Perennial Discussions

Permies is a place for perennial discussions. We have threads that are still running from 10 years ago, long after the OP (Original  Poster) has fixed the problem they started the thread about. This is not a question and answer forum, where a question is asked, it is answered, and it goes away. In the future someone with a similar problem may search for a solution and find the thread. Some of the answers that are not relevant to the OP may be relevant for them. Because of that, replies tend to be all kinds of related solutions, not necessarily specific for the OP's parameters, but they may be relevant for someone in the future, who has different parameters, and can still learn from the thread.

What do you do about answers that are not relevant? Ignore them, or thank them nicely, and see if you can politely word why, so maybe the next person knows a few more of your parameters.

An example, I don't recall which thread I started that I was dealing problems with my brush cutter. Someone said "I use a scythe." If it had mattered, I may have said "Thank you for the idea! I'm disabled and on bad days can't even lift my scythe, and I have 4 acres to cut, so I really need my brush cutter to work right." so that maybe he could have given me a more focused answer. It didn't matter, so I ignored it. But in the future, someone may say "Whoa, I never thought of using a scythe where the brush cutter can't get to due to the slope!" And THAT is EXACTLY what Permies is about, giving ideas to people that help them find solutions that fit their parameters, sometimes many years from now.

So relax if you are getting answers you can't use, be nice and realize that someone else may be able to use them, and that is what a perennial discussion forum is set up to do.  

Once in a while, someone posts a question, and gets a response that is tangential to what they asked, then the OP replies by being bossy and telling people that they shouldn't post tangential things, and to limit replies to certain parameters. That kind of response is not nice, and is a violation of the publishing standards.  A person doesn't gain editorial control of a thread, just because they were the first one to post to it. Telling other people what they can or can't write about is a great way to lose apples.

Sometimes an OP tries to phrase a question in a way that discourages open discussion of all available options. That is not an approach that fits in well with the nature of this site.

Because this is a site for perennial discussions, we don't allow discussion in the main forums about moderators, moderation actions, forum software, or errors of staff, policy, or bots.  Discussions about those topics are limited to the tinkering forum.

People come to permies to read high quality content, not to read that last month the moderators didn't approve a post, or that if someone posted what they really wanted to post that the moderators wouldn't approve it.

Another thing that isn't helpful to perennial discussions are posts that I think of as fluff. "Wow! Thanks for posting", or "I do the same thing".

I so agree with what Pearl Sutton and Joseph Lofthouse have said.

We do some out-side the box things on our property. Sometimes I would make a suggestion, and Hubby would immediately say how impractical and impossible it was. It made me feel like saying, "Then solve your own d---- problem - don't bother asking me!" However, that also doesn't solve the problem. It took a lot of training, but Hubby's now much better able to see how some of my *really* weird suggestions, actually lead to a solution that *does* work and *is practical*. That's what "brainstorming" is all about! And it's one of the things I *love* about permies.

However, there are times when a thread OP asks a question and someone further down adds a tangent that takes off. I was guilty of one such occasion, and the OP actually saw the benefit of expanding the topic a little and changed its title to be broader and more inclusive - it's now a "one-stop shopping of buying, fitting and using" the tool in question. Other times, the tangent really deserves its own thread. We can do that here on permies - hit report and kindly ask staff if they can move the tangent and give it an appropriate name. This can be time-consuming, so we try to save that tool for situations that really benefit from it.

As someone using a *really* old computer running old software (and aware that I'm by *no* means the only or the oldest!), I really appreciate it when I don't have to try to search through 20 threads to get the answer to a question I think is obvious, but each thread has only covered the elephant's ear, or the elephant's tail, or the elephant's big toe. Remember, just because you thought an idea was so obvious you'd already thought about it and rejected it before asking your question, the next poster can't read your mind, and doesn't know what's "obvious" to someone and it may not be obvious to the next reader, as Pearl commented about the scythe in her post. I had *no* idea how big a difference there is between a "stamped scythe" and the type made like quality Japanese knives when I first learned about permaculture. There will always be people who've learned things that I haven't or haven't learned things I grew up with - let's leave lots of room for all those people to find a better way to live through permies.

This is one of the things that drew me to Permies. This is also a good opportunity to mention the idea of a place where gentle souls can have a discussion. In many forums, there are many loudmouths who bully everyone around for whatever reason. Even if you are not a bully yourself, you must do a certain amount of posturing just to be heard. Some people seem to enjoy that type of stress. Some people do not. Permies is a sanctuary for many people where they can leave that stress elsewhere and relax and talk. Many of these people have very good ideas. Even if they know nothing, they can learn from others, and then one day have good ideas of their own. None of this can happen if someone shuts them down and runs them off. Imagine a new person makes their first post, believing they're being helpful, and they are immediately made to feel bad. Why would this person stick around? Permies is the electronic version of permaculture. How do plants and animals grow to their full potential, if you are mean to them, and only take and give what you want, or if you are nice to them and do all you can to help them along?

Hi,
this is something I wish I had known from the beginning.
I think it's Nancy or Beau who links old threads to new questions, and I see how useful it is.
The information is so scattered that the only way for most people to find answers is simply asking, but these fine staff people try to address it to old threads where the most important things has been said, and more can be added for the sake of completeness.

A good project for this site could be to take some of these "big fat" threads and convert it to a "short and comprehensive" thread that we could point to in case of new questions, and elaborate upon.

Abraham Palma wrote:A good project for this site could be to take some of these "big fat" threads and convert it to a "short and comprehensive" thread that we could point to in case of new questions, and elaborate upon.

That sounds like a fun project.

Maybe you would enjoy doing a project like that.

Abraham Palma wrote:I think it's Nancy or Beau who links old threads to new questions, and I see how useful it is.

Something always worth checking is the "Related Threads" at the bottom of each thread. That is bot generated then staff curated, making it an interesting resource.

The search functions are always useful too. I tend to end up reading most of the threads it pulls up on a subject I'm interested in. I do learn tangential information too, and often that ends up being the most useful part to me.

Abraham Palma wrote: "big fat" threads ... to a "short and comprehensive" thread.

Good call, Abraham!

In reality, there are many instances of this. Probably behind every well-curated, succinct, and info-dense thread is a dozen or more threads where the concepts have been endlessly poked and prodded from different angles. It takes intentionality, energy, and time. But it is part of what makes Permies work. And part of why Permies works this way is because that is the way Paul works.

And, Anne is right.  As an all-volunteer site, there is no sure path to attaining this well-curated, succinct, and info-dense thread on the subject you seek - apart from pursuing its curation and completion oneself. That doesn't mean you have to do it all, but it does mean that if you're the one who wants to see it exist, you're probably the best candidate to spearhead the effort and keep the conversation going.

Do you have an example of a topic you'd like to see curated like this?

Yes, indeed.

One thing that took me time to realise is dryland gardening, since it works very much differently in desert and humid climates. What works in Marseille has zero chances in Malaga. So desertic drylands is one thing and humid drylands is another. Hugels are a very bad idea in desert, and so are raised beds.
Another one  that 'm still uncertain is about fertilising. Apparently, we can grow things without applying fertilizers, they just become smaller and give less yields but on the other hand the yield comes cheap. Well, the rules when fertilizers are applied are very much different than when wild growing. Spacing, competition, works differently when plants provide for themselves.
This is something people don't explain. Most of the advice assumes that you are irrigating and fertilizing your crops and that you live in a mostly humid climate. It requires an experienced master to give proper advice based on the OP circumstances.

The "Perennial Discussion" policy is one of my favorite things about Permies. On so many forums, if you create a new thread about something, they will tell you "There is a search bar, use it." So then you use the search bar to find the thread that originally talked about what you wanted to talk about. But if you post in that thread, you will instantly be criticized for "necromancing." For some reason, continuing a discussion from the past and bringing it up to the top is seen as a bad thing. Darned if you do, darned if you don't. They have evolved rules that are contrary to the very notion of a "discussion board." All in the name of saving a few kilobytes of server space, or something.

Perennial discussions are much better, and I think they are well-adapted to the discussion board medium.

Abrahm said, "Another one  that 'm still uncertain is about fertilising. Apparently, we can grow things without applying fertilizers

That can be easily accomplished with soil building, using compost tea, and growing mushrooms.

https://permies.com/t/120453/Great-Wood-Chips

https://permies.com/t/125311/leaf-mold-awesome

https://permies.com/t/211238/composting/easiest-compost-tea-liquid-fertilizer

https://permies.com/t/181240/compost-tea-high-tech

https://permies.com/t/130113/mushroom-noob

Dr. Bryant Redhawk's Soil Series:

https://permies.com/wiki/redhawk-soil

Lovely, Anne! Kudos for all the relevant links, that's precisely the behaviour I was praising.

I mentioned this because I listened to one of the Food Soil Web webinars where they explained how to ammend soil with active compost tea, and how the plants themselves are creating the sugars that feed the microbes that feed minerals and pretty much everything to the plants, so you really don't need to use fertilizers at all.
But when you grow using this technique, suddenly much of the advices you receive for growing in traditional ways no longer applies.

( I didn't know about mushrooms as amendments, seems like another thing that may be useful in humid climates, not in desert ones)

Another one who talks at length about this issue is David the Good, every time he lectures about how different it is to grow things in Florida from much of the advice you are usually given.
If I am making a permaculture project, first step should be to understand my local conditions, water sources, climate, wind patterns, soil structure, acidity, wildlife, fire hazard, resources accesibility, etcetera. Next I follow a guide on how to grow tomatoes, from a gardener that I don't know the location or the climate, and I fail miserably because whatever made it successful in that piece of land doesn't work in mine.

In Mathematics, when you learn a theorem, first thing you have to learn is where exactly this theorem is valid. Sometimes it is valid only for real numbers, sometimes it is in a Reichmann's space. 'Always' is not a valid condition. But in classroom you are never allowed to say the theorem without saying the exact conditions where you can use it.

I guess that if I were to remake some of these threads, first thing I'd do is to state clearly the conditions where these techniques were tried, where it works and where it doesn't. But I fear that that can become boring to read. And I'd be writing this on hearsay, since I have actually little field experience compared to the average permie, and most of what I know is arid mediterranean. I guess I can open a thread and let you all help to improve it and edit it as much as it needs from feedback.

Abraham Palma wrote:...
In Mathematics, when you learn a theorem, first thing you have to learn is where exactly this theorem is valid. Sometimes it is valid only for real numbers, sometimes it is in a Reichmann's space. 'Always' is not a valid condition. But in classroom you are never allowed to say the theorem without saying the exact conditions where you can use it.

I guess that if I were to remake some of these threads, first thing I'd do is to state clearly the conditions where these techniques were tried, where it works and where it doesn't. But I fear that that can become boring to read. And I'd be writing this on hearsay, since I have actually little field experience compared to the average permie, and most of what I know is arid mediterranean. I guess I can open a thread and let you all help to improve it and edit it as much as it needs from feedback.

I don't know much about mathematics, but I think I understand what you mean.

In my opinion it is the best thing you can do, to explain the circumstances, as 'exact' as you can. That isn't boring. If you write it like a story, it reads like a story. With permaculture it's always 'it depends ...'. Circumstances are very important to know.

You can start your own thread telling all about your place (land, garden). And if you like to know about how other Permies do it, and about their circumstances, you just ask them to write about that in their comments.

I saw someone say a line I liked, that relates to this thread "a sense that we are corporately building a knowledge base for whomever might follow behind us. "
I 100% agree   :D