How come there are so few plant files on Gardenality?

Answer #1 · Gardenality.com's Answer · This is a VERY good question, Daniel. And, as one of the co-creators and founders of Gardenality, I'm happy to have the opportunity to provide you with an answer and explanation you might appreciate.

Gardenality was launched in late March of 2011. So, at this time, the site is just a month or so out from launch. At time of launch, to look "big" or whatever, Gardenality could have had 80,000 plant files in it's database that were full of information. All we as the developers had to do was copy information and data from other websites and import them into the Plant File Database on Gardenality. This is fairly simple to do for those who know how. There are two very good reasons why we didn't want to do this, as I will explain below.

1) - Reliability and Accuracy. If we had just randomly copied content from various other gardening websites, which have no system in place to ensure that the most updated and accurate information is posted on their website, Gardenality would have been full of inaccurate and incorrect information in its Plant Files. We are such perfectionists that we couldn't allow this to happen. And we took further measures to ensure long term that the Gardenality's plant files would contain the most updated and accurate information you'll find anywhere on the Internet. How did we do that? Well, since we knew that Gardenality would be a member-driven website, in which most of the information uploaded to the site would be done so by its members, we built in a Member Ranking and Voting System that would serve long term to keep all content and data on the site as updated and accurate as is humanly possible. Simply explained, any content that is added to a Gardenality Plant File must receive Approval by way of "votes" from other members before it goes live on the website. And, even when it does go live, all content remains subject to correction on an ongoing basis by the members.

The higher your level of rank in Gardenality, the more voting points you get. With these increased number of voting points comes more power you can use to approve new, "pending" content that is being added to Gardenality by other members.

If you would like to know more about how the Ranking and Voting systems in Gardenality work, visit this page:

http://www.gardenality.com/Articles/596/Gardenality/Gardenality-Members/Member-Rankings/default.html


2) - Member Credits and Recognition - Had we simply copied information from other sites to have 80,000 plant files on Gardenality at launch, then you and other members could not receive lifetime credit and recognition for having been the "Original Creator/Planter" of a Plant File. All of the content would have already been there and, as already mentioned, it might not have been very accurate. We also had another option we considered. We could have just uploaded 80,000 plants files that contained no information and let our members fill in the info over time. The problem with this is that visitors who land in Gardenality from Google searches would be upset to find that there was no information on many of the plant files! It would have made Gardenality look like a ghost garden...and lots of people run from ghosts:-) Besides, as you may have already noticed and experienced, we think it's fun to build plant files in Gardenality, and when you do it you score lots of points, which means you move higher up in the ranks and get more voting points:-) If you would like to see instructions that are helpful in adding and building a new Plant File in Gardenality, visit this page:

http://www.gardenality.com/Articles/3/Gardenality/Gardenality-Plants/How-To-Build-Add-A-New-Plant-File/default.html

As the creators of Gardenality, one thing we believe is that a great, solid website cannot be built overnight. The Gardenality Guys (our development team) began development of the site in October of 2008. It was nice to finally release it in March of 2011, so you and other gardeners from around the world could experience it and help us to make it the best interactive gardening website on the internet.

Hope this answered your question. If you have any ideas as to how the Plant Files in Gardenality can be improved do let us know. Thanks again for your great question!

At your service, Brent)

Answer #2 · Addilyn Daniel's Answer · I too had wondered why there were not that many plant files. Now I see why and can appreciate the reasoning and intentions behind it. I will be helping to add plant files of native North American plants to your database when I have the time to do so.)