More little earthquakes at DPR?

A big step forward would to have the threaded view, as has been talked about for some time. The photo threads would be easier to navigate as each picture has its own set of replies. It also might solve the problem of "problematic behaviours" fouling up and making an entire thread ridiculous. Or those who revel in negativity towards others destroying the friendly tone of the picture thread.

A little tweak. On the front page. "Bob's Articles" is much too vague (Who is Bob? We know others do not). It needs the little introduction that you see on the page put underneath.

Cannot think of anything else for now. Everything else is fine. I would be nice to see more participation. Maybe a front page with more articles or links to interesting articles might help. Or maybe a robust tagging system to get Google links to forum posts that are reviewing gear or discussing certain techniques and stuff.

im actually enjoying revisiting Ham radio from 50 years ago on facebook. i was a licensed ham when i was 17yo and owned a top of the line kenwood 520s at the time, i havnt been active in 40 years so im enjoying the posts and images of past but still preasent ham radio gear. and electroninc test equipment i used to own also.

We don't need huge numbers. Anyway, without threaded view, discussions with large numbers of participants are very difficult to manage.
I'm from another generation when photography had a higher status. Even so, I find it difficult to believe that with all the camera/camera phone owners out there, we can't find a useful number who really want to talk more about the images they take than they do about the gear. The first trick is to find and tap into them. The second trick is going to be how to help the owners here survive. A few hundred active participants would be plenty for the forums to manage. Would it be enough for those who have to do the work?

This is a pretty good reply, with more than a grain of truth, in the under article replies, about a subscription model.

the problem with dpr now and pretty much most of the time is troll sales reps, like a thread im engaged in. a nikon shooter comes onto the sony forum with a new a7cii with state of the art AF and says his camera cant focus on a coffee mug handle. so he has deliberatly set the camera up for extreme sports and wonders why the focus point is dancing around and finding the closest focus point within the focus box 🤣🤣 wont share any setup settings, dead givaway of a sales troll.

Well, I posted this reply to the screen shot above.

It did the trick. I can post on DPR without pre moderation again. I just need to be bland.

But to be honest there is not much of interest there anymore.

HAND.

It can be useful at times, for technical questions. I did not asked to be put on pre moderation and the Admin who obviously checked my posting history, saw that there was no reason for this PM.

I am still using the same name, unlike those who use multiple "names" and all the other trickery. They actually use your IP address to see who your are and they have all your old names. In a post I saw a Mod posted a list of "names", all active and owned by the same person. If you are banned, they will ban the new name too, or put the "name" on pre moderation.

The fall in revenue is all about the fact that nobody cares much about photography anymore. The mass market has evaporated. The forums are much less active, than even a few years ago when Amazon bailed out.

I understand there are ways around the IP problem. I did think of using another network to set up an new account, but I could not be bothered.

I wonder what other methods they use, to discover who you are.

Anyway, we are drifting off subject.

I still read and post to DPR on gear matters. Being able to tap into a substantial number of users with the same gear is useful. Digital cameras and menus and processing are complex things. Being able to post questions and get generally useful responses is valuable. It is also useful to get heads up about specific gear. For example, my Sony A7CR requires, IMHO, an evf eyeshade. They aren't available and can't be added in the usual way because of the design of the evf surround. A search of the DPR forum gave me the answer.
Bit image discussion there is hopeless and bogs down in brand rivalry. That's the opportunity for Dprevived. The Photo.

When I google some technical problem, DPR always comes up in the results, often with an answer.

When I got banned for life on Cambridge In Colour I had the dynamic IP, I tried all tricks except VPN ... deleted their cookies ... found a new image place ... of course used another email ... and a couple of other things I've forgotten ... never could get back in ... might try VPN, thanks for the tip!

IP addresses on their own with nothing else mean next to zero because you cannot identify with total certainty who actually used a device at any particular time based solely on an ip address.

An IP address can be allocated to multiple devices on a given network. People also share a given device with other users.

The device danhasleftforum uses is shared by multiple people.

And if someone also used a VPN then that makes it even more difficult to identify who a particular user actually is.

For example -

In the screenshot below where it is claimed all the listed accounts belong to danhasleftforum, there is nothing at all in the listed data that links any of the accounts.

Even the "Shared IP Addresses" are different for every account on the list below.

There are 3 possibilities from the listed data:

1. All the accounts belong to one person.

2. Some of the accounts belong to a single person.

3. None of the accounts belong to more than one person. They are all individually owned by different people.

They match images posted by members in their dpreview posts with images the members have on Flickr and other social media where members use their real names.

I guess, like DPR they use some sort of software or cookies to find out what device is connected to their site. I am sure they can overcome VPN too. In a post I saw on DPR, they were more than certain about multiple accounts.

Now why did you get banned from Cambridge in Colour?

If using solely ip addresses then they cannot be 100% certain.

Without seeing the dpreview post you refer to there is no reason to believe they were certain about multiple accounts owned by a single person.

Anyone with a modem at home can try this quick and simple experiment.

Connect two devices to the modem with WiFi or Ethernet - say a laptop and phone.

Then on each of the two devices go to

www.whatismyipaddress.com

You will see both devices will have been assigned exactly the same ip address.

So multiple accounts with the same ip address might or might not be the same person.

To get back on topic.

How many of you people would be prepared to pay a reasonable subscription to access DPR content?

I personally am prepared to pay a sub, for certain newspapers and magazines that interest me. I am not sure about DPR though.

I think we are going to have to get used to paying to see professional content on the web, especially niche interests like photography.