Until DPR has settled and it is clear what the new content will be, this is a moving target. I think that we shall have to wait until the new owner of DPR makes changes and shows the motivation for acquiring the site. In the meantime, cleaning up the forum structures here would be a good idea, so that that task is out of the way.
David
I would like to applaud Bob and the others that stepped up in rapid fashion to insure that there was some soft landing for us when Amazon threatened to pull the plug on DPR. I have watched this site seek it's own identity and mission over the past few months and I think you have characterized it properly as a platform for those interested in discussing the intricacies of the technical issues of photography. However, as a layman, I do not see how I could contribute much to this site, moving forward.
I will continue to visit from time to time......good luck to all.
If it is your plan to keep feeding the pedants, this forum will be in the toilet.
Having no knowledge of how the new owners intend to run DPR in the future I am intending to continue my learning process as in the long distant past by reading the knowledge shared by Bob etc, if things change I may follow the original DPR but I spent less time there just before the closure announcement as it became nothing but equipment reviews, my interest is photography and I will remain with my existing equipment despite the popular mentality of chopping and changing brands because of a few changes/improvements ?
What do you mean by 'feeding the pedants'? And is this something we've been doing?
Hi,
I'm not worried. There is the Dumpster, after all. And, that's a difference I really like. The garbage doesn't suddenly disappear leaving me wondering 'wasn't there a thread about -insert topic here- ?? Or, am Iosing my mind?
I joined DPR so long ago because I was an engineer in electronics R+D who had a pretty good understanding of what happens inside a digital camera. I met this guy shooting at a race track, and he had this new review and discussion site, and we were both using Nikon D1 cameras.
I spend my time first in the Kodak SLR forum, but that's pretty much put to bed. Then the Nikon full frame SLR and Lens forums and the new Z one. Sometimes in the Printing forum. And, as I mentioned, in the Medium Format forum. But I don't pay attention much anywhere else on DPR.
Here, there is a big difference. Thanks to the lower traffic volume, I am always eyeballing Threads. So many things catch my eye here which I'd never see over there. That alone makes Here a valuable resource compared to There.
In time, the UI will change. I'm one for a threaded mode so when I detect a rabbit hole (topic change) which I don't wish to follow, I can just Read On around it. It's quite often that a conversation drifts as one thing brings another to mind. But I am in no hurry when it comes to this, like some others seem to be.
Stan
Thanks for your contribution. It's very interesting. Could we perhaps discuss the 'approach that you were looking for'. What I'm asking really is how would we adapt this site to be more interesting for you. Would the enhanced gallery and display facilities that I talked about help? Do we need a change in forum structure?
Thanks for that contribution, Stan. It's really useful feedback.
[deleted]
The bottom line for me is whether there can ever be a productive and thriving astrophotography and astrovideography section in this forum. So far that has been a huge no as there doesn't seem to be much interest around here for such. It is a very dead forum herein.
Yes DPReview is a hard act to follow, but those who say it is likely to suffer under a commercial-based corporate system need to remember that the original owner was Amazon dot com, and you don't get much bigger in the corporate world than that. Yet DPReview thrived, warts and all, at least in the astrophotography forums.
I don't like anal-retentive moderation. A freedom to express informed views is necessary within a learning and sharing community. But since "online" tends to mean "anonymous" these days, there are often a lot of rowdy posters in any lightly moderated forum that can make it not worth the effort to participate therein. So some moderation is necessary...
W5JCK de W2CK
Hi,
Maybe in time. Is there a core group doing that? Maybe some others you know elsewhere? Maybe get them to make Here home base for such.
Or we can just chat about amateur radio. 😁 I wonder how many of us are here. Now, this is a topic that wouldn't last any time at all elsewhere. Seemingly no connection to photography. I can come up with a slew of such photos, though. Probably be boring to most, though.
73
Stan
I can't see why astro photographers would come here and build a community spontaneously. Looking at DPReview's astrophotography forum, it's not busy either (by their standards, anyway). However, if the site had high quality astrophotography content, then I could see people coming. It's something of a chicken and egg - if you have the people you get the content but you need the content to bring the people.
We would need to have a better idea of what you mean or intend in the line of enhanced gallery and display facilities Bob to be able to offer any meaningful opinion on that matter. As to changing forum structure, again I am uncertain what you mean. The structure as is works fine for me. That said, it may not work fine for everyone. Two members left here because they did not read the Welcome message Alan posted for me at the beginning of the 'The Weekly m4/3 Talk' subforum. They wanted to exclude participating members from posting images from non m4/3 cameras. If they had read the Welcome possibly they would not have posted what they did and I and others would then not have reacted to their contrary comments to the purpose of that subforum. They went to DPR Forums because we had abused them or their egos for expressing a differing opinion. My fault I guess, lack of sleep etc. Would a different forum structure help this? Perhaps. On the other hand I think the way the latest post in each forum grouping is shown to the right does generate some traffic that would not otherwise occur. That is a plus for me.
Long ago, DPR had a gallery widget that showed a matrix of the latest post to users galleries on DPR. I don't know how many were in that matrix but it was successful in driving visits to the galleries of members that did post images to galleries they maintained at DPR. I know that after the widget was removed the visits to images in my galleries dropped like a stone! I spoke to the then owner (or manager) of DPR at the time and was told that they were working on a new replacement for the widget. It never came to pass. Likewise another member of the DPR team approached a number of us about a new feature, Discover, a gallery view of images with not much else to it (no idea what the intent was as that was never made clear), but that also did not come to pass. DPR's closing may have been the driving force behind the latter.
Anyway, I am rambling so I will end here.
Andrew
OK, yet to be specified - but what I was thinking for gallery, would be an organised space where people could download their photos and optionally display thing in their own gallery (as DPReview does). This would probably subsume the present image upload, in that image upload would go to your gallery and you could display from your gallery to posts - sort of as DPReview does. One idea is that the gallery tools would include a simple image editor so you could tweak your images for web display - possibly also working for view. The gallery post notifications could also be interesting. I've also been thinking of an alternative to threaded view, just for your kind of thread, so the default view would be a list of the top-level, image threads and then you could navigate to the comments on each if you wish - kind of trunk and branch rather than a tree. This would allow to just scroll down all the images.
As for changing the forum structure - I think we have too many forums for the level of traffic that we are likely to have, which leads to them being very quiet, so I'm thinking that some kind of rationalisation is needed.
As for the exclusion of images from non- mFT cameras - one of the things that the threads page has done is break down some of the silo mentality which exists sometimes on DPReview - I'd be loath to see that come back.
Besides a lot of things this
is one thing I could wish for here. One click and I am where I want to be.
Here I use the threaded and it's fine for recent. Takes a little to get to a desired forum 😀
Also the chicken/egg... I like pictures. The scientific discussions are lower on my list but appreciated 😀
This definitely has appeal to me as a complement to DPReview. There's been a widespread trend of reactionary hostility towards experts, so hosting high quality content from folks who are well informed is a great niche to fill. I've already learned more from friendly folks in the UV/IR threads than I have from years at DPReview forums, and the creativity shared in the Adapted Lenses section is inspirational. That said, as others have expressed, I personally find a lot of the dynamics in Beginners Talk/Open Talk threads toxic and try to stay out of them. It's a pity, as I have come across some interesting and new to me information but the signal-to-noise ratio means I don't always want to open up the threads there.
Found the problem! 😁
More seriously, though, the issue is that so many people want an answer "in a sentence or two" and for it to build upon what they already "know". For example, let's say someone asks, "Why are my photos so noisy?" They want to hear, "The ISO you're using is too high" not "The photo is made with too little light. To get more light, you either have to increase the exposure time, which increases the risk/severity of motion blur, use a wider aperture (lower f-number), which will result in a more shallow DOF, and/or add in your own light (e.g. use flash)." Then, to make matters worse, you have trolls swoop in to muck up any chance, whatsoever, that the person might actually learn what's really going on.
It's not unlike the situation that plagues the US right now: to have a tolerant society, you cannot tolerate intolerance. But how, exactly, do you do this without it giving the appearance of censorship? Do you immediately move their replies to the dumpster? Do you flag them with labels such as "trolling", "misinformation", etc.? Because the person asking the question will like their responses much better than the correct responses -- they're so much easier to "understand".
The purpose of a forum is for people to share ideas and opinions. But it doesn't take many bad actors to ruin that, where by "bad actors", I mean outright trolling and willful ignorance. However, the question is how to deal with these, as they "slide in" to the threads in an insidious manner. For example, Porky's favorite technique is always to introduce "the exposure triangle" as a pretext to derail honest discussion.
I think you mean increase the exposure time instead of the words in bold above.
