Upcoming forum changes: investing in our community's future

Mbruinsma said:

reading all this again about threaded view versus flat view when DPRevived tried to save the community when DPReview was about to stop existing. I am thankful that Gear Petrol could save DPReview for the time being. I would say to them: do what you have to do. But personally I am less and less engaged with the internet in general, because the so called needed commerce is killing it (little by little).

I like DPReview the way it is, no change needed. How to get young folks over here? I don't know, maybe they have to reach certain age to get interested in the "dated" style of this site.

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BryanHL said:

This is all about conversation. There will never be anything static about a discussion and new sub-topics will naturally occur.

The fact that in this forum we can change the title is irrelevant. Even if the title couldn't be changed people will still bring up new points.

Another example might be where someone posts an exceptional pic. All sorts of discussion follows and some may be about SS and motion blur. Another sub-thread will be about fstop and DoF. Someone else will discuss ISO and noise.

The whole point about Threaded View is that those sub-topics are kept grouped together for easy on-topic perusal. Would it be silly to suggest people create new threads re SS, fstop and ISO? Should they then re-post the OP's pic for reference? It's just the same here in this thread. All discussion (well the vast majority of it) is relevant to the OP. So it is on topic and logically belongs to this thread.

I get that some are happy in flat view if at least because they don't have to wait for page re-loads.

But there is seriously no logic to suggest a whole bunch of new threads when they are in essence still pertinent to the OP.

And the people (many - currently > 50% in the poll) who use the utility of Threaded view are quite correct to voice their concerns. I don't think those concerns can be argued against in any logical way.

If they are ignored - well there may be a shell left, but it won't be in anyway the same place...

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mfinley said:

Mathew Anderson said:

Automatic locking of threads is a possibility. I've discussed this with our volunteer moderators and they've expressed some interest. It may end up being a per-forum section application.

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I hope you don't go that route, it's a double edged sword.

One of the largest online forums - trip advisor has this feature and it sucks. I can't tell you the amount of times I do a search for something on google for a travel subject, I get a trip advisor thread in the results and click on it and find the perfect match to what I'm asking about, read through the thread and see I need to post a follow up only to discover the "This topic has been closed to new posts due to inactivity".
Then you have to start the whole process over instead of simply adding a question relevant to where the discussion left off.

Yes, Zombie threads happen, but so what? If the old thread is relevant enough for someone to revive it what difference does it make?

Forums are about discussions and activity, anything you do such as locking old threads is going in the wrong direction when your goal is to promote activity.

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Overrank said:

Ken53 said:

Much of DPR's original success was fueled by the efficiency and user friendliness of the threaded view. With out the "Threaded View", DPR will likely shrink down to about 25%. It will manage to survive as thousands of other insignificant sites do. I like many other users, will likely lose interest and drift away from this site. Life is too short to waste time with the ball and chain effect of using the flat view. More time to spend in the field.

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Having implemented a web chat system in the 1990s, I suspect that threaded view was forced on DPR because it was easy to implement using the asynchronous web protocols available then. I doubt if DPR had been written in the early 2000s that threaded view would have been an option. But of course from a user perspective if you’ve been using something for years then it becomes your preferred platform.

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MAC said:

Mark Ransom said:

Ken53 said:

Life is too short to waste time with the ball and chain effect of using the flat view. Less screen time, more time to spend in the field.

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You're right, I was completely missing the positive aspect of this change.

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I was a member of FM wedding forum for years, and now it is a dead place

flat view could make this place a dead place, more will leave

knowledgeable resources will flee

that becomes an overall negative, nobody wins

they could keep what they have, and simply add a link to the new forum for image posting topics. Then when they get threaded view down the road, make the migration

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J A C S said:

On a second thought, the 150-post limit is not such a bad thing...

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yslee2 said:

Chris Dubea said:

I've used xenforo forums before......

It wasn't what I would say was a positive experience. Quite the opposite in fact.

Well, it's been nice knowing you dpreview.

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Lol, XenForo is modern software that underpins large forums like RedCafe, it's much nicer than the antiquated UI that DPReview's current forum runs on. Can't wait for the change.

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gary0319 said:

I would have thought that anything as major as this would have warranted a full site wide article on the front page with details on why, when, and how the change is to be made …… with full endorsement of the top management.

Seems kind of half baked right now.

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gary0319 said:

I would have thought that anything as major as this would have warranted a full site wide article on the front page with details on why, when, and how the change is to be made …… with full endorsement of the top management.

Seems kind of half baked right now.

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tbcass said:

yslee2 said:

Chris Dubea said:

I've used xenforo forums before......

It wasn't what I would say was a positive experience. Quite the opposite in fact.

Well, it's been nice knowing you dpreview.

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Lol, XenForo is modern software that underpins large forums like RedCafe, it's much nicer than the antiquated UI that DPReview's current forum runs on. Can't wait for the change.

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Let me ask you this, if DPR was changing to threaded view only how would you feel? …. It’s time to take other people’s preferences into consideration and not just your own.

Newer isn’t always better and I find the UI of most other forums much worse, too simple and unsophisticated if you will.

I will go so far as to suggest that the DPR UI format is the main reason it is more popular than other photography forums.

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Mathew Anderson said:

"We did the research, and unfortunately, the few available add-ons we found are unreliable and outdated. They would put the entire forum structure at risk, including the potential inability to maintain the forums long-term because the add-on is no longer supported for that version... breaking the entire forum structure permanently."

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BryanHL said:

Also, I think their software "dials home" to some degree. I know on one site using Xenforo that it was down for a whole day while the Xenforo maintainers tried to sort some routing issue between them, Cloudflare and the forum site. I never saw a satisfactory answer as to the cause of the issue but I don't know how clued in the forum admins were either...

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knickerhawk said:

Bill Ferris said:

knickerhawk said:

ishwanu said:

Bill Ferris said:

ishwanu said:

Bill Ferris said:

I can share that the test environment allows much larger images than 1600 x 1600 pixels to be uploaded. I've personally uploaded a 13986 x 4847 pixel JPEG of a stitched pano. The file is 21.3MB in size. I've also test uploaded an 8256 x 5504 JPEG (9.3MB) from a processed Z9 file. The image quality at screen resolution is very good. Viewed at 100%, the images display at about 80% of the quality I see when viewing photos at 100% in LrC.

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How about an explanation of that? Is it about compression? Does it mean all files will be further compressed when they're uploaded, or only some files will be further compressed based on dimensions and/or file size?

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All good questions. It's a ballpark estimate based on a comparison of browser window and LrC Library module 100% displays. In short, it's the eye test.

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Oh. Browser displays of web files often do their own weird things when compared to local app displays of local files. That already happens now. I interpreted it as meaning that files will be stored on DPR servers in a way that reduces their quality - which I hope is incorrect.

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Bill, if you're not sure what if any destructive storage compression is being applied, please download some sample images from the test site and apply a difference filter between them and the originals in Photoshop. That will tell you the extent of any added lossy compression.

For a leading camera comparison site, ANY lossy compression imposed would be an absolute disaster.

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I've done a comparison of how the same JPEG displays on the current DPR platform and on the staging/test site. Viewing the photo at 100% on both platforms, I didn't see a difference in the amount or quality of detail.

Here's the photo I used for the comparison.

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Thanks for the test and response. Please open the JPEG of the above shot on the staging server, save it locally and then upload that local saved version so that we can do an objective comparison.

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mfinley said:

I hate to see anyone go over such a thing, in the end I doubt you will, you'll get used to it. There simply won't be an option for you anywhere else as threaded view is basically dead everywhere

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Ken53 said:

gary0319 said:

I would have thought that anything as major as this would have warranted a full site wide article on the front page with details on why, when, and how the change is to be made …… with full endorsement of the top management.

Seems kind of half baked right now.

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Bingo... well said, maybe time to buy an extra camera battery, and get more fun time out in the field. (-:

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Ozzie SD said:

This is post 500! Am I famous now? Does anyone want to have my autograph? :-D

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