it.

Yeah, out of date information would be a problem (if the magazine articles could still be found). Thus making and even stronger point to having pointers to more current information.

But I don't want to detract from current web sites providing good information (like this site).