What's wrong with NP (No Picture) thread?

I recently posted two threads with "NP (No Picture)" in the titles.

Like "No words" threads which ask people not to post words (although

most of them quickly turn into critiques or mutural flatteries), "No

picture" thread is for discussions without the interference of

images. Does that violate the policy of this forum?

 

Instead of editing the images, the moderators edited my title. I just

wonder what their purpose is.

 

P.S.

There is no disrespect to the moderator in this thread. I just want

to see some discussion. That is what forum for, right?

NW/W threads indicates photo threads. Everything else are

considered discussion pretty much so i assume there need not

"NP" in the title. I could be wrong though.

The forums are generally for discussion. If you go through the tens of thousands of posts here that don't have images, you will notice that there are no NP threads. It's unnecessary.

generally people post pictures in NP threads and talk quite a bit in NW threads. Same thing when you ask about Elmarit 28 lens, you will get recoomendation for a CV 35 lens or even a Nikon camera. That's how it goes and just enjoy.

I agree that in the first few days of this forum, it is kind of hard to find the threads that aren't "NW", but it should not be necessary to stick "NP" in front of the thread title.

If you want to showing off the latest dog/baby/street snapshots, there is <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/forum?topic_id=1481">a Photo Critique forum</a>.

<p>

If you want to have visual conversation with other people, there is <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=007jPx">

a No Words forum</a>.

<p>

For other general discussions, many people including myself like to use images to support the argument. Images like this don't belong to No Words or photo critique. I don't see anything wrong with it. (For example, the thread <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=007jg8">Decisive Moment</a> started as a NW but quickly turned into serious discussion about decisive moment.)

<p>

I don't think forums should be image-free but I don't see anything wrong with image-free threads either. If I put "no picture" in the title, people who have the urge of posting a image would have a second thought. That would help us concentrate on the topic.

Images often help in illustrating a topic under discussion.

 

In the forums where I'm the primary moderator (e.g. EOS forum), my policy is no images for the sake of images, but images to illustrate a point are OK. It seems to work just fine as long as the forum participants are made aware of this and moderation is consistant.

 

My guess is that any forum inviting images is going to have to work pretty hard to keep it from becoming an image gallery and driving out the serious discussions. That's why I decided to keep image threads out of the EOS forum (and the nature forum).

 

That's just my personal view. I hope Jeff and Josh can manage to strike a balance here. I'm sure it can be done, but I think it will need some work to do it.

<i>P.S. There is no disrespect to the moderator in this thread. I

just want to see some discussion. That is what forum for, right?

</i><P>

Wouldn't the site feedback forum be a more appropriate place to

discuss the potentially-life-altering ramifications of the

moderators changing the title to a couple of your threads?<P>

<i>Wouldn't the site feedback forum be a more appropriate place to discuss the potentially-life-altering ramifications of the moderators changing the title to a couple of your threads?</i><p>

 

Yes. Mike is, as usual, right about how to deal with these things.<p>

 

I will delete this thread by tomorrow, because it's posted in the wrong place, and add that anything that begins with "NP" will be deleted by me as soon as I see it.<P>

 

Josh and I (along with Bob's assistance) will post a policy on images by morning. The general trend on photo.net is to move pure "No Words" threads to the W/NW Forum.

"Josh and I (along with Bob's assistance) will post a policy on images by morning"- I hope this is because the three of you will be taking the time to find out what the membership actually wants, as opposed to deciding what the moderators think is best.At times there seems to be a considerable distance between these two points.

That's probably because of the considerable difference in experience bteween the two groups in establishing and running discussion forums.

I agree with Bob (no surprise on that.)

 

If you look around the web at different types of forums, they range from unmoderated, typically dominated by inane posts and personal attacks, to highly moderated. The highly moderated ones tend to be the most informative and useful, although they take some time to develop a sense of community. There's a misguided belief here that heavy moderation eliminates community, when what it really does is keep the forum from becoming a chat room about anything and everything.