To Brian and Bob A.

<P>Dear Both,

 

<P>Bob, you may have noticed I have been participating at the Leica

Forum more than a few months ago. For about close to two years, I

was almost completely absent with Photo.net for personal reasons.

 

<P>To my dismay, most of the things have not changed, and some have

gotten worse.

 

<P>Example : It is no longer the Leica forum. Anybody who has a

question with their Nikon, Canon, MF, LF and even pin hole, all send

their questions to the <B>Leica</B> forum. If you can't or don't

want to send these people away, can you device a method so the the

Leica users don't have to read through the entire question just to

find out it has noting to do with <b>Leica </b> ?

 

<P>There are too many things I want to see change, but the one that

I want to see the most urgently is everyone knows on weekends, there

are no moderators on site and people can post whatever they like,

and most likely any obnoxious post would remain until Monday. People

are not stupid, you know. So how about assiging a few weekend

moderators so that things do not get so out of hand?

 

<P>PLease delete this post after you read it. If you want to give me

a response, it is your choice to do it openly, or you could send me

an email privately.

 

<P>Best regards,

<br>Sandy

"...PLease delete this post after you read it..."

 

Who is Sandy?

Sandy was and probably still is a great benefactor and friend to this site, and anything he says, right or wrong, should always be taken note of .....IMHO.

I corroborate Mr Hinterberger's statement. Regards.

My thoughts on the Leica forum are well known to both Brian and Tony (who is the primary moderator there).

 

I do moderate there sometimes and I have been known to move threads I don't feel belong there, but I do try to stay "hands off" most of the time as I'm not the primary forum moderator. There are moderators looking at the Leica forum (and most other forums) at all times, including weekends. There's no "unmoderated" time, except between moderator visits. If people think there's no moderation at the weekend, they are wrong.

 

It's a valuable forum with many good contributors, but it is something of "a law unto itself", mainly for historical reasons (because it was "imported" into photo.net, not created here).

 

It can certainly be problematic at times since it came into photo/net with a different "culture" and so operates somewhat differently from most of the other forums and this can create some "tension". It does tend to operate on a "chat room" level sometimes and that pleases some members but greatly annoys others.

 

Right now, just scanning through the most recent threads, they seem to be pretty well focused on Leica related issues.

Then there's always the 'philosophy' forum where the chuck-outs from the Leica forum grow wild and free. I'm not too proud to admit that I let one of the denizens wind me up to some pretty atrocious behaviour of my own. He's still at it and nary a sign of a moderator...

Then there's the Street & Doc forum where the moderator knows a banned member is posting under a new name and zaps an entire thread when it's admitted. I could care less if the guy posts or not-- actually, I rather like his work-- but it would be nice if the rules were followed a bit, especially by a moderator who is otherwise not shy about expressing his site, political, and other views.

Sandy, I'm sorry about all that. I do go to the forum quite a few times on the weekends and over the last few months I have found it to be pretty tame. But even so, it's really not reasonable to put people in a box with a subject on its lid and expect everyone in it to completely avoid some discussion of other camera brands. I think the occasional meanderings into issues involving Canon/Nikon/Other brands is completely natural, and I also think that placing a "hard" limit on discussions in the Leica forum would not only be overbearing, but it would be like trying to herd cats. The result of that would be a dull forum with no interesting content, and we would be bound to lose participants. Stick around; it's a great forum.