Forum Organization, my suggestions

Site Feedback
1

It would be easier for me to find threads that I’m interested in if we had a menu of Categories like:

Technical discussions about cameras and lenses, news, reviews, and looking for help:
M43 General discussion
Olympus/OMDS
Panasonic
Other Systems
Processing software
Computers and printing
Video
Accessories

Photo sharing and discussion about photos:
Landscape (to include cityscape, seascape, cloudscape, forests, etc.)
Architecture (buildings, interiors)
Flowers and plants
Birds (no need to separate BIF from perched, wild captive, etc. if it’s a photo of bird, it goes here)
Other wildlife (lions and tigers and bears, etc. If captive, must say so)
Sports
Street
Macro and close up
Astro
Abstract
Portraits
Pets and domestic animals (dogs, cats, horses, oxen, goats, your favorite pig…whatever)
Underwater
Drones and aerial
Photo Play, digital art, and how do I fix this photo
Potpourri (like the old “Through my eyes last week” thread)

I have no problem including photos taken with other systems, we should welcome anyone who is interested in M4/3 and wants to participate here. However, this is about M4/3 and there is no reason to have brand- or format-specific subthreads in the “Other Systems” Category.

Mods should be able to move posts to a more appropriate Category as well as to delete posts that are otherwise inappropriate. Mods should be able to delete long quotes from replies when someone says something simply like “I agree”.

Limit of 5 photos per post. No “quoting” of photos in replies except in Photo Play or similar Category. Attribution of source if not original.

I would welcome a Category for Nudes and Figure Study, carefully curated to exclude porn, but perhaps that is best left to more artsy sites like 500p.

NO discussions of politics or religion, but widest latitude of photo content.

2 Likes
2

Plus astrophotography ??

3

I don’t know if you object to it being on the list or if you just missed seeing it there.

4

OOps, missed the word “astro”. My eyes had their blinkers on and were looking for the whole word “astrophotography”.

5

See above. Don’t seem to be able to delete a post in its entirety, just the text.

6

No worries, it probably won’t make any difference anyway. :slight_smile:

1 Like
7

hear Hear… totally agree… would be easy. maybe i missed something but a question tab as well. unless it is in the very first one " photosharing and discussion"

8

Technical discussions about cameras and lenses, news, reviews, and looking for help:

9

Prolly the Best/Greatest thing about DPReview M43 forum - there were NO sub-divisions !
Yes there were other separate ‘subject’ forums - Landscape, Sports, Nature, B&W, etc. So one could go to those as well.
We in M43 joined in the general melting pot of posts in M43. Oly, Pany, ‘PP’, new lens, astro…
so we got to see the title of a thread and decide if we wanted to view further…
Consequently M43 was one of the most ‘active’ forums in DPR… Plenty of new threads every day - with plenty of responses.

How a Creator of a Thread choses to title their Thread, allows intent to be clear or obscure.
I’m good with that allowing me to decide to poke my nose in, or ignore.

I’m also OK with ‘Categories’ or ‘Tags’ as long as there’s a chrono view of ‘everything’…
I’m here to see images, read about thoughts and ideas about photography and images.
‘Categories’ for me are more limiting than inviting.
I like to know about some Pany things… but would I go into a ‘Pany’ category to scan of anything interests ? Prolly not, same for quite a few other ‘categories’.
… just sayin…
Thx
Yuri

10

Having a greater assortment of Categories beyond Gear Reviews, General, etc. would not change anything about the way the forum now reads by default, it would just give the option to click on a Category that you are interested in reading about or posting in if you so desire, and all the posts tagged with that Category would appear…just as it does now. If you simply want to read everything that is posted chronologically, I think the default is “Everything” or “General” now and that needn’t change.

11

A efficient use of tags would meet both points of view and leave General as it is now.

12

How do you create a tag?

13

You can add them when creating a new thread

14

Wouldn’t a pre-set list of Categories be better than a free-for-all of whatever tags people decided to create?

15

Have you tried to create a tag?
I have tried to create a new thread. I can add a tag to the post but can not create one.
I think admin needs to create them.
Using tags would enable a number to be added to a post to indicate the contents eg. Olympus, macro.
It isn’t possible to do this with categories as a post has to go in one or the other.
Users can set their Tag tracking or watching settings to notify them of posts using the tags they are interested in.

16

I guess it would work either way, as long as the taxonomy that is created by the admin makes sense and you can select the Tag or Category you want to post in or view. Not a big problem now with few users, but when the number of posts gets unwieldly there probably will be a need for filtering.

17

Blockquote

I think that’s why having both categories and tags is good. Categories = admin curated. Tags = user generated.

I would be happy either way. As you pointed out, the default view for this form is “everything” –- as long as that doesn’t change, I wouldn’t really care!

18

Do you know of a way to create a tag? As with Categories, it appears that only the admin can do it and that would make sense. Aside from the logic and appropriateness of a tag, typos, misspellings, bad translations, and the like would make user-created tags a mess. I can’t even find any instructions about how to use tags.

19

I can’t even find any instructions about how to use tags.

Click on new topic.
Click on the plus sign in optional tags.
Select the one or ones you wish to use.
Post in the normal way.

20

No, I just assumed and wrote before checking. I don’t think then they serve a lot of purpose right now tbh.

You add them when creating a post (or edit afterwards).

Hm… tags might make sense to for eg manufacturers I guess? As in “Gear” category tagged as either Pansonic or Olympus or Sigma or…?

You’re right that tags can get messy but with autocomplete, in my experience people usually pick something existing out of convenience. And in the beginnings it can be a nice way to figure out “grassroots style” what people actually want to use and find it useful for.

Regardless, up to Admin :slight_smile: