BANNED FOR LIFE from DPReview for coordinate here how to get around DPR policies LOL

LOL

One gets the sense that they had that move lined up well in advance and were poised to announce it is soon as the "DPR is closing" missive launched into the ether.

If that's the case, they and other staff likely had more lead time than the rest of us, so it's likely that at least some of them have scouted out alternative positions that we don't happen to know about (yet).

So you effectively got a 5-day suspension?

I feel this way too. And, what that says to me is that Amazon Bosses discussed with DPR management the closing well in advance of the announcement and, IMO may have offered the DPR site to management for a small/nominal fee. BUT, I also believe that the site was losing enough cash that management decided to decline to purchase or couldn’t get financing. But, that is my utter speculation. No facts, just a guess.

I don’t think they’ve hidden the fact that this decision was made some time ago, it seems to have been part of a wave of widespread cuts Amazon have been making in recent months.

As for offering the site for sale to anyone, I’m not sure this was ever something that Amazon considered. It’s their property and remains so. They may well feel it still has more value to them in the long term, even in its shuttered form, than anyone is likely to pay for it.

you mean banned for a week then, glad we can just move on with the new forums and forget this nonsense

Humans. We are an erratic lot.

Somebody posted a link to a similar thread on DPRforum and, surprise, they were complaining about exactly the same sort of bias as people are talking about here. I suspect that, regardless of how moderation was handled in the dying days, people would not be happy. Their forum has been unceremoniously and abruptly killed.

My impression from my time on dpreview is that some people have very strongly held views about some things relating to photography and could be rather aggressive about those views. On an online forum where you do not get real time, non-verbal, feedback those strongly held opinions can lead to less than optimal outcomes and perhaps hard feelings towards moderators.

FWIW, I've not had any issues with moderation at dpreview.

Also FWIW, I participate on a forum where political discussion is allowed. It can get fractous and there have been a few bans for people who let things get personal. The site owner has most likely made a decision to moderate with a very light touch and made it work on the most contentious possible subject, so even handed moderation is possible. I suspect it takes a lot of effort on the part of site management to get to some level of consistency.

The staff got the news at the end of January, but the public announcement was made almost 2 months later, so they had enough time to make a move.

Chris and Jordan seem thrilled about moving to PetaPixel in that video.

Well, they started advertising it as an officially approved forum on the old place a few days ago... that being said, I am not trying to throw shade on anyone in particular, just alert people that they may get "banned" in favour of promoting a forum the old mods are now running...

Both of the forums I am already a mod on, we have banned politics as it has caused, more than once, the loss of a significant quantity of members. I would not recommend it be allowed on here.

In an an article in LuLa on the demise of DPR, the writer pointed out that Amazon bought DPR at a time when millions of compact and P&S cameras were flying off the shelves and before phones were any real competition to the camera market. That portion of the P&S camera basically died as phones got better and the whole camera market has been in contraction for last 10 years. So while it might have made financial sense for Amazon to own DPR at one time that is no longer true today. Seems to make sense and Amazon is a publicly held company, not a non profit charity for Amazon to close it down.

This is what happens when you post a FF camera on m43 forum and mod Tom C.... doesnt like you :-) LOL

I am not in any way suggesting political discussion should be allowed (or should not). I'm just using it as an example of what good moderation can achieve.

Interesting. I have not been on dpreview that long, so I don't have any real sense of what the moderation is like. I don't know how exactly you would go about maintaining uniformity across moderators. I do know that on the site I am talking about, there are multiple moderators involved in any banning.

I saw your post and I saw his. I thought he was joking when he wrote about a ban. For heavens sake what was the problem with your post? What a pathetic jerk.

He was amongst the the most incoherent and hypocritical Mods on DPR. Always saying there was no other worthwhile format other than M43, whilst he used Panasonic FF for his photography.

I remember him posting a comparison set that was shot in a theatre. We could see some high ISO M43 shots with the format stretched to its limits compared to a Canon FF shot. Even in the small shots in the thread, the Canon shots were clearly superior, regarding shadow detail. But he insisted the M43 shots were better. Did he really believe what he wrote? Or was he playing to the gallery?

On one forum, I am the only mod, but I use a moderate tone and when things start to get out of hand, I calm it down, ask the members to please play nice. This is a "calm" forum anyway, so rarely any drama. If anything continues to get out of hand, a quick PM asking them to be reasonable and to please look at the forum rules. I have yet had to ban any member (outside of Spam posts, which are a nuisance)

On another forum, we are three mods. People are more prone to getting into discussion of topics that are not allowed as it is a rather large forum. Incidents happen more often. Usually, if there is a question about a thread or post, we have a section of the forum that only Mods can access, you pose the question there about if they agree if a post is trespassing a rule or not. Consensus rules. If a post is blatantly in violation of the rules, we nuke the post or thread and PM the person, if it continues, they get a temporary ban. Outside of spammers, I have never had to ban someone forever, even though being the target of abuse in a post or PM. It's called having thick skin and understanding that sometimes people are having a bad day/week/year. Granted, there are some people out there that cannot be reasoned with, but I have yet to come across one that does not respond well to a kindly worded PM.

At the same time, a mod needs to be able to admit when they screwed up and have the humility to apologize. Mods are mods, not gods.

That's why I say that any mod who is ban-hammer happy, or takes sides in a discussion where two groups are pitted against another on a topic, is not a good mod. Mods should be neutral, otherwise you get a toxic "school bully / clique" like environment. I have seen this on more than one forum, but DPR was typical, you had groups of people that the Mod likes (his/her yes men/women) and those people the Mods do not like who get banned (or harassed by the mod, even) for even simple, inoffensive things, or having a differing opinion.