Feedback Details, details, details!

Stiga

Veteran
About a week ago, Kevin challenged me to explain in detail, detail, detail why, after being at Cameraderie member for 18 months, I still had problems with navigation. (Link to Kevin’s request)

After exploring Cameraderie extensively over the past week, it dawned on me that the main reason for my problems was that I was looking for things that are not there. One phrase that you quoted was “At the moment there is hardly enough bird posts to warrant it's own dedicated sub-forum. “ Frankly, I find this incredible. Every forum I have experience of has a Birds sub forum – except Cameraderie. Kevin, this is a chicken and egg situation; if you don’t have a dedicated space for bird photos, folk will not post their masterpieces here, they will go elsewhere. There is evidence of this currently on POTN where birders are migrating to Photo Talk. As an aside, I note they are not happy there. So this is a big opportunity for Cameraderie to attract new members. You should be proactive rather than reactive.

I have looked at the whole of Cameraderie during the past week despite some of it not having much of interest to me and Have come up with a new draft structure for discussion. It is an Excel 97 spreadsheet and you can find it here. It only deals with the photography threads. Non-photo topics are only presented as heading and the core photo topics have large font

To wind up I would like to say there is a lot I like on Cameraderie. I have found everyone to be friendly, I have encountered no spam or bulling and I love the landing page. The latter often takes me to places I would not otherwise visit and, usually, enhances my experience here.

Lastly, please interpret my comments as constructive, that is what I mean them to be.
 
@Stiga Thank you for taking the time to write up you ideas. From the POTN group you're the first one to actually submit your ideas as an actual feedback item. :cool:

For those curious, here's the link Stiga is referring to over at POTN....

After exploring Cameraderie extensively over the past week, it dawned on me that the main reason for my problems was that I was looking for things that are not there. One phrase that you quoted was “At the moment there is hardly enough bird posts to warrant it's own dedicated sub-forum. “ Frankly, I find this incredible. Every forum I have experience of has a Birds sub forum – except Cameraderie. Kevin, this is a chicken and egg situation; if you don’t have a dedicated space for bird photos, folk will not post their masterpieces here, they will go elsewhere. There is evidence of this currently on POTN where birders are migrating to Photo Talk. As an aside, I note they are not happy there. So this is a big opportunity for Cameraderie to attract new members. You should be proactive rather than reactive.
At the moment there's about 150 "Birds" threads. That comes out to 7 pages. To me I don't think that's enough to warrant a dedicated sub-forum yet but I'm open to the idea. For other out there reading this.... is it time for a new "Birds" sub-forum under the Nature forum? The link below will show the current threads. When viewing any of the forums clicking on the thread prefix, like "Birds", will return a list of all matching threads.

I have looked at the whole of Cameraderie during the past week despite some of it not having much of interest to me and Have come up with a new draft structure for discussion. It is an Excel 97 spreadsheet and you can find it here. It only deals with the photography threads. Non-photo topics are only presented as heading and the core photo topics have large font
I'll have to take a look after-hours when done for the day... for others reading this, please go ahead and take a look also to give your thoughts & opinions.

Lastly, please interpret my comments as constructive, that is what I mean them to be.
We always welcome feedback. One of the goals has always been to make sure our community members have a way of giving their input and it's why we encourage folks to post their feedback & suggestions. Folks letting us know how they feel about the community, good or bad, is the only way we evolve. :)




[Pinging the mods' crew to make sure they have a chance to take a look ..... @MoonMind / @Brian / @rayvonn / @davidzvi / @Bobby T / @Biro]
 
While I am not against adding a birds subforum (I don't spend a ton of time looking up bird photos, but I always appreciate them), I think if you go that route, there are other forums here which have some pretty different topics arranged under one roof: scenic, architecture and travel, for example. Those three can come together but are often very different genres, especially if you're strictly a landscape photographer. So there's a balance between getting specific with subforums and being inconsistent in the other forum headings.

I think our tags prefix system, while not intuitive to many, is equally powerful to what a subforum could give.

(edited to use prefix instead of tag)
 
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Where is the tags system explained? Thanks.
Sorry, Prefix may be more accurate than tag, there are tags also but I don't use them. I'll correct in my previous post too. Kevin mentioned the "Birds" prefix above: if you click on a prefix it will show a list of all threads with that prefix, so it's a bit like a subforum heading "on command."
 
Sorry, Prefix may be more accurate than tag, there are tags also but I don't use them. I'll correct in my previous post too. Kevin mentioned the "Birds" prefix above: if you click on a prefix it will show a list of all threads with that prefix, so it's a bit like a subforum heading "on command."
I went over to "other genres" ( Other Genres ) and tried to use the tags mechanism and only got two choices, both in yellow. Picking either one just showed a dialog box to start a new thread. Couldn't find anything about "prefix." What am I missing? Thanks.
 

The field in the URL is "prefix_id", but it looks like a tag in the thread. When opening a thread- the creator can optionally "tag" the thread. The URL converts "birds" this to "prefix_id=134".

Opening a forum- you will see the "Tag" in front of threads. Click on the Tag and all threads with the same tag come up.
Bookmark the URL- gives fast access to all threads under the same tag. Much like Flickr.
Lots of tags in "Nature and Animals"- prefix_id 134 through 140 are defined. Squirrels have their own tag.
 
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You could change it to Nature, Birds and Animals and let people just click on the green bird prefix to list only the bird threads, but both new and old (as in being here for a while rather than aged) members might not necessarily know to do that. A sticky at the top explaining how to do it might be helpful if that was a solution you were considering until more interest was shown.

I have no objection to a sub forum being created for birds though.
 
The available tags are Color and Critique Wanted. The OP of the thread does not have to choose a Tag, it is optional. Just as the OP can place a thread in several different forums, there is a lot of overlap. This is somewhat of a result of multiple forums being merged into this one.

As you create threads- pick the tag that you want associated with it.
 
I'm from POTN, so this whole forum is fairly alien to me. The main forums or main categories, however you want to call them, don't make a lot of sense to me. They are confusing.

Take the main category of Nature and Animals. It is terribly broad. It's a bit odd to have Birds, Wildlife, Pets, Cows, Insects, Flowers, Landscapes and more treated as one category. It would make more sense to me to have better defined categories and not lump so many, basically unrelated, subjects together. At the very least I would split up Nature (Landscapes, Flowers) and Animals (Birds, Wildlife). Of course I also think that Pets need to be a separate forum. And Insects should go with Macro as images of insects are almost by necessity macros.

At the same time I see main categories like Portrait and Performing Arts. But not a main category People. To me it would be more logical to have a main category of People with subcategories Portrait and Performing Arts. You could add the sub categories Weddings and Family Events to them too.

I'm also puzzled by Black and White and Color. I'm not entirely sure what these are for exactly. I can understand Black and White, although I think they could just as well be dedicated threads within other categories. But Color? Everything is already in color, it's the default way to take photographs so why have a separate forum for that?

Personally, I would love to have a dedicated Bird forum. I think I saw someone from the staff say that there isn't enough interest in such a forum? What's funny is that way back on POTN, there was no bird forum. People asked for it but staff was reluctant. In the end however, a Bird forum was created and it became the most popular forum on the board. If you will build it they will come. ;)
 
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I'm from POTN, so this whole forum is fairly alien to me. The main forums or main categories, however you want to call them, don't make a lot of sense to me. They are confusing.


I'm also puzzled by Black and White and Color. I'm not entirely sure what these are for exactly. I can understand Black and White, although I think they could just as well be dedicated threads within other categories. But Color? Everything is already in color, it's the default way to take photographs so why have a separate forum for that?
;)
POTN has proprietary software, and that is the main reason it is being shutdown. The owner got tired of maintaining it and refuses to hand it to anyone else.

This forum combines the old Leicaplace forum, Leica being one of the few manufacturers of dedicated B&W Digital cameras. Pentax has now joined in. We also had a Film forum folded in, and quite a few people shooting B&W film as well. I shoot B&W digital and film. Many people here have conversions from color to monochrome down to a science. I wrote my own DNG processor with custom demosaic as well, to convert M9 to linear DNG monochrome. That is also custom software, but I give away source code.

Photo.net- after 30 years has a "Nature" forum, not a dedicated Bird forum.
 
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The available tags are Color and Critique Wanted. The OP of the thread does not have to choose a Tag, it is optional. Just as the OP can place a thread in several different forums, there is a lot of overlap. This is somewhat of a result of multiple forums being merged into this one.

As you create threads- pick the tag that you want associated with it.
Thanks for the option but I'm hesitant to do that. No doubt several people will pile on and say,"We've already got a section for that. It's called (insert generic category name here)."

For example:

"Aviation Photo Thread" (Planes, Helos, Balloons, etc)...​

Share Trains - Depots - Trestles - Stations​

but there's another sub-section called

Station Series​





Most of the stuff I look at and post in is in "other genres" which seems to be a catch-all for anything that didn't fit in anywhere else.

I'm not criticizing the way things are or asking to change them. Just making an observation. :)
 
Thanks for the option but I'm hesitant to do that. No doubt several people will pile on and say,"We've already got a section for that. It's called (insert generic category name here)."
The crew is friendlier than you may be thinking; just post using what you think is right and if really is a duplicate than one of the volunteer mod' team will likely say where the duplicate is and can move the posts as needed. It's really easy to move posts around between forums & threads so house-cleaning is pretty simple.
 
.....
After exploring Cameraderie extensively over the past week, it dawned on me that the main reason for my problems was that I was looking for things that are not there. One phrase that you quoted was “At the moment there is hardly enough bird posts to warrant it's own dedicated sub-forum. “ Frankly, I find this incredible. Every forum I have experience of has a Birds sub forum – except Cameraderie.
.....
Part of this may come from the origins of this Forum. Cameraderie started by combining 4 main forums: Serious Compacts, Fuji, Leica, and Forever Film. You know, all the main players in the telephoto and super telephoto markets.

But as the forum has evolved and grown, things have been added. I'm sure we will continue too as needed.
 
......
I'm also puzzled by Black and White and Color. I'm not entirely sure what these are for exactly. I can understand Black and White, although I think they could just as well be dedicated threads within other categories. But Color? Everything is already in color, it's the default way to take photographs so why have a separate forum for that?
.....
"Color" has sub-areas for different color themes, not sure how it came about, but it is nice to see people color-themed images.
 
Thanks for the option but I'm hesitant to do that. No doubt several people will pile on and say,"We've already got a section for that. It's called (insert generic category name here)."

For example:

"Aviation Photo Thread" (Planes, Helos, Balloons, etc)...​

Share Trains - Depots - Trestles - Stations​

but there's another sub-section called

Station Series​





Most of the stuff I look at and post in is in "other genres" which seems to be a catch-all for anything that didn't fit in anywhere else.

I'm not criticizing the way things are or asking to change them. Just making an observation. :)
I create new threads instead of posting in a theme thread, if there are characteristics I want to highlight - for example everything was from the same location, there are a larger amount of images I want to show, or some other uniting theme makes them stand out (to me) from a simple theme thread. That seems natural to me; one-off images which fit themes or genres go into the main threads.

I think what this forum mostly wants to stay away from are those types of threads where just one image is posted, or one or two, followed by a thread of comments about the images which aren't saying anything in particular. I'm thinking of some of DPReview's subforums, like the street photography one where there is no real discussion, just a ton of threads where a well-established member posts a photo and a bunch of people pile on praise, but no further discussion ensues. Maybe that behavior has dried up since they left the Amazon fold and lost a number of members, who knows.
 
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