Rob Galibraith Forums Close.

It appears that the Rob Galibraith Forums are closed to new posts.

 

http://forums.robgalbraith.com/showrules.php?Cat=

 

This is a most unfortunate developement for us gearheads.

$$$

Not money... time.

 

Hopefully the forums will find a buyer... Actually I don't really care as long as CW finds somewhere to post and his 2500+ RG posts are still available.

 

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I hope Rob earns plenty from the sale. If you divide what he receives by the time he's invested in the forum I doubt it will be adequate compensation, everyone who has ever visited the site owes him a vote of thanks.

 

I wonder if this development has any implications for this forum?

The Fred Miranda forums are also undergoing some navel gazing. http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/377743

 

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I noticed this yesterday and regard this as the worst piece of news I've had as a photographer in some time. So many knowledgeable users provided feedback, and the moderators culled the mean-spirited posts that are the bane of online forums. I felt privileged to be able to post questions and get answers from top professionals.

 

As Rob Galbraith and Mike Turk probably will happen across this thread eventually: many thanks to both of you for hosting these forums as long as you did. You provided a great service to photographers worldwide.

So let's take this as an opportunity to "show the love" to Photo.net. <a href=http://www.photo.net/photonet-subscriptions?src=foot><b>Become a subscriber now.</b></a> The level of expertise available in these forums is worth <b><i>way</i></b> more than $25 a year. Do it now.

Sound the last post.

 

A couple of unfortunate consequences are that old links from answers posted here to threads at Robgalbraith will inevitably become invalid when the forum finds a new home or is shut down (losing a valuable repository of information); and that the valuable contribution of Canon's Chuck Westfall to explaining how to get the best out of Canon equipment and some of how it operates, often speedily drawing Canon's attention to issues affecting particular items, and providing feedback to HQ in Japan, may not get a new home.

Walt has the answer to keeping this forum going. Think how much time effort and money this site has saved people over the years. 25USD is a bargain.

I have thought the same thing myself regarding the information on that forum.

 

For one thing, the search function on THIS forum is pretty pathetic -> Rob Galibraith is much more amenable to finding dim posts from the past.

 

I for one will be raiding that forum over the next few weeks, downloading information to my HD for future reference.

Forums are basically a "loss leader" for a commercial website. It's like a supermaket selling Orange Juice for $1 gallon. It brings people into the store in the hope they'll buy something else and the idea is that overall the store makes a profit.

 

It's very well known among website operators that forums can be more trouble than they are worth. Forum readers don't click on ads, forums can consume signifcant system resources and forums need a lot of upkeep (moderation). They do attract users, but if the users don't visit the other parts of the website and generate revenue via advertising they can be (from a strictly commercial viewpoint) more of a liability than an asset.

 

My own website has some low traffic Canon EOS related forums (with their own integrated search function no less!) and I can tell you that the above is true. For me, low forum traffic is fine and the forums aren't designed to generate income (though if they do, that's fine with me!) The more traffic you get, the more forums cost in bandwidth and effort and the harder they are to keep high quality. Since forums don't usually pay for themselves, larger isn't necessarily better and certainly from a quality and moderation viewpoint you can get too big. I'd cite the DPreview forums as an example of very popular forums with a low percentage of quality traffic.

 

Making forums "subscription only" doesn't normally work well either because there's always another forum to go to that's free and most people will take free over not-free even if the absolute quality isn't quite as good. There certainly isn't a shortage of photography forums on the web.

 

If forums were making money, nobody would be closing or selling them. They'd be hiring someone to run them. If somebody buys a forum, you can bet it will be to make money and so you can expect either to pay a subscription or get ready for much more aggressive advertising and marketing.

 

At least there's still Photo.net. As far as I know there are no plans to close, change or sell the forums, or to close them to non-subscribers. I suppose anything can happen in the future and you can never say never, but I expect the photo.net forums will be around in their present form for quite a while. I can't say this with 100% certainty because I'm not (and would not be) a particpant any such decisions regarding photo.net, but I don't know of any plans to make significant changes.