To find out more about this new project,
please go here.
If we were to carefully dissect
GuppyLabs today, using what tools we have
at hand, we would see something like this.
We are an international web-based
community of guppy enthusiasts. We have an
board of directors to make executive decisions,
and are made out of two parts: a quarterly
e-bulletin and a discussion forum.
Our efforts to publish quarterly
bulletin issues have yielded great results.
We, all of us, are lucky to have found a formula
and a medium to print some information that
is found nowhere else, free of charge, advertisement
free; just guppy information, simple and pure.
GuppyLabs is an all-volunteer organization
and a good complement to what guppy information
sites and forums available on the web.
While our technical writing
is a great reference guide for those guppy
enthusiasts interested in the technical detail
of guppy rearing, and we are proud of these
articles, our interviews, our country reports,
and news articles is what really broadens
the appeal of the bulletin. Our intent is
to continue into the future with this e-bulletin
format as long as we can. But we need help.
We can translate Portuguese,
Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Mandarin, German,
Finnish, Danish, and maybe others into English.
Writers should not let language barriers stop
them from submitting your articles for the
e-bulletin.
Most of our technical articles
are summaries of what is available in scientific
journals. The fact that we do not use strict
copyright protocols, we hope offends none.
After all, we are not charging to have access
to this information or claiming as our own.
As for participation or “membership”
in this web-based community, most of our readers
are not “members”, if you define
members as registered forum members. Our previous
seven bulletin issues have received a total
of at least 110,000 hits in less than two
years. Most people that read it are not registered
members of the forum. For a bulletin of such
specific subject, we think that this number
of hits is impressive.
Our forum is a small forum and
most members do not participate. We estimate
that there are between 30-40 readers (between
members and guests) that visit our forum on
a regular basis, but most do not post. In
fact, our forum is all too quiet most of the
time these days. We have no discussion groups
yet, no moderators or any real structure per
se. So there is plenty of room for improvement,
and we are working on that.
Our board approved a motion
to ask for voluntary one-time donations for
the purpose of purchasing a USB microscope
that can be shared amongst interested participants.
The objective is to build a collection of
close-up photographs of guppies, with the
purpose of illustrating guppy anatomy for
specific purposes, including for aiding in
the discussions about the inheritance of such
anatomical features in modern strains. If
interested in finding our more about this
effort, please go here.
Editors
