The Future Here? Andrew 23 07 04

Well I am sad to say that I think I will restart the 'Weekly' thread at DPR. I did not want to go that route! The admins here have been more than accommodating. The site worked fine here in this subforum for discussion of posted images as new threads instead of a part of a weekly thread. The images as shown in the image box when 'clicked upon' were great at screen size. Much better than what was possible at DPR!!! I missed the threaded format and that prevented my participation in other weekly threads here because it was too much like work. That, however, is also not the reason for restarting there. The short and not so sweet of it all is the lack of posters here. Many never came, some did and left, the 'closing of DPR' likely did irreparable damage to the mind set of participants. I know that I have been in a mental funk about the whole thing for months. (On the other hand perhaps that is down to pain and medication. Who knows!)

I will stop in here from time to time to see what is shaking but unless something changes there is really no point. I could start a personal blog with WordPress and get the same amount of traffic, well maybe!

If you have input I am happy to read it and I appreciate the presence of those that gave it a go!

Andrew

Don't have any input. I'll follow where you go.

Well, I may have just a little input. I don't think we've seen the end of this yet. But I think you took the right decision for now. The thread obviously was dying. And after all it's possible to participate at both forums.

Just an observation, the departure of the weekly M4/3 inhabitants back to DPR will take nearly all the activity under the top level Olympus, Panasonic and Micro Four Thirds forum with them. Save for the Sunday Cat! there is very little else. Rather like when the anchor store in a mall closes, it can destabilize the rest. Website rationalization might become a more urgent matter for the founders.

Well, there are only 8 posts on the Leica forum and 9 on the Canon FF DSLR which are 2 of the cameras I have... Most conversations here happen around whining about DPR, moderation, etc. so not so excited to spend time here with that kind of engagement (not going back to DPR).

A forum is only effective with many multiple participants - which this one doesn't have.
I do feel bad that it has come to this, because the hosts have been very good and have made significant improvements.
I've been reading and posting a little in two of the threads back on DPR for a little over a week, and while it's not what it was, it is more active than here.
Guess if you leave, I'll be doing so as well.

yeah- most of the photo gear forums here are dead.I wonder if they would have been more populated if the interface here resembled that of DPreview. a simple easy to read white text on black menu--click "forums" --a drop down window with choices in alphabetical order.very neat and clean and efficient as opposed to the cluster ---k of an interface here that almost everyone and their dog would never admit they were responsible for it's creation..Any suggestion to clean it up has been met with"This is better" Any person stumbling on this forum would immediately assume this is the wrong side of the tracks and leave . that's all. it is what it is. love it or leave it. BTW the "threads" category keeps people from going to their dedicated gear forum directly to check out that wonderful threaded view like on DPR.- one can see nothing is happening in their gear forum from "threads" category and shoots over to dpr. where people go directly to their preferred forum and have a greater opportunity to run into another human with like interests. it is very difficult to figure out what kind of forum the creators are wanting to create. .I think they are leaning more toward photo BS. than essential gear.Just an observation.

To all, I will still drop in here but there is not enough activity here to maintain a community. I have visited the Canon and Fuji image subforums/threads and see that they have a currently more activity than we have here. A month and one half ago we were doing pretty well here but it has diminished with participants going back to the place of origin of the community.

In the long run it may not last there. I do not see how maintaining an Olympus DSLR or Kodak forum will generate income for Gear Patrol. It may take them a while to do what they need to do there to make the place work for them but I really do not see how the old forums and gallery structures will fit into that overall plan. Going back to DPR may keep the community together long enough to see what happens there and give the management here time to get the forum structures headed along a meaningful path.

I am not into the name calling, I am smarter than you threads and avoid them like the plague. If I need technical information I am sure I can contact Bob and get it. However, for the most part, I am not sure I need more than I have. With an ancient background in electrical engineering I can muddle around reasonably well.

The forums where one can ask questions about the gear one owns are important. I like to help when I can. I like to post images for others to view and to view theirs in return. I don't much care about the equipment used and benefit from seeing what others can do with the equipment they use.

I am very happy with the way Bob and the admins (Alan) have made accommodations for us here and their plans for the future. They deserve a very large thank you! I will not be leaving completely and expect that it may just be a temporary hiatus.

Stay well and post some images somewhere!!!

Andrew

totally agree just look at the sony FF forum here. 5 posts in a month . there are more posts in a single brand on DPR than on ALL the forums here.
you try and start a sensible thread and it just turns into a shit fight over and over and over again.

I haven't "switched back" to DPR, i.e. to never post here again, but will post here less often, because the 'Sigma Camera Talk' forum there is much more active than 'Sigma Stuff' here.

Well, not every thread but scarily many. I agree that kind of posts is very dominant here, even more so than they were at DPR. And that puts people who are not enjoying that game off. I suspect those that not enjoy it are more numerous than those that do. So we get the all too common situation where the loudest crowd wins while the quiet crowd gets more quiet.

I’m sorry to see you go Andrew, but Alan, Bob and the team have my full support for the growth of this website, dprevived.

“There is a tide in the affairs of men

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat;

And we must take the current when it serves,

Or lose our ventures.” 


William Shakespeare , Julius Caesar.

It's sad, but don't give up!
Your last thread about macro was very interesting and it was able to be a helpful discussion to macro photographers. Unfortunately it turned to ugly, noisy, low-resolution, mis-white-balanced, boring, stupid animated gifs of pop-corn eaters. Did I say too much upresized ones.

If I was looking alternative forum after DPReview, I'd go away after looking those threads here.

I am not going Greg, just restarting the Weekly Thread there. I will still hang around the image threads here but I don't really have any interest at all in what seems to be the main activity here. Same as at DPR. I avoided it there because I had no interest. Bob and company have been pleasant and helpful to my interests and I wish them well.

Andrew

Yes, I too read that thread. Well, I started to read it but gave up when the noise to signal ratio became too high.

That, for me, is scary!! These make up over half of what I come to DPR about.

Andrew, I will follow along with you and the rest wherever you all go. Right now I am more reading than replying because I'll be trading my E-PM1 for a different body.

Sad, but true. I come here rarely now…. not enough M43 traffic to be viable. Also, those early hundred post long grievance posts really soured me to the general tenor of the entire site. On the positive side the MFT Talk forum on DPR, seems to now be pretty much devoid of those that would seek to devolve to such sniping discussions of minutiae.

The C&C thread is doing much better here than at DPR though. In fact it thrives.

That's one thing I like about this forum, that it's easier to find interesting threads one might have overlooked at DPR. That's what's happened to C&C, they get new contributors and a more active thread.

I've never understood why it is that we think it is easier to discuss pictures in the threaded view rather than in a subforum like the 4/3rds ... something different about the tribal nature of the thread I suspect ... Separate the entries in a subforum and few want to open them .. maybe we feel more of a requirement to comment once we step in???? and really all we want is to have others look at our pictures??? .. C&C is a bit different as it is the comment as much as the picture we are sharing ... but that flat view really defeats much of the coherence of the discussions for me ... I think it would improve if it went to separate entries and we could get the participants to open each as they do when they move down the current thread!! ...

WhyNot

I think you just answered your own question. 😀