- Joined
- May 1, 2008
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- Can others edit my Photos
- Photos OK to edit
Ok so as part of an intent to reduce some of the pressure in the, overused, beginners subsection (an act that will help beginners as a reduction in new thread generation will only help their threads stay on the first page, and get noticed) I'd suggest that we approach the (controversial) area and open up a critique section on the site.
I know in the past TPF has had this and that in the past it led to fights and general headaches for the mods and members, however I would put forth the argument that by not having a subsection we have not avoided the problem.
Instead what happens is threads are posted with "C&C" and various other labels, in the title to ask for critique; and that in those threads (esp when the dreaded W word is mentioned) we still get the same fights and arguments that we'd have if they were in their own dedicated subsection.
So from a forum social and mod workload* point of view having a dedicated critique subsection, as I see it, can't make any problem any worse than it already is under the current setup. What it will enable, however, is a hopeful reduction in the use of the beginners section and the pooling of similar threads into a single subsection grouping.
Note I am aware that we have a lot of subsections already and that adding them is not done lightly, in view of our large forum organisation. To that I would suggest two possible resolutions to this:
1) Supporting vendors get a subsection as part of the site; however looking at these sections they are not strongly used (only one vendor is using their subsection to any great degree) and thus the vendors could easily be combined into a single "supporting vendors" subsection without incurring any disadvantage to what they have at present.
2) An interface more akin to what Photography on-the Net (and other sites) use in their "talk about photography" heading as seen here:
Canon Digital Photography Forums - Powered by vBulletin
the grouping still divides the subsections into easily viewable links, but also reduces their space and bulk on the page significantly - making the site far more viewable at a glance (though I'd argue that the larger typefont that TPF uses would make this easier still over the smaller POTN font).
*accepting of course that there will be a teething time when workload will increase as initial threads are moved into the new section and members get used to using the new section and moving out of other areas.
I know in the past TPF has had this and that in the past it led to fights and general headaches for the mods and members, however I would put forth the argument that by not having a subsection we have not avoided the problem.
Instead what happens is threads are posted with "C&C" and various other labels, in the title to ask for critique; and that in those threads (esp when the dreaded W word is mentioned) we still get the same fights and arguments that we'd have if they were in their own dedicated subsection.
So from a forum social and mod workload* point of view having a dedicated critique subsection, as I see it, can't make any problem any worse than it already is under the current setup. What it will enable, however, is a hopeful reduction in the use of the beginners section and the pooling of similar threads into a single subsection grouping.
Note I am aware that we have a lot of subsections already and that adding them is not done lightly, in view of our large forum organisation. To that I would suggest two possible resolutions to this:
1) Supporting vendors get a subsection as part of the site; however looking at these sections they are not strongly used (only one vendor is using their subsection to any great degree) and thus the vendors could easily be combined into a single "supporting vendors" subsection without incurring any disadvantage to what they have at present.
2) An interface more akin to what Photography on-the Net (and other sites) use in their "talk about photography" heading as seen here:
Canon Digital Photography Forums - Powered by vBulletin
the grouping still divides the subsections into easily viewable links, but also reduces their space and bulk on the page significantly - making the site far more viewable at a glance (though I'd argue that the larger typefont that TPF uses would make this easier still over the smaller POTN font).
*accepting of course that there will be a teething time when workload will increase as initial threads are moved into the new section and members get used to using the new section and moving out of other areas.