Based on what? Certainly neither science nor observation. Any effect from insufficient fertilizer takes months or even a year or more to manifest itself. I don't have the in-depth knowledge of the fine points of fertilization that Ray does, but do have a lot of years of experience in observing (and under-fertilizing) orchids. You have neither.

Also note, correlation does not equal causation. And when drawing conclusions from statistics, if n=1, result is meaningless. With orchids, as diverse as they are,"n" needs to be a LOT larger to draw any maeningful conclusions at all because there are so many variables to confound the result.

in case any of you are wondering - I mean to me it's meaningless - like getting a virtual cookie - but I have been given a virtual infraction because I have given out "bad" advice.

I don't know which I should be more offended by- the fact that my years of studying specific deficiencies in plants means nothing or that new members get treated this way.
I know my advice is spot on but I have annoyed Roberta by giving advice when according to her I have no advice to give

Instead of pointing this out Roberta has taken out her superiority stick and decided to give me a forum infraction.

I come on here, try to help. Give out sound advice that I know will get backed up.

Instead I get questioned on my ability to help and get a forum infraction. Great way to treat a member.

So in future I will unfortunately be giving out bad advice also -who seems to care. According to most on here it won't even make a difference lol

Like feeding tap water, yeah great advice right there

Swimmingorchids, I know Marty gave you a major infraction for your use of language and insults, and promised to ban you altogether if any repetitions occurred. In a subsequent post, you personally attacked me, which should have put you over the limit, but the absence of admins meant you got to stick around longer.

A couple of your posts in the mean time were quite good, despite your relative lack of experience with orchids, so I've been thinking that maybe we've turned a corner here.

Now there's your snide remarks here. Yeah, you're right, is this the way to treat others here? Certainly not, but Roberta has been pretty tactful in her comments. You, not so much.

---------- Post added at 05:56 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:34 PM ----------

I doubt that giving bad advice would bring an infraction flag from anyone - we have all goofed from time to time. Of course, a jerk reply that "drew a card from the ref's pocket" could always bewas later edited.

SwimmingOrchids --- the recommendation about providing fertiliser is quite ok. I see no problem with that.

I think it's the extra sentence after that - ie. 'leaves look a bit underfed' that draws attention. First is - that 'fed' or 'feed' can either relate to usual food (ie. carbohydrate from photo-synthesis) and taking up of fertiliser chemicals. From the photos, it just appears that the orchids aren't suffering from nutrient fertiliser deficiency just yet.

So leaving the last sentence out (ie. leaves look a bit underfed) wouldn't draw that attention.

What Ray is talking about --- ie. snide remarks -- is a tendency of generating snub remarks/comments for insulting, patronising or even baiting somebody - which is poor character form.

Eg. click here - where Ray wasn't even involved in the discussion, and you decided to dish something out on him.

Just for the record, Swimmingorchids received an infraction for profanity that he removed after the infraction was delivered (one CAN edit one's posts but can't make people unsee what was originally written, so a claim of innocence doesn't fly...), NOT for giving bad advice. It's called "gaming the system". However, insulting another Forum contributor is also grounds for an infraction, and that was only partially mitigated.

With sincere apologies to the OP for hijacking the thread.....out of curiosity today, I searched the board for all posts by Swimmingorchids and was shocked to find posts containing extreme profanity that has not been removed, as well as many just of a general insulting, condescending nature, sometimes directed at one person, other times, to the whole board. Too bad, because it's ugly and unpleasant, and will serve to drive (even more) people away.

I, too, am worried that S's remarks are scaring people away from the forum. it was and still is a really nice place for me and i hope it stays that way. and if that means that people need to be given more serious punishments, so be it. i just really can't believe that S continually lurks around the newcomers' comments and hijacks their threads to attack Ray, almost as if he's trying to build up some sort of faction against Ray. abominable.

I'm sincerely sorry that all this has happened. It was really unfortunate that the situation massively escalated in the past 6 weeks, precisely the period when I couldn't come see what was happening on the forum, first due to my vacation, then personal circumstances. Approriate action will be taken today, the posts cleaned up, and steps taken to avoid these sort of situations in the future.


And Swimmingorchids - you've run out of chances to redeem yourself, and you've had way too many of them. You recieved a temporary ban with threats of it becoming permanent, which you didn't take seriously. Well you should have, because that's what's going to happen.

Everyone is entitled to vacation, Camille. I hope it was enjoyable. Welcome back and thank you for all you do here. :bowing

Absolutely agreed!

And to the OP (original poster) of this thread, Lou Reid, I do hope we haven't discouraged you from coming to the board. Please come back with more questions if you have them. Hopefully, nothing like this will happen again.