Re: A critique suggestion

Yeah, totally agree.
What are Forums for, after all ?
If people desperately need a place to play "I made a picture", a free and frank Forum is the wrong place to be; try Flickr.
Remember also, if you think someone is wrong in criticising someone's else's piccy; nothing is preventing you from saying so.
That's sort of the beauty of an "open" Forum. We're all different and think accordingly.
As long as people share their genuine beliefs and keep the name-calling out of it, what more can be asked ?
Kudos also to this place for running regular editing exercises, not sure they should in any way be contests, but.

Wasn't talking about NCV. If the cap fits, wear it.

I have been advocating for people to be allowed to post CC whether it was asked for or not.

What Arvo is proposing is a good idea because it makes it clear the op's do not want feedback.

No one has a global overview, we all are defined by our experience, and it's limits.

And so we should remember that our critique offered is not absolute, and neither is that given freely to us. It is a point of view and not a statement of fact.

Often we try to adapt or change other people's photosto fit inside the metrics we understand. A photographer who has only learnt the rule of thirds looks for that rule in every photo and if it is not seen then assumes the photo is not composed correctly, until they learn another rule, and so on...

Some understand exposure and noise to such a degree that they look at the numbers and histograms of others photos to understand those photos by the metrics they are expert in.

All critique has to be taken in context, and the understanding that it is only an opinion. But then those posting photos must also understand that they don't have a global overview and their photos are not absolute either. We mustn't be too precious about them.

It's a common problem on internet forums, get a technical crowd or an artistic one and you still seem to be walking on eggshells.

I prefer an open forum. Start censoring what and how people can say things and very quickly nobody left on the forum seems to be able to see past their own opinion. The most vocal are there to reinforce their own world view, and not listen to others really.

Personally, I have no interest. That said, I'm not against it, either. What would be cool, though, is if there were a tag by a person's username that linked to a "thread" of every photo they've posted -- kind of like a gallery -- with a link to the threads the photos they were posted in below the photos.

Why? Let's say someone posted a photo I liked. I click on their "photo thread". I see another photo I like. I click on that and it takes me to the thread it was posted in where I may find other photos I like. I follow that kind of rabbit hole scenario on You Tube all the time, and it gets me some interesting stuff.

Anyway, that's for after threaded view is done. 😉

In the US, at least, that's becoming the norm for pretty much everything. A "real education" is what you learned when "doing your own research" on Facebook, Twitter, etc.. 😖

As an off-topic side (well, like my whole post, but, well...) I had a quantum physics professor talking about how difficult it was to modify existing theories, 'cause one little change here affects all sorts of well-established experimentally confirmed predictions of the old theory. So whatever change you make to an existing theory has to not mess those predictions up, which is what makes it so hard.

But the funny part is when he continued, "So people say all the time, 'Can't you just do this?' NO! Did you think we didn't try that?! Do you think we're stupid?! Somehow all of us who work in the field missed that obvious "solution" that you figured out all by yourself without putting in all the study and work that we have?!"

It was a funny rant. 😁

I blame Rupert Murdoch. For years in Australia his media has labelled any scientific research it didn't like as "elitist", especially anything related to Climate Change. Bit by bit "educated" has merged into "elitist." Teachers, especially in government schools got the same treatment.
The same technique has been taken up with a vengeance by the Murdoch USA media. Dumbing down on a national scale.
There is an outstanding book on the subject by the person who was once Clinton and Obama's science advisor. "The Triumph of Doubt" by David Michaels.

Bold emphasis is mine:

www.goodreads.com/quotes/632474-i-have-a-foreboding-of-an-america-in-my-children-s

I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance

Kinda prescient, wouldn't you agree? At the very least, the seeds for what we reap today were planted long ago, and have been thoroughly watered and nourished since.

No, the fun of posting pictures is getting sensible feedback.

Maybe we can have a personal ignore list like they have over on DPR. But with a variant. Those on our ignore list would not be able to reply to our posts.

Something like this exists already in the PM system, I believe, where you cannot PM certain members if they switch it on.

I believe it would solve a huge number of problems with trolling and bad behaviour.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, written in 1931, went to much the same place.

But now we have wandered far from your OP

Isaac Asimov put it quite well over 40 years ago:

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

(from an article in Newsweek, January 21, 1980)

I think this applies to a greater or lesser extent to most democratic countries, not just the USA. It has been increasing in recent years with the widespread use of social media (which includes forums such as this one) which often propagate nonsense much faster than they propagate truth .

I prefer the writings of H. L. Mencken who was the "Sage of Baltimore" by in the during the 1930's to 1950's.

"Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction in stolen goods."
"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance."
"Democracy, too, is a religion. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses."
" If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner."

And of course my favorite.

" As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

and in Fora, particularly photographic, I get more pushback against technical posts - often mentioning the "Real World" and/or the word "practical" - than I get thanks.

Weird -- I never, not even once, ever got any flack about a technical post I made. In fact, everyone was always super quick to thank me for taking my time to explain this or debunk that. The only downside was the constant PMs from mods asking me to post more. 😂

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Yes we are wandering a long way off but it's a valuable wander.
May I again mention "The Triumph of Doubt.." It's a brilliant analysis of exactly how the trick of destroying confidence in scientific method has been done. It begins with the attempts to defend the tobacco industry and shows how attacking science became an industry in itself. The fast growing "doubt" industry built a media and a linked political lobby network that has become ever more powerful. The attacks on climate change science have the same fingerprints all over them.
I'd suggest that the USA has one other factor that makes it especially vulnerable. It doesn't have a significant, trusted news service that is independent of the corporate world. For example, Britain has the BBC. Australia has the ABC. Both give news coverage that is independent of the corporate world. Both are trusted by significant numbers of the population to give serious challenge to the Murdoch version.
I don't think Democrcy is the problem. Democracy is only as good as the news services that create the opinions that determine how people vote.

You, have not popped in lately to say hello on the DPR M43 forum. It is pretty dull there without you.

I've been "soft banned" -- that is, I've been "sandboxed" from posting. And while some mod might let me out, "they" will put me right back in. I've posted about it a few times -- the posts that led to my sandboxing are in this thread. None of my posts were deleted, and nothing I posted in that thread was nearly as bad as what was posted by the mod and the mod's buddy (jalywol). Worse, Mako entered the fray for no reason other than camaraderie with fellow mods (I think we can guess what's being said in their private "mod forum"), 'cause the only other post I made after that, was moved from the Canon R forum to the forum it's currently in, which is about as a dick move as I could imagine. An appeal the the admins led to silence, so I just walked away.

Anyway, no worries. I had been posting less and less at DPR -- just the occasional "flurry of activity", such as the thread that got me sandboxed -- so it came at as good a time as any, I suppose. Also, I've come to realize that facts don't really matter to many, if not most, unless the facts happen to line up with their opinions (which was made eminently clear by the US political situation, and likely elsewhere). Even on this site, I don't post all that much -- just a "flurry of activity" at the moment. I've become quite the misandrist in the past few years, like many others, and it's hard to just ignore it knowing what lies underneath, even if everything's OK on the surface. Maybe time for some shrooms? Or worse, bite the bullet and finally get an account on reddit. 😁

By the way, since this thread is about critiquing, and I'm being salty, let me bridge those discussions with a photo:

Y'all can critique/edit as much as you want. And before any of y'all say to crop like this or that, yes, I did try a 2:1 central crop, and it looked really nice, too. But not better that the photo as is -- just different. But there's all sorts of curve adjustments that could be made, too (although I liked the curves on this out of all the ones I tried). Still, have at it!

I actually got the sandboxing removed. I had written to the Admins a couple of times, with no reply. On the article they made about paid subscriptions. I made a comment saying that the heavy moderation had lost them a lot of members/traffic. One of the top dogs saw it and wrote a PM to say it had been lifted. I stay well away from certain forums, and just post pretty banal stuff.

I post more here actually, as it is nice and relaxed.