Forum restructuring and thread sections suggestion

[Overread]

*takes off his mod hat - puts on his user hat*

Just a few suggestions regarding the forum organisation and structure for consideration:

1) Change "Photography Equipment & Products: News & Reviews" to a title which better reflects the concept of the section (ie also asking questions about gear use/purchases) or change the descriptive text to limit content to only news and reviews. At present the title is out of sync with the sections use and description

2) Move the new Camera Forum subsections up in the site structure to sit above the galleries. It feels odd to have all our gear and learning resources at the top - then the galleries and then another gear subsection below them and I suspect it results in them not being used as much as they would if they were seated higher up in the site structure.

3) Remove the Digital Photography subsection - since its honestly the mainstay of the site now and not a more exclusive section such as film based photography is now.
"Digital Discussion & Q&A" honestly has no use since those questions are easily put into other existing subsections and to have it on its own just spreads a bit of confusion
"Graphics Programs and Photo Gallery" should be kept but moved inside "Foundations of Photography" category along with the rest of the similar subsections already there.
"HDR Discussions" should be moved into the Galleries (see point 4) or at least out of the digital category since HDR is not limited to digital photography alone (even though its the dominate form).

4) Adjust the Galleries to be both galleries and topic discussions. Not only promoting the greater use of those sections, but also realising the fact that (as shown in several such as macro) these sections are no longer just used as galleries, but are also used for basic and advanced discussions within those niche interest pockets (which ties it in very well with allowing HDR to be moved into this area).

*puts his mod hat back on*

 

[Big Mike]

I do agree that the Equipment section could use a name change. Maybe even a couple specific sub-sections like 'Lenses', 'Lighting', 'Studio Gear (or hardware)'.

As for moving the new branded sections up...I guess that is an option.
Way back in the day, we made an effort to drive the forum toward photography (in general) and away from brand wars. The point being that your gear matters much less than what you know and how do use the gear you have. At one point, we even went so far as to dissuade members from putting their gear in their signatures.
I don't care if you shoot with a Nikon, a Canon or a bird who chisels the image in stone.
That was one reason we were never big on the equipment/brand sections. Besides, you can find that type of thing on most other photography forums.

So if we moved the brand name gear sections up to the top/front...we would be getting even farther away from that. Although, that may be what the members want, so let us know.

And I do think something could be done with the 'Digital' section. If I have to move any more questions about lenses or tripod, out of that section...I may shove a pen into my eye.

 

[dxqcanada]

The "Camera Forum" should be changed to "Equipment Forum"
The "Photography Equipment and Products" should be placed there.
The "Collectors Corner" should also be there.

 

[Compaq]

Newbie forum archived and all questions and C&C requests to be posted in the appropriate "Gallery".

 

[Virtuosos]

a bird who chisels the image in stone.

ummmmm WHAT?! How could you NOT care about that?! That would be beyond spectacular!

 

[Compaq]

Chill, my trained black headed gull does that all the time.

 

[Formatted]

Yes to all of the above.

 

[Josh66]

Newbie forum archived and all questions and C&C requests to be posted in the appropriate "Gallery".

Honestly, I think this would be the best move for the forum.

The beginner's section has turned into a sort of catch-all 'I don't know where to post this' section. I cannot think of a single thread there that could not just as easily fit into one of the other sections we have.

How 'bout instead of having 'pro galleries' and 'beginner galleries', we just have galleries?

Any noob that feels uncomfortable posting with the 'big boys' only has to preface the post with "I'm kinda new at this", or something like that. I'm sure most everyone will understand and accommodate.

I'm convinced that 90% of the posts there are only there because that section gets the most traffic.


Right under the beginners section, we have 'beyond the basics'. I think that if the beginners section was just renamed 'photography basics', or similar, that might help to get people putting their threads in more appropriate sections which already exist.

At the same time, the gear review section should also be made to include general gear related questions - and to some extent it is used to that, but many of those threads wind up in the beginners section.


I also like Mike's idea for a lighting section, as that is a pretty huge part of photography, and we don't currently have a section dedicated to lighting (be it flash, the sun, or whatever). Threads dealing with light modification would fit in nicely too, and it would keep it all in one easy to browse location.


One more thing ... the Articles of Interest section (one of the most useful, IMO) seems to be getting a lot of misuse lately. It seems to me that it is intended for polished and complete articles dealing with various subjects... Lately, we seem to be getting a lot of links to blogs in there.


One other idea - I think a 'sticky suggestion' section could prove useful. It would probably be best as a sub-section of the feedback section. Say you've noticed a very informative thread that you feel should be stickied - post there linking to the thread and maybe mention which section the sticky should go in. ...Sometimes I do think that we have too many stickies already though... Not sure if a suggestion thread will make that worse or better, lol.

 

[Overread]

Hmm I think articles of interest was locked, but got unlocked during one of the forum upgrades - you've reminded me to remind whoever it is that is in charge of locking to re-lock the section - at least against new threads being posted.

 

[Big Mike]

One other idea - I think a 'sticky suggestion' section could prove useful. It would probably be best as a sub-section of the feedback section. Say you've noticed a very informative thread that you feel should be stickied - post there linking to the thread and maybe mention which section the sticky should go in. ...Sometimes I do think that we have too many stickies already though... Not sure if a suggestion thread will make that worse or better, lol.

Just a quick note on stickies. They really don't work.
Sure, they are great if the thread has some info that you may want to come back to and read again. It makes it easy to find...but this type of thing should be done by subscribing to the threads you like. Stickies are meant to be at the top of sections so that people will read those first, hopefully before posting their own new threads into that section....and if that's the purpose, they don't work.

For example, I could put a sticky up into a section, with the title 'READ THIS FIRST'...and then in the thread, I could put "If you post in this section, you're an idiot". And still, people wouldn't read the sticky and would post there all the time.

 

[Overread]

I've always viewed stickies as the kind of thing that established members can link to when a new person asks a question already covered by a sticky - as a way of a quicker community answer. The problem however is that many stickies to common questions cans fast fall out of date.

 

[Big Mike]

I've always viewed stickies as the kind of thing that established members can link to when a new person asks a question already covered by a sticky - as a way of a quicker community answer. The problem however is that many stickies to common questions cans fast fall out of date.

On that point, almost every question asked around here, has been asked (and answered) before. So rather than answering them (again and again) we could point them to the search function (or a sticky)....but they'll just think it's rude.

I think that stickies can work, but they would have to have someone managing them closely...as you said, they get fall out of date and we don't want the sections to get too crowded with stickies.

 

[Overread]

I think the best way to keep the sticky number down is a single stickied thread with direct links to a variety of information sources (namely threads, but not exclusive). That at least allows for many topics to be covered whilst most of the threads will filter down into the forum structure so as not do dominate, but are there to be referenced and added to as needed.
Methods and techniques would most likely only be added to - whilst ones dealing with things like "what camera should I get" would need pruning every so often to remain current

Edit - something like this would be really great:
http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/...rum-photo-gallery/123160-tutorial-thread.html

 

[Josh66]

we could point them to the search function

To be fair, the search feature doesn't always work well... The 30 second wait between searches can also get very annoying when you perform a search that returns zero results...

 

[Big Mike]

Is it really that long?...I'm sure we could change that.