What is "bashing" anyway?

Richard Murdey wrote:

I need to get this off my chest:

dpreview is not a fan site. The forums are governed by mutual courtesy, not mutual allegiances. People are free to voice their concerns, frustrations, anxieties, annoyances, and vexations numerous and various as they please.

And I think some people around here would do well to keep that in mind.

If you don't want to hear people make critical statements about Pentax, go to somewhere like Pentaxforums where they play Pentax fan service all day, everyday.

I've been around a while. Since before the *ist D to be exact. One of the formulative experiences observing the forums back in the day was when people started comparing the D80 to the K10D. Pentax fans would insist the K10D was better than the D80 because of (laundry list of features including weather sealing and shake reduction). On the Nikon side of things, people were more concerned about whether they should buy the D80 or the D200. (.....) Anyone who made an objective comparison between the D80 and K10D, however, soon arrived at the conclusions that the AF system on the D80 was miles ahead of the one on the K10D.

This was met by certain vocal members of the Pentax community in one of three ways,

1) insistence that the K10D AF was good enough so who cares?

2) rationalization that it didn't matter because the K10D was cheaper

3) rationalization that it didn't matter because the K10D had weather sealing, SR, etc. and the D80 did not

I ended up owning the K10D for quite a few years. I mostly used it in manual focus, so it didn't bother me the AF was pretty much crippled. I would not deny to anyone, though, that the D80 was all around the nicer camera to use. The K10D has a few points in its corner, sure, and was perfectly fine, but so far as proficiency in core abilities (focus, exposure, white balance, responsiveness, ergonomics) went the D80 was generally better to a lesser or greater degree.

Fast forward a decade and there are people on the Pentax forums who are still as blindly defensive of Pentax gear as they ever were. Behavior includes but is not limited to,

1) overtly hostile response to reports of technical issues with Pentax equipment (insisting ad nauseum that test methodology is flawed, demanding more proof, insisting the problem must be the user, etc)

2) belittling people who express an opinion brand X is better than Pentax at function Y

3) demanding people making statements critical of Pentax (Ricoh) to stop posting

This lamentable behavior is, sadly, a feature of Pentax forums more than most (any?) others. It does you, and the forum, no favors.

You should really learn to be a little more thick-skinned. Stop seeing criticism of a camera or company as a personal insult. No one at Nikon forums does this! We all rip into Nikon with gusto at every opportunity, for the D600 oil spots, for the D750 flare issure, D800 focus alignment, the D7000 buffer, the D7100 sensor, for the poor profits, for not making a full frame mirrorless camera ... then Nikon puts out the D500 and we all go crazy and do virtual high fives and fist bumps. But most of the time we are just hanging out giving our thoughts good and bad, listening what other people have on their mind. Nikon is not going to roll over and die just because someone made a forum post explaining why he likes the Canon 80D better than the D7200, and Pentax isn't going anywhere either.

So stop taking it personally. Stop being so dogmatic about insisting everything about Pentax must be great. There are lots of things to like about Pentax cameras, but plenty of things to complain about too.

Richard,

Not anybody like you who could afford many gears from different brand. Some of us they stick with one brand, and that could be Pentax. And when they have Pentax with them, it is becoming their religion. You know that.

If you could criticize Pentax for the cons they have, you should be able to see what pros they have also. Give the credits when it is due. For example, now Pentax has achieved significant recognition out of K-1. But then, what the first comment you could say: The price of K-1 in Japan is so expensive even Nikon D810 is cheaper. As if who would buy Pentax K-1 if D810 is cheaper ? That is your reasoning, but the reasoning you have is not accurate. You don't see high demand of K-1, not only in Japan, but also the rest of the world.

True that DPR is not fan site, but you should understand one condition that here in pentax SLR talk, is loaded with pentaxfans. You can't just say: "Guys don't be blind, do be a fanboys, looks outside there are better camera than what you have". It is as if when you bump your head into the wall, you blame the wall and you want to destroy it for the sake of your convenient.

Thank you for giving a lecture today. I appreciate it. But you should take the lessons also why people don't welcome you here (very) nicely. I don't have personal grunge with you. It is just 2 cents comment.