Hi Melody,

Thanks for picking up on the positive aspects of this thread. From my perspective, it is something that works really well. I try and publish 80-90% new articles in the BLA magazine and, as far as I am concerned translated articles are new (although that is a slightly self serving definition).

I have been able to get the French and German groups to participate and have a special on Micropoecilia in the next edition which is around 35 pages and covers all aspects of Micropoeclia. It has been translated from German.

What a wonderful find! We still struggle to source detailed information on Micropoecilia in North America... or at least anywhere I've looked. I usually send people to the UK for it, in fact.

I think the ALA should get involved in this, I know we have multilingual members. All clubs should be involved for that matter, it would be an amazing resource for everyone.

Maybe you need a "Take one, leave one" policy .

Information breeds enthusiasm and enthusiasm inspires people to participate. Any hobby gets boring without something new. We have so much left to learn, but we're running out of places to learn it from.

Your efforts will result in an invaluable resource and the contribution should be commended and encouraged.

At the moment the system is very informal and is currently just in trial, but is something like this.

1./ Each editor deposits their magazine in draft form as soon as possible before it is published.

2./ If any article is of interest then the receiving Editor will contact the donating Editor for permission to publish.

3./ The donating Editor gets the required permissions and sets the requirements for publishing an article (i.e. credit being given to the donating group / author, the provision of a number of copies of the magazine and the date from when the article can be published).

4./ The donating Editor provides the article in electronic form (article and photographs).

5./ The receiving Editor translates the article etc and complies with the requirements for publishing.

My opinion of the system is that it works well and I believe that this system could be the saviour of the international magazines.

As a volunteer Editor, it is such hard work to get submissions and after a while you just get ground down by all of the complaints and give up (I went through this stage between January and June 2010).

If we can get a ready supply of fresh articles then the Editors job becomes easier and more tolerable.

A 'take one / leave one' policy might be a good idea, but I know from my own experience that it kind of ebbs and flows. Every now and then you get inundated with articles and then they dry up. Some days you are keen and other days you just wish you had never taken the role on. A 'take one / leave one' policy would not aid this process and an 'honesty box' system seems to make more sense to me.

By the way, the ALA are already involved in this. The BLA have just published an article on the ALA Convention that featured in your magazine and the ALA have just published an article on a trip to Guatemala that featured in the BLA magazine.

Your committee / management team work very hard (on a voluntary basis) to give you guys value for money, just like every committee around the world, often in ways that none of us know about.

That is why I felt that I had to step into this thread.

Trading has been done, but I like the idea of making it official, tangible and reliable, as you are doing. Sounds like a great system!

Maybe we could all collaborate on an article about writing articles.

I hear ya on the frustration, and I only have to find pictures! Sourcing content is a nightmare I'm sure and our editor works wonders every time.

I'm working away on the cover of the next issue, so members should have it sometime soon.

I would like to create an online resource for Editors, but one step at a time.

I am happy to help you with a picture or two if you have any particular requirements.

Thank you, and that goes both ways of course.

It's not complicated. You just write the article and Email it to the editor (Bill Allen) and he does the rest!

Darrell

Unfortunately, most of us are not very successful in breeding the quality livebearers that some, like D. Mefford produces. I barely have been able to keep the quality up on the fish that I've had from time to time [maybe not as ruthless a culler as I chould have been], and I suppose I didn't have the 'eye' as to 'good' livebeares--that's why I don't write about them. Those with success, and who have developed desirable strains are unfortunately in the minority in the ALA and therefore this lack forces those few to be the major contributors, , unless people want to hear about the lack of success of fish keepers.
Besides, I learn more by reading what the good breeders do...

I must admit that I am one of those people who merely keeps a colony of guppies and otherwise I keep mostly single species breeding colonies of wild type goodeids and Limias. The subject of selective breeding simply does not enter into what I do since any selection on my part makes the fish deviate from the diverse wild strain. When keeping wild types, selective breeding weakens the strain, it does not make it stronger. If I wanted to take a wild and develop a fin shape or stronger color or whatever, the selection of the mating fish would start to come into play but it would be done with the understanding that the resulting fish could never be as hardy as the original fish were.
We are not all capable breeders with an eye to fancy strains the way Darrel and similar people are. For fancy strains, those are the people with the hands on knowledge.

It's a completely mistaken notion that so-called "fancy" strains of livebearers are more difficult to keep or are somehow "weaker" than species strains in the aquarium. Hobbyists far too often blame "genetics" and "hybridizing" for what are in truth extrememly poor, lazy or cheap husbandary practices. The so-called strength of species has to do with the abuse they take in many colony set-ups and the fact that grey pretty much always looks like grey. Just look at the photos of these fish or at recent show entries and one does not see the best Mother Nature by herself produces in the wild - but poor, underfed, undersized fish that are the product of a so-called "superior" unmonitored natural breeding process being copied in the aquarium. Of course, it is impossible to copy nature's highly selective breeding process in a relatively small aquarium and where weak, small and underfed individuals that would die or never breed in the wild or given a new lease on breeding in the typically unselected colony. Wild strains end up declining or being accepted as being far smaller and even uglier than they are - thanks to completely nonsensical notions of a breeding "selection" process. In captivity we must select with even greater care than nature allows or does as we use a closed, genetically limited system. Fancy livebearers may show the lack of fine husbandry and poor or non-existent selection of breeders sooner than wild strains but the process and negative effects are exactly the same. The overcoming of this myth would be a boone for the livebearer hobby and certainly the neglected and even sigmatized "fancy" livebearer hobby. The ALA fails the "fancy" heritage of the livebearer hobby. It is essentially a wild strain club.