Is Photo.net Dying?

From where I sit it seems like photo.net is dying. There has not been

any new post in the general fours, and the forum maintainers are

taking forever. Not to mention what looks like an advertising plea to

support them. I have also noticed the great quest to make everything

politically correct. What about the new rating; are they efficient

and useful or are they just a way to shove away the problem

temporarily. I plan to renew my membership when it is up I truly

would not be surprised if photo.net takes a turn for the worst. What

do you think?

<p>

-Justin Winokur<br>

<a href="mailto:Jwink@email.com">Jwink@email.com</a>

<p>

P.S

What about the never-ending debates (i.e. Film vs. Digital, ratings,

digital alterations)?

What really sucks is that nothing gets archived anymore. All the action occurs on the non-archived forums, but none of that is kept. Photo.net's strength was as an ongoing repository of information, conversation, and ideas-- however heavy or frivolous. Now everything is weighed for its "value" to the community before it is archived. Which is a bummer because this kind of tight-fisted policing just doesn't jive with the web. Also, photo.net's utility as a research tool is also diminished because you won't be able to look up a discussion of interest that occurred just last week. Why? Because it's gone, zapped, purged as if it never occurred.

 

Other forums have much more powerful archiving and search capabilities. Information and conversation has more permanence at those places. Photo.net only lives in the moment. You can contribute what you want, but it'll be gone tomorrow.

I agree that it is sad to watch the demise of the General

(archived) Forum, which was the repository of so much valuable

information and expertise related to photography. On the other

hand, photo.net now has a large number of topic specific forums

that are archived. Personally, I find it harder to track these

individual forums, even through the Unified Forum, than I did the

General Forum.

Since I only joined two days ago, I don't know. My impression though of being brandnew here is that the site does not navigate in a particularly intuitive, user-friendly fashion and I don't find FAQ or Help to overcome this. When I see pictures, I see lots of viewings but only a few ratings. Last night I tried to comment and rate on a number of pictures (of pictures selected for critique and also of pictures of people I know) and it was rather frustrating with frequents Url Not Found pages for obscure reasons and getting sort of stuck in certain pages without seeing a logical fashion on how to continue. From my novice vantage point I can't say thus far that the navigation of the site encourages the rating and commenting on pictures. That's a pity since most people show here in order to get some feedback.

 

It also seems that on pictures listed as Selected for Critique one can rate as high as a 7 but on pictures that *I* want to rate the dropdown rating box doesn't go higher than a 6 ?????

Helene, I think that in order to use the highest or lowest ratings, you have to supply a critique along with your rating. Not sure about that...

 

Under the General (archived) forum there's a discussion that explains how it works.

 

I can't answer Justin's question. My situation is that I'm much busier at work than I used to be and have little or no time for browsing this site lately. The site is certainly changing.

<p>Here is the data on archived messages since January 2001. This is all forums. Obviously, the Unarchived Forum is not included since the messages aren't archived. I also removed Critique Forum postings from the data.

 

<pre>

2001-01 7419

2001-02 6579

2001-03 7808

2001-04 7356

2001-05 7862

2001-06 8356

2001-07 9412

2001-08 9411

2001-09 8341

2001-10 9032

2001-11 10947

2001-12 13292

2002-01 15387

2002-02 14300

2002-03 16361

2002-04 15368

2002-05 15853

2002-06 11862

2002-07 14520

2002-08 19448

2002-09 17565

2002-10 11490

</pre>

 

<p>Note that this month is so far a partial month. The activity has shifted for the time being away form the General Archived ("photo.net") forum, and towards other forums. While this data speaks for itself, it would seem that photo.net isn't dying. On the contrary, the last two full months (August/September) set all-time records for archived forum activity. In addition to these forums, there are around 7000 postings per month in the Unarchived Forum. If this is dying, most of the other photo sites on the Net would like to be dying like this.

 

<p>Incidentally, the Gallery side of photo.net shows even more dramatic growth in numbers of photos posted, comments, and ratings.

 

<p>As for subscriptions, we have been posting appeals for subscriptions because we need revenue to run a rapidly growing site. The computers that we bought in 1999-2001 to run the site are holding up, but just barely, and we would like to purchase new hardware to better handle the traffic. Only 3% of the members of the site have subscribed, and we thought it fair that more of the many people who regularly visit the site should do so, and we thought that they would if we only asked.

 

<p>So we have been making regular appeals, and we will continue to find ways to remind people that while photo.net is a "free" site, our ISP, hardware vendors, etc don't provide the resources to run the site for free. Somebody has to pay for it, and the revenue that we get from clickthroughs to affiliates doesn't cover all the costs.

 

<p>The appeals have been successful: in August and September we increased the number of subscriptions from around 30-40 per month to over 200 per month. So far in October, it has unfortunately dropped down, to around 30 per week, which is still better than before we started the appeals. For the first time in years we are starting to build up a budget with which to purchase significant additional hardware and to expand in other ways.

Is photo.net dying? I hope not. I took up photography two years ago. Over those two years I have learned a lot from many of you. I would like to think that photo.net will be around for many years to come so that others will have the same opportunity I�ve had.

 

When I started here, this was a hobby for me. As of recently it has become a way for me to pick up extra money. Last week I shot senior portraits for a very beautiful young lady, some of which I posted here the other day. I�ve also picked up extra cash shooting images of a garden center over the summer. None of this would have been possible without the help of this forum and it�s members.

 

We are very fortunate to have a place like this to learn from each other, and communicate in open discussion with professionals and not receive a bill at the end of their teachings. Sometimes I wonder if other members realize how lucky they are.

 

As for myself, I would sincerely miss everything this forum has to offer if it were to come to an end.

Just for the record, I love photo.net. I have posted this thread in hopes of fining answers to photo.net�s future. I am a young (15) hobbyist photographer who has learned most of what he knows from forums. I have read and kept up with many forums but I just fear what is to come. Thanks Brian for the reassurance of photo.net�s success.

Brian,

 

Thanks for the data. People may be posting comments on photos, but they aren't posting many new threads in the General forum. Posts are made in other archived formus that don't draw as much attention from the Mod's as the general. Read through posts arechived in the Canon EOS forum. Many belong hear, and unarchived.

I really wish more was archived. This would mean less repeats in The General forum, and make even more information available in the archived.

<p>Jonathan, the data above don't include comments on photos, on any other comments. Just messages posted to forums, excluding the Photo Critique Forum and the Unarchived Forum.

 

<p>Besides the forums, the site provides many opportunities for comments. In addition to photos and presentations, one can write member reviews of ezShop products, neighbor-to-neighbor recommendations on retailers and labs, news_items, etc. Then one can comment on what others have written. Here is the data on these 'general_comments'. (These are primarily photo comments, by the way.)

 

<pre>

2001-01 959

2001-02 1266

2001-03 2970

2001-04 3552

2001-05 3754

2001-06 5182

2001-07 5968

2001-08 7079

2001-09 7424

2001-10 9168

2001-11 11433

2001-12 12098

2002-01 16919

2002-02 19434

2002-03 24678

2002-04 18744

2002-05 17548

2002-06 16364

2002-07 22362

2002-08 26894

2002-09 22299

2002-10 16606

</pre>

 

<p>So if you look at the recent peak month of August, and consider all types of comments and forum postings (archived and the Unarchived), adding in the 9000 Unarchived Forum postings in that month, there were about 54000 written contributions to the site in a 30 day period.

 

<p>Then there were the photos (about 1000 per day) and the ratings (around 3000 per day). Then there are the people who just read messages and look at photos, the "lurkers", most of whom do not register as members. We can't update the database fast enough to keep up with photo views, which we try to count. For example, in one four hour period on a Saturday afternoon (a very slow period), there was at least one view on 15,000 different photos. And we estimate that every forum message is read by an average of 300 people, and this number has been increasing also.

 

<p>Then, there are the clickthroughs. One of the most important services provided by photo.net is to serve essentially as a portal to other sites. We offer numerous opportunities for people to post links on the site, and many people take advantage of these links. We generate probably a half-million clickthroughs per month to other web sites, most of them non-revenue clickthroughs to non-commercial sites.

 

<p>I know Justin's question was well-intentioned, and I am not trying to bury him with statistics, but the issue is not whether photo.net is dying, but rather whether we won't collapse under too much success and traffic. Because we can't figure out how to pay for the service we are offering, and let it continue to grow.

Photo.net isn't dying, but it is changing. The old photo.net may not be dead, but it certainly isn't feeling well - but the new photo.net is growing rapidly.

 

Photo.net is FAR from what it was in the early days, both in philosphy and execution. That's understandable. When it was small it was much easier to administer. It started out as a totally academic, philanthropic project. It didn't have to make a profit, indeed it didn't need to make any money. When Philip invited me onboard to run the nature section I had full shell access for managing static content etc. Now I don't have any direct access at all. Not that I should have, but it means the (nature) static content really is static now.

 

By sucking all the LUSENT forums into photo.net there is certainly some confusion as to where to post. Equipment forum? General forum? Canon forum? Where do you post a question - or look for an archived response? As for archived vs. non-archived, at this point I'd say just archive everthing. Too much work to sort it all out and not enough reason to do it. Who does a search these days. I'd be interested in the search statistics. What percentage of users actually do a search?

 

Currently I presume the first priority of photo.net is to generate enough income to keep its head above water. That's not to say it's better or worse than it used to be(that's for individual users to decide). It may be growing too fast to support itself, I'm not privy to those statistics. Either it will prosper by catering to a new audience, or it will collapse under its own weight, or someone (person or corporation) will have to step in and provide private funding. Time will tell.

 

So, no, photo.net isn't what it used to be, but then neither is anything else! I'm sure those who really like image critiques are much happier with the new photo.net for example.

Bob, I can probably get the statistics on search from our WebTrends database. However, here is an anecdote. Recently, I was working on the search, and I broke it. It took me a few minutes to notice that our error log was taking a lot of hits. (I mean literally a few minutes, less than five.) It took me a few more minutes to fix the problem and restart the servers. When I checked the error logs, there were around four hundred errors. This was from having the search broken for under fifteen minutes. I must admit I was kind of surprised too, but I believe Search is a heavily-used feature of the site.

 

When searching, one currently retrieves messages from all the forums, not just the archived one. Search is not really so problematical when there are multiple forums where any given topic might be posted. What is more difficult is using the categories of the multiple forums, since the "Unified" category view isn't that

good.

 

As for merging the Archived and the Unarchived forum back into a single "General" photo.net forum, just like all the others, with all posts archived. This is the way it was up until about two years ago. Bob can probably remember when the current setup was established. What would people think of this? Actually, I have the last three months or so of the Unarchived forum, around 20,000 messages.

Oh, and concerning the question of whether photo.net is growing too fast to support itself.

 

The increased traffic mainly impacts our bandwidth charges and hardware requirements. We have a colocation contract, and right now colocation vendors are hurting. So we were able to lock in higher bandwidth than we are currently using by guaranteeing to continue our current monthly payment for the next year, even if our bandwidth usage declines. This is a calculated risk. We now have a lot of headroom on the bandwidth, and we win the bet if our bandwidth requirement continues to increase. But if our traffic falls off, we are stuck with the same monthly expense for bandwidth that we have now.

 

Previously, the advertisers were paying for the bandwidth and the colocation charges, and the subscriptions paid for the odd disk or new front-end web server. But the traffic has increased faster than the advertisers, so this is no longer true.

 

As for hardware, this is now the factor constraining further growth of the site. As the traffic has increased, we have been able to manage on the current hardware -- by rewriting slow code, by tuning, by being increasingly careful on use of disk space, etc. This strategy only buys time and is not a permanent solution; in fact, I am sure somebody will point out that we have already taken that strategy to the limit and there are already several times per week when the site's performance basically sucks.

 

Stretching out the hardware the way we have is not actually a very smart strategy, anyway, because it is labor-intensive and normally people are more expensive than hardware. The strategy somewhat works for now because the people are volunteers, who aren't more expensive than hardware.

 

Indeed, the main thing that has permitted the site's budget not to sink is that as full-time employees departed, they have not been replaced. At one time, photo.net had three or four employees. At this point, we have no full-time employees. We could probably scrape together one kind-of-pathetic salary if we had to, but for the past few months we have been able to operate with volunteers, so that the funds can go into our capital (i.e. hardware) budget. This strategy also only buys time, because we can't expect to operate with no employees indefinitely.

 

So we need to increase our revenue to buy hardware and eventually to hire employees once more. We strongly believe it is feasible to do so. We are working on some new advertising revenue streams, that won't result in a lot of intrusive banner or pop-up ads, with animated dancing girls and cars zooming around the page. We get tons of offers from ad networks that want to "buy" our traffic. We aren't interested in this type of advertising.

 

During the last couple of months, our big push has been to convince people to subscribe. For our budget to work, we needed to ramp up to around 300 subscriptions per month, and we were completely beside ourselves when right off the bat for the first two months of our increased subscription appeals, we came nearly to 250, counting renewals. This is actually a factor of 8 more than we were getting before. However, this month is down to about half that, "only" a factor of 4 better than before, and not so thrilling as August and September. We will be working on ramping the subscription level back towards our budget goal. Meanwhile, if anybody out there feels motivated to support your favorite photo site, there is no time like now.

Well I'd just like to mention how much this sort of debate has improved since Brian came on board. It used to be the case that any question or comment to the "management" of Photo.net was very likely to go unanswered; there was zero chance of getting an objective numerically-based response and all this just meant that the myths perpetuated. Here we've got detailed numerical responses and in general terms a much greater willingness/ability to respond cogently. Looks good (and alive) to me.

I don't know about photo.net but I heard that film is dying.

 

I personally think digital is dying.

Impressive data Brian, and it explains scientifically why photo.net needs resuscitation. New hardware may help to handle growing traffic but no hardware will ever restore the quality of discussions or an easy access to top photography that photo.net once offered. The bigger you become, the less you offer. Your new rating system does not work and the politically correct censorship invented to accomodate totally talentless but memebership paying fragile egos of new members simply kills any honest thought exchange. Altough photo.net may exist as a website for a long time, to many of us it will be as good as dead. I have to say with a deep sadness that photo.net's obssession with control and political correctness became a main issue on photo.net and contributed profoundly to the decay of this site. Your new policies allow anyone who manages to shoot a smiling rabbit or a stretchmarked ass sharp enough to find its way to a top photos gallery because they would be rated by fellow lovers of such shots. Ultimately, the elves will have to award such shots POW titles because they would be hard pressed to accomodate the tastes accodingly. Now, that's a stench of decay Brian and I don't like it.

Maria, your comments are full of it. We delete very few postings or photos. Like I said above, there are 50,000 postings per month, and I delete an average of less than ten per week. Most of the other moderators delete even fewer. That doesn't even add up to one-tenth of one percent. Most of those that are deleted are crude pornography, obscene rantings, or some anti-this anti-that person slamming every pro-that pro-this photo he can find as sarcastically as possible. The rest of the deleted stuff is way off-topic posts, generally ads, spam, or endless is-it-Photoshopped? discussions on the POW. Is this what you are talking about as "politically correct"?

 

<p>As for the moderation policy being designed specifically to protect the egos of subscribers, that is false. For one thing, once a person is a subscriber, we don't need to coddle their fragile egos in order to get their subscription, do we? By the way, thanks for <em>your</em> subscription and your finanancial support. Because you are a subscriber, I won't delete your post, so as to ensure that you will subscribe again next year.

Photo.net is following the path it has to. Once upon a time it was a small "readership" website. Maybe analogous to "LensWork" magazine. But "LensWork" will never make much money or attract a lot of subscribers. It's serious, B&W, somewhat narrow interest and it doesn't take ads or market or review equipment - though it does what it does do better than anyone else in the business.

 

Now photo.net is perhaps becoming more analogous to, say, "Petersen's Photographic" magazine. Lots more readers, who want a lot more diverse subjects covered. More color pictures, more ads, and no doubt a more profitable enterprise. It also probably appeals to many more photographers, particularly beginners.

 

This is evolution in action. The more users, the more things have to be (or be perceived to be) nice, fair and inoffensive or you risk more complaints than you can handle. If there seems to be an air of political correctness and pandering to the lowest common denominator, this may be part of the reason. You can't please everyone but you have to try to. Every month there seems to be a letter in "Popular Photography" along the lines of "I've had it with you guys, cancel my subscription". I guess the trick to success is minimizing the number of such letters - depending on how you define success of course...

Brian, Isn�t the threat of deletion on the basis of it pissing you off just another sign of decay (or <b>corruption</b>). I am a member but that should not give me the right to piss someone off. I should be able to regardless of my status.

And now I am "totally talentless" based on my having paid for a service I use? You base this on what experience with my work?

 

Conni

Justin, I had no intention of deleting maria's post. Pretending not to do so because she is a subscriber was my ironic way of showing what nonsense her point is. Obviously, her decision to subscribe or not next year has nothing to do with whether I delete the post or not.

 

On the subject of moderating: I am the only moderator on this site who has any connection to photo.net management. I would be very much surprised to learn that any of the other moderators are influenced in the slightest by financial considerations in deciding what to delete. Many of them are the same moderators who have been moderating the site for years, and I doubt any of them have changed their moderation style in all this time because the site has grown in size. If anything they have become more strict in deleting (or not archiving) posts, which is not a change in moderation policy that is apt to please the crowds.

 

That leaves me. The few posts that I delete, even if every single one of them were motivated by financial/political correctness considerations, are not enough in the face of tens of thousands of posts to have much impact on the flavor of the site. And, as it happens, financial/political correctness considerations are not on my mind when I delete posts.

To get to the point; what is happening Brian. Give us some inside info. You have given me statistics and examples but what�s your opinion. Stop worrying about who on the photo.net management you are going to piss off. What�s you opinion.

Sorry to upset you Brian -- unlike yours, mine was meant to be a personal attack. And Connie, the answer is no unless you write lenghty e-mails to the modeartors complaining about harassment because you got only low ratings in your portofolio.

I don't know about your statistics, but there is only ONE thread in the general archived section which is 11 days old. As far as I can see, no useful topics go to the general section any more. Wouldn't you say that the general section is dead? A lot of archivable stuff gets posted in the unarchived section. That definitely indicates something is wrong.