PhotoNet at a Crossroads

[jeff_b2]

The users and administrators of photo.net certainly are at a crossroads.  The responses to this thread show remarkable divisiveness.  Some folks seem interested in a user content focused community.  Others appear to simply want a commercially supported site that dishes up editorial content for consumption.  Both are legitimate models.  There are currently successful examples of each as well as some mixtures of both.  The admins (owners?) need to decide which path to follow.

All I can do is tell you what used to appeal to me when visiting photo.net is no longer found here.  I view this site from a PC.  The current site appears optimized for mobile viewing and swipe navigation which I find inconvenient.  You'd better figure out who your audience is and how they're primarily interacting with the site.  I'm not suggesting going back in time.  The world today is not the same as it was just a decade ago.  But perhaps there are valuable lessons to be learned from what worked in the past.  If readership and participation was exponentially higher in 2010, maybe the 2010 format is worth looking at for inspiration. 

I wish you the best of luck and hope for the site's success.

Edited January 27, 2023 by jeff_b2

[samstevens]

On 1/26/2023 at 8:56 AM, gary green said:

For example, I don't think George Eastman, Mark Zuckerburg [sic], nor Elon Musk put out customer surveys before they created their businesses.

LOL. Because Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk should be our business role models. 🙄 It's hard to understand turning the solicitation of long-time user feedback when newly inheriting a photo site into a negative. Personally, I'd prefer to thank TGOPS for his efforts and for reaching out.

[gary green]

1 hour ago, samstevens said:

LOL. Because Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk should be our business role models. 🙄 It's hard to understand turning the solicitation of long-time user feedback when newly inheriting a photo site into a negative. Personally, I'd prefer to thank TGOPS for his efforts and for reaching out.

If that's your takeaway from my post then you've missed the point.  Completely.

First, I never suggested that Zuckerburg or Musk were role models from a behavioral perspective.  They were simply examples of individuals who had the insight and vision to start/grow successful companies.  Whether their companies survive in the long run is another matter.  I'm sure there are plenty of other examples I could have used but I'm also sure someone would find a reason to piss on them.  That's the world we live in today.

Let's summarize what the Tech Support/TGOPS person(s) have said/requested so far:

• PN was once a thriving community (from a membership/involvement perspective).  Three migrations later, including this last one, "resulted in much damage to its reputation, loss of membership, and participation in PhotoNet".
   
• Change is necessary for PN to survive.
  By "change" I think the implication is that they need more activity on the site.  I assume more eyeballs on the site equates to more potential income (via advertising or some other means).
   
• Our current platform (Invision) is not a good fit for this community and will remain so until/unless we have "significant investment in feature plugins and custom coding".  We cannot go back to any previous platform (even if it was a better "fit").
  In other words, we have to live with trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.
   
• "Be advised that at this time, we have no budget to buy new features or pay programmers to custom develop functionality."  The current support team (not sure how many) are working on a volunteer basis in addition to their regular paid jobs.  At least one of the volunteers has put in an additional 50 hrs of work in a week on top of their existing paid job.
  I'm curious as to the employment arrangement here.  Are they working their paid jobs for the same company that they're also donating their time to?  Is there some promise of future reward if this endeavor is successful?
   
• Please give us suggestions for improvement (i.e., to grow the community).
  I assume they will take the suggestions, put them on a list, prioritize the list (based on what's feasible within the constraints of no budget, volunteer effort, and which improvements they feel will draw more users to the site), and then implement those selected suggestions.

So, in summary, the hope is that this volunteer support team will be able to solicit enough good suggestions that meet their restricted criteria so they can implement enough improvements to grow the size of the community sufficiently to enable the owner to obtain enough capital to run it like a real business.

That sounds like a recipe for failure to me.

[Sandy Vongries]

I struggle with these kinds of responses, and must ignore them.  My focus has to be the members who are treasure houses of photographic knowledge which they generously share, my fondness for the site, the majority of members, particularly those who have offered to help or are currently helping to keep things running.  Some days, those things and a promise to myself to do my best for the site as long as it exists are all that keep me from walking away.   

[PapaTango]

1 hour ago, gary green said:

So, in summary, the hope is that this volunteer support team will be able to solicit enough good suggestions that meet their restricted criteria so they can implement enough improvements to grow the size of the community sufficiently to enable the owner to obtain enough capital to run it like a real business.

That sounds like a recipe for failure to me.

Seems to me to be the words of someone who has never begun or operated a small business.  This is exactly how many such sally forth--and it sure has provided me and others I know a comfortable retirement...  😎

Edited January 27, 2023 by PapaTango

[gary green]

2 minutes ago, PapaTango said:

Seems to me to be the words of someone who has never begun or operated a small business.  This is exactly how many such sally forth--and it sure has provided me a comfortable retirement...  😎

The majority of small businesses fail within the first year or two.  Especially ones that make bad decisions early in the process (e.g., choosing Invision as the platform).

I salute you on your personal success however.

[ken_s4]

My earlier feedback in this post was meant to be constructive.  I have been a member of PN for a while, but have not been too active as I have a busy work schedule.  I will be retiring in a couple of years and will get more involved in this community.  I am amazed by the many great photographers there are out there and hope to learn and improve my own skills by their examples.

[Timo Hartikainen]

Hello,

a couple of things I would like to see fixed:

1) let photographers upload their files "as is", I think there is some kind of compression method packing the jpg-files even more and uploaded photos lose details and there are lots of artifacts visible.

2) I haven't been able to delete some of my own photos.

 

[clayton_m]

@SCLYou commented, "another much better managed site", would you mind sharing what that site is? I'm currently looking around for an alternative myself. Thanks.

[SCL]

Hi Clayton - the site I most often use focuses on Leica and Leica related gear, photography in many aspects (but principally photographed with Leica\Leitz gear over the last hundred or so years) and Leica\Leitz products. It is the L-Camera.forum, originally run by Leitz, ut taken over several years ago by one of its administrators. Besides the main fora - one for international participants (in English) and one for German participants (in German), there are approximately 40 sub-fora each with a different focus. We don't see spam, there are lots of active regular participants, mostly European, it has a good topical search engine, and not surprisingly, some of its active participants are/were Photo.net participants.  There are several others I occasionally visit, that seem much like the first 1-2 iterations of Photo.net. Most have good spam filters and regularly ban  trolling, active political arguments, and people who don't follow their guidelines for participation. I sincerely hope Photo.net revives, as it has been a much valued part of my photographic life, and some of the active participants have become people I enjoy conversing with and occasionally seeking assistance from.

[je ne regrette rien]

I see a main focus on functions and therefore the user experience (UX).

There may be another thing to consider: how to design a photo platform in 2023. What do photo enthusiasts desire? what do they want to discuss? Does somebody still need to know whether horizons need to be straight or not? Is somebody still interested whether "rules" are the way to make good photographs? Or whether rules make sense or not at all?

I don't know.

The crossroads photo.net is at may be related to the overall lifecycle of photoforums as a whole and of forums in general.

I appreciate the smart conversations here and there; very powerful threads as well.

The gallery may not be exactly what it could be in terms of quality of pictures.

 

[bruce_z._li2]

If the photo.net community is decreasing, one radical proposal might be to merge with photrio (which itself was the merge of three forums, but mostly APUG). Thus we will have enough membership for at least one big community. Photrio has similar forum format, and the developers seem to be quite active and competent to keep the site refreshed and updated regularly.

[John Peri]

To all useful purposes, I can still only see the first 44 pictures in my portfolio, the remainder remains filtered and no way offered to change the settings.

Edited January 29, 2023 by John Peri

[John Peri]

6 minutes ago, John Peri said:

To all useful purposes, I can still only see the first 44 pictures in my portfolio, the remainder remains filtered and no way offered to change the settings.

Incidentally, I discover that this only applies to photos posted in the "nude category".

[LineMartel]

The home page is definitely not reflecting a serious place to come. I am trying to participate just to keep this site alive. But I think the home page will not attract new serious members. This is what I see today on the home page...

 

SECOND IMAGE REMOVED DUE TO POSSIBLE CHILD PORNOGRAPHY AND VIOLATION OF COMMUNITY STANDARDS--TGOPS

[Gerry Whitmarsh]

This is my Home page

 

[gary green]

This is what happens when the owners/admins advertise to the world, via this forum, that they have "defunded the police".  

[mikemorrellNL]

Just a reminder to @SiteHelp that I'm up for supporting the current PN mods. I sent a positive response to a PM from @SiteHelp more than a week ago and I've had as yet no reply.

[Mudita]

Stay tuned for further updates @mikemorrellNL!

[The Ghost Of Phils Society]

We are aware of the incredible spam problem coming out of India.  Use your discretion in posting screen shots that contain nudity as one such example may possibly have contained child pornography.

 

[mickeysimpson]

On 1/23/2023 at 11:39 AM, SiteHelp said:

PhotoNet has existed for over 30 years.  For much of that time it was one of the premier photographic communities on the web.  Things began to change with the first migration of the platform in early 2017.  Two more “migrations” later resulted in much damage to its reputation, loss of membership, and participation in PhotoNet.

T...

We are soliciting your thoughts on things you would like to see, and your vision for the future of this community!  

Please let us know!
 

I have sent many suggestions and have received no responses whatsoever. 

My last message to the PN Admins/Help was a request to permanently delete all my photos. I find 39 pages (sometimes 40 pages) of photos when I select my name at the top right of the screen, select Profile, and select Images. These are images that I have deleted from PN multiple times. I cannot do anything with these images, not view or delete.

Is it any wonder why more people are leaving when you have removed the ability of a PN contributor to manage their own images?

Permanently delete all my images.

[The Ghost Of Phils Society]

No suggestions have been discarded.  Everything is under consideration and is being assessed for inclusion in a new general management plan--and in many instances recently deployed.

As has been clearly and definitively stated in another thread, discussion or argument over PhotoNet management or moderation is not allowed in forum threads.  Such complaint or inquire should be directed to @TGOPS or @Sandy Vongries.

A proviso to that should be clearly understood.  We are willing to hear your complaint--but not bound to address it in any way that would lead to misunderstanding or discord to the community.

Management is open to suggestions and ideas.  This is why threads are created to solicit such response--and staff addresses "fixes" as they are reasonable and possible.  We will continue down this road because we are now part of this community also.

Because of failures within the Invision (IPS) Community platform, moderators and administrators are unable to delete images that were present before the October migration debacle.  For many users we cannot delete images aside from "one at a time" instances.  This is not something that we are going to do for hundreds (and in the case of some, thousands of images).  What should work as a selectable "bulk" deletion does not work--nor has action on the part of Invision Community administrators to fix it succeeded.

Here is what we can do.  Your account (or anyone elses) can be completely deleted, ala GDPR style.

The choice is whether a member who requests that is to move on, or create a new account on PhotoNet.

Please advise at your earliest convenience.