The Photography Forum - Your feedback wanted

If the PYPH and themed threads aren't working (and they are very quiet), individual threads aren't likely to work. That option has always been there but is seldom used, and when they are feedback is always low. This isn't a serious photography forum. Getting the competition going again (entries emailed in, then posted anonymously, then voted on) would at least possibly start more interest. I wouldn't limit the voting to just those who have entered either, advertise the competition/voting thread in GD if needed.

Discussions in here all to easily get hung up on gear rather than actual useful feedback. I pop in for a read every now and then, but I haven't really participated in the last year at all and not much more in the year before that! It has definitely turned into a forum of lurkers (me included) than the place it used to be where it was fun to discuss photography and share what you're doing, where you are, and where you'd like to be.
 
Since the competition died I've not visited this sub forum much at all....pop on occasionally to lurk but don't post anymore.

I think it needs some advertisement in other sub forums (GD perhaps?) to try and encourage a bit more activity. This is probably the perfect time of year to do it too as people will have just got new cameras for Christmas.

And as I've always voted for....bring the competition back :) Maybe even mix it up a bit more and have monthly themes as well as specifying whether we should only use mobile phone cameras, or cheap/disposable point and shoot film cameras for certain months? I know the original competition was open to everyone but I have no doubt that those without DSLR's probably were intimidated enough to not think about entering. If you have a month that goes back to basics and only accepts disposable P&S cameras, it might be a bit less intimidating :)
 
Columbo said:
I'm not sure I'd see it as a clique, more the 4 or 5 people that have helped keep this forum alive.
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Well yes, that's what I was saying. I see it like that too, but others almost certainly wouldn't if they're new to it all. As long as people don't talk down to others, or even amongst themselves, it's all good :)
 
I've not had time to read through all the above yet. My general feeling is that creating a sub-forum isn't a great idea at this stage. This would just water down what we have already.

edit

It seems the closing of the general "Post your pictures" thread seems popular.

Could have annual threads for specific categories such as :

"Buildings & Architecture - 2014"
"People & Portraits - 2014"
"Animals, wildlife & insects - 2014"

etc..

These can be closed at the end of each year and start new and this would be a good time to start.
 
Admiral Huddy said:
I've not had time to read through all the above yet. My general feeling is that creating a sub-forum isn't a great idea at this stage. This would just water down what we have already.
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But I also think that should the activity be there in future, we're open to looking at it. Nothing is off the table.
 
An Exception said:
Just out of curiosity. How many of the mods/staff here actually like/care about photography and this section of the forum?

The forum was gradually gutted as others have said, but that is in the past, and it's about time we all left it there. If the mods are serious, there is no reason why this forum can't be bigger/better than before.

...
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Very serious and my aim to to be a little more proactive and to take this forum forward the best way we can. We want to work with the members to make sure everyone enjoys the experience.

Shadowness said:
I got put off when I had to remove my sig, which was just a 'portfolio' of my photos.

They said, company advertising is not accepted.

Pit pathetic really.
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I sympathise and we realise this was a mistake but a mistake we've learnt from hopefully. Although we have relaxed the rule on images, pimping for business .. like "buy my images here" so to speak on the forums will still be prohibited. What you have on your website is non - of our concern[within reason].
 
Admiral Huddy said:
I've not had time to read through all the above yet. My general feeling is that creating a sub-forum isn't a great idea at this stage. This would just water down what we have already.

edit

It seems the closing of the general "Post your pictures" thread seems popular.

Could have annual threads for specific categories such as :

"Buildings & Architecture - 2014"
"People & Portraits - 2014"
"Animals, wildlife & insects - 2014"

etc..

These can be closed at the end of each year and start new and this would be a good time to start.
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Ditch all the big threads, the whole idea when they were split off from the 'post your pictures here' thread was to encourage more critique and discussion and they have failed to do that. Loosing those encourages people to create threads for images and makes it easy for people to see and hopefully comment on new images. This would also reduce the number of hardware threads on the first page which makes the place look like a gearheads hangout!

I wouldn't creat subforums at this point but if traffic increases and we need to seperate out pictures and hardware then review it at that point.

Not sure about the clique thing, I've never really noticed it obviously there are certain personalities who are more prominent in the forum but thats because they are the ones contributing and keeping things going. You can't have it both ways if you want a lively forum you need regulars allthough obviosuly increased traffic would dilute the voices which is probably a good thing.

I think others have already said this but if we want a vibrant photography section we have to make it such so people need to be willing to post pictures, comment meaningfully and sensibly and we need to be willing to take a little crit from time to time in the way it is intended.
 
I agree. - These big threads need to go.

If people want to show off their work, create new threads, make the forum popular! :)

Just posting in big threads doesn't do a lot at all, just keeps the whole forum quiet and boring in my opinion.
 
The themed threads were due to the one large thread being full of everything and not everyone wanted to trawl through all of that if they were only interested in for example landscapes. Those same people aren't likely to want to open half a dozen individual threads to see what the content is?

The problem is the user base in here is small. I don't know how to resolve that if there just isn't the interest from the wider OcUk community, which seems to be the main issue? All of the options mentioned have been possible, we've had large pic threads, we've had themed pic threads, we've tried to encourage individual threads for c&c. All fail (or are just slow) due to lack of users. It will be interesting to see if closing the PYPH thread will get people posting individual threads. The PYPH was a fun non serious thread, posting you own thread used to be for more detailed c&c rather than just sharing some taken for pleasure pics.

Someone mentioned about starting your own thread that you keep all your own photos in. I'd be interested to see how that pans out. If everyone buys in and starts one up it will hopefully generate interest and discussion? I don't know how that will develop the overall community though? (lots of individual threads)
 
Rojin said:
The themed threads were due to the one large thread being full of everything and not everyone wanted to trawl through all of that if they were only interested in for example landscapes. Those same people aren't likely to want to open half a dozen individual threads to see what the content is?

The problem is the user base in here is small. I don't know how to resolve that if there just isn't the interest from the wider OcUk community, which seems to be the main issue? All of the options mentioned have been possible, we've had large pic threads, we've had themed pic threads, we've tried to encourage individual threads for c&c. All fail (or are just slow) due to lack of users. It will be interesting to see if closing the PYPH thread will get people posting individual threads. The PYPH was a fun non serious thread, posting you own thread used to be for more detailed c&c rather than just sharing some taken for pleasure pics.

Someone mentioned about starting your own thread that you keep all your own photos in. I'd be interested to see how that pans out. If everyone buys in and starts one up it will hopefully generate interest and discussion? I don't know how that will develop the overall community though? (lots of individual threads)
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You won't need to trawl through threads to see what in them as long as people give the thread a sensible title which they will do if they want to see traffic in it. Much like other areas of the forum poorly titled threads will drop off the front page and disapear. If anything individual threads should make it easier to find things that your keen to look at.
 
The competition died because whom shall not be named decided to take it out of the member's hands and placed it in mod's hands for reasons I still cannot fathom.

I stopped posting for ages and don't post as much photos (I haven't stopped taking them, my Facebook page gets one posted every other day) because the rules here changes from week to week without notice in the past. What was legit one minute then it suddenly isn't, and you find out when you realised there is a padlock on the forum. There seem to be this infinite time retrospective loophole that the moderation team can decide to ban you for something you've done 2 years earlier and was seen by the mod who banned me himself numerous times. If someone can put it in black and white that stops happening it would be a first step. At least if you are going to change the rules, give us a heads up and notice. (Re-Watermark)

I don't think pigeon hole any theme is a good idea. It will end up another dumping ground. Let users post their new photos in a new thread with their own approproate title. Just like in other sub-forums here. By all means start a thread on say the Fuji X-series or X-M1 and keep all the talk about that camera there, that is actually useful but in terms of sharing the pictures, let it be more organic. It is an organic process - photography.
 
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Raymond Lin said:
The competition died because whom shall not be named decided to take it out of the member's hands and placed it in mod's hands for reasons I still cannot fathom.

I stopped posting for ages and don't post as much photos (I haven't stopped taking them, my Facebook page gets one posted every other day) because the rules here changes from week to week without notice in the past. What was legit one minute then it suddenly isn't, and you find out when you realised there is a padlock on the forum. There seem to be this infinite time retrospective loophole that the moderation team can decide to ban you for something you've done 2 years earlier and was seen by the mod who banned me himself numerous times. If someone can put it in black and white that stops happening it would be a first step. At least if you are going to change the rules, give us a heads up and notice. (Re-Watermark)

I don't think pigeon hole any theme is a good idea. It will end up another dumping ground. Let users post their new photos in a new thread with their own approproate title. Just like in other sub-forums here. By all means start a thread on say the Fuji X-series or X-M1 and keep all the talk about that camera there, that is actually useful but in terms of sharing the pictures, let is be more organic. It is an organic process - photography.
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I fully agree with everything that you have said. :)
 
Just for the sake of adding to this thread, I think closing the pyph was a good thing - although individual threads don't seem to have started happening yet. I guess it doesn't help being winter, but I took a few on the way to work so will see if there's anything worth posting tonight :p
 
a1ex2001 said:
You won't need to trawl through threads to see what in them as long as people give the thread a sensible title which they will do if they want to see traffic in it. Much like other areas of the forum poorly titled threads will drop off the front page and disapear. If anything individual threads should make it easier to find things that your keen to look at.
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People didn't want to click on the "Go to first new post" button on one thread, and scroll through the latest posts. Unless they hadn't logged in for a couple of weeks we weren't even talking about going through multiple pages. I don't think there was a lot of effort there personally (I never had a problem with the PYPH thread), but it was a turn off for some. Having to scan through individual thread titles may still be too much for them! :D

We should try everything we can to be honest. I am just playing devils advocate as we have had a lot of these discussion over the last couple of years but it's never picked up. It's pretty much just the same people participating and we haven't really made it an attractive place for new users\lurkers to start posting in. If the mods could crack down on threads that drift off topic and those of us who can start to generate more threads... who knows?

We need a consensus on the competition as there is only one, but we can all try to do something with regards to thread creation and discussions? That's why I created the themed threads a while back, all we were doing was discussing what we could do but doing nothing! :)
 
Raymond Lin said:
The competition died because whom shall not be named decided to take it out of the member's hands and placed it in mod's hands for reasons I still cannot fathom.

I stopped posting for ages and don't post as much photos (I haven't stopped taking them, my Facebook page gets one posted every other day) because the rules here changes from week to week without notice in the past. What was legit one minute then it suddenly isn't, and you find out when you realised there is a padlock on the forum. There seem to be this infinite time retrospective loophole that the moderation team can decide to ban you for something you've done 2 years earlier and was seen by the mod who banned me himself numerous times. If someone can put it in black and white that stops happening it would be a first step. At least if you are going to change the rules, give us a heads up and notice. (Re-Watermark)

I don't think pigeon hole any theme is a good idea. It will end up another dumping ground. Let users post their new photos in a new thread with their own approproate title. Just like in other sub-forums here. By all means start a thread on say the Fuji X-series or X-M1 and keep all the talk about that camera there, that is actually useful but in terms of sharing the pictures, let it be more organic. It is an organic process - photography.
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I agree also Raymond.

When you say let members create their own threads and own photos, do you mean like "Raymond Lin's Photo Thread" or purely on an ad-hoc basis?

I quite like the idea off seeing an individuals work in one thread.
 
Admiral Huddy said:
When you say let members create their own threads and own photos, do you mean like "Raymond Lin's Photo Thread" or purely on an ad-hoc basis?

I quite like the idea off seeing an individuals work in one thread.
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Perhaps we should let the members decide what they might like to do and not be too prescriptive? Reading the thread it seems that having too many rules seems to be a root of the issue.
 
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