When a question is brought forth about something being difficult, it's understandable that responses reflect personal perspectives and preferences. It is always helpful to look at external reasons for why questions arise, problem-solve about how to navigate things successfully, and to clarify whether an issue is local or global, if partly from a lack of familiarity that has a quick fix, or a larger practice that has no easy alternative available - even something that is just not open for wider exploration. There is a healthy range of all those things here.
What might still be missing may be two-fold. On one hand, everyone has experience with the dis-ease of having something pointed out, walking a bit in new shoes to discover what its cause or effects might be, and dealing with concerns that change would lead to a loss of enjoyment, control, or mastery over already well-earned and accepted levels of habit and familiarity.
On the other hand, it is especially at that juncture of old and new perspectives where solutions may blossom that benefit everyone. The bouncy steps heard from the approach of new ideas can be disarming to us all when miles and miles have already been gained into established paths, and the paths themselves become a source of easiness. But it can also lead to the happy prospect of paving some new, yet familiar, means to the same ends - to open up new vistas, and sometimes embrace enjoyable innovations we may not even yet recognize as being as familiar as they can be - especially when there are already similar avenues readily available and in place to explore.
It can be hard, and even unwise at times, to embrace brand new ideas or unfamiliar people or paths without deeper contemplation. But it's not about exerting unwavering control, its about widening established footpaths to welcome and accommodate a closer alignment of traffic in a narrow space, and to benefit from the desirable increase in range and number of friendly, informative, and enthusiastic participants. We were all once new here, and each update that makes our paths a little easier for everyone to traverse is a great achievement from and for us all.
In an even more publicly oriented perspective, when people are interested in information about plants, this is one of the top five places for them to take a look, by virtue of ATP's well-won rankings in the major search engines. That is huge, and it means quite a lot of people trust they will find relevant information here without needing an exhaustive amount of instruction, training, searching or assistance. In the shared venue of the database and its sub-categories, renowned external data is partnered with exquisitely flexible crowd-sourced input to provide unparalleled levels of depth and breadth in a poignantly user-friendly format. Changes to the database, through both programming and uploading, is like a life-source.
A next, and significant layer of experience for newcomers to any site follows when initial public browsing leads to membership, participation, and contribution. If footpaths might in some preferred routes resemble either a profusion of signs, or the opposite, a kind of "last gas station for 500 miles" long trip, especially at first blush, it may not hurt much to test drive or even adopt some available kinds of spacing to make our ongoing journey together even more pleasurable for everyone, without significantly compromising anyone's ability to enjoy and learn.
