Rant for the day!

Why don't we get rid of all the Forums except Pentax Digital SLRs, General Digital and the Comp Forum? It may just be me but it seems that most only ever use these 3 regardless of the topic.

Take the dSLR Forum, Thes last threads include: Flash leads for older pre dSLR flashgums, Macro lenses, Tripods, Website for Weddings. There are then about 3 related mainly with the K10 and then Photos in Botanical greenhouses, Metz flash etc.

In the General DIGITAL forum, there are threads on logging in, Printers (Perhaps used more for Digital users but I use one for scanned negs as well), Comp discussion, travel with the K10, Tamron lenses, Aperture settings, Choice of one lens etc etc etc.

Sorry for the rant but many of these would be far better in other forums. Surely the General Discussion Forum is the place for anything that covers both film and digital such as discussing the comp, printers, tripods etc. The lens and Flash forums surely must be the place for these subjects.

Again sorry for the rant but it just seems that it is lazy not to change forum when you change subject.

Kim

Careful, Kim. This is the sort of post that ends up with an invitation to become a moderator...

Kim,
Point taken. I usually do my best to resort mis-topic'd posts. But lately there's been quite a lot of activity and resorting is lowest on the list.
I've moved at least one though
Matt

I do that already on the Range Finder Forum which is somewhat busier than this.

Kim

Matt you do enough already on this forum so grab your pipe and slippers sit back and relax and let others worry about re-organising mis-topic'd posts.

Matt,
My "rant" wasn't directed at you or the other Mods, you already do a good job. It is really up to the OP to choose the right forum in the first place rather than rely on the Mods organising it for them.

Kim

This does on occasion annoy me too, but sometimes it is genuinely unclear where something ought to be.

The lens forum for example, is called "Pentax Lenses". You can read that as either "Lenses made by Pentax" or "Lenses for Pentax Cameras". If the former, then where do you put a topic pertaining to off brand lenses?

You could put it in Digital/film SLR because that's what you mount the lens on, you could put it in Digital photography because that's what you plan to do through it, or you could put it in General Chat because it doesn't really fit anywhere else.

To my mind, all are valid, I would probably go for General Chat (In fact I think I did).

You could even argue that because this is a Pentax forum we shouldn't be talking about off brand lenses, but TBH I don't think that's a very sensible position for the forum to take, especially given the current limited range of Pentax brand lenses.

It's split because it spreads the topibs into areas of interest, in theory at least. But it is up to posters to put their topic where they think it's appropriate.

I tend to leave them, but I do delete or merge duplicated threads where people start the same discussion all over the forum!

Life's too short and there are higher priorities than policing the placement of threads. As Matt said.

I think you may be confusing my point here with a post in another thread. I am certainly not against posts about other makers lenses. I don't care whether the forum is called Pentax Lenses, Lenses for Pentax or just Lenses! I just happen to think that that would be the best place for a discussion on which lens may or may not be better than another. After all many of them especially the independents are full frame and are therefore suitable or film bodies. Just because you want to put it on a K10 body doesn't mean that it belongs in the dSLR forum. This is even more true for the thread on tripods which cover medium format as well. A thread on file storage, IMHO, would be best in the General Digital Chat forum, if only because it doesn't apertain directly to dSLR bodies. The chat on the comp is normally in the General Digital Forum but the pictures can just as easily be taken on film. Again a disctussion on the effect of aperture is just as relevent to film. In the same way a thread on a Spotmatic might be better off in the Film Camera forum than General Discussion.

It certainly was not my intention to limit any topic or to even remotely suggest that anything non-Pentax should be avoided. Nor do I think it is the mods jobs to organise things. However, as John has said, the areas are split so that each covers an area of interest and it helps organise things. However, and again it is just my opinion, if the OP ignores that and posts everything in one forum because he happens to use a K10 or a DS or whatever, it seems pointless having different forums. It doesn't cause a problem when you read the latest posts but it is very difficult when you try to find something out. If you split things up it makes it easier to find older information as long as the index is used correctly. If not it takes longer than it would because you quite often have to look in 5 places.

Kim

I wasn't disagreeing with you per-see Kim, but threads which don't obviously fit in any particular place are always going to end up scattered to a certain extent.

While you are quite correct that a thread about tripods would be useful to people using anything from a spotting scope (Pentax make those too) to a 67, a new member who may be new to the wonderful world of photography is likely to think "I need a tripod for my new dSLR, therefore that goes in the dSLR forum".

It may not be the intended or most enlightened thought process, but I maintain that it is perfectly valid. The person is not being lazy, they are just uninformed.


What to do about it is quite another question. You could argue that we need a Tripods and camera supports forum to give these posts an obvious home, but it doesn't seem likely that tripods and camera supports generate enough posts on their own to require a forum to themselves.

Renaming the Lenses forum to just Lenses, or Lenses for Pentax might help as Pentax Lenses deffinitly implies lenses made by Pentax (for me anyway).

Another point re your assertion that Printing questions don't belong in the General Digital forum, it seems that whoever wrote the descriptions of the forums disagrees with you.


for the record I didn't suggest that anyone actually WAS arguing that we shouldn't talk about non-Pentax lenses, I was just playing devils advocate. I tend to do that a lot I don't mean to get at you, I'm just participating in what I hope is a good natured debate in the hope that it will throw up ideas which will improve the forum for everyone.

I think we should post all our topics on the mtb-wales forum, it would make life much easier for me as I spend a fair bit of time there so merging the two fora of my two main hobbies makes perfect sense.... to me.


and I'm not kidding either!!

mmmm not totally convinced that would go down well with the other MTB wales members!

I have had my rant so I won't go on much longer but....

There will always be the topic which doesn't naturally fall into "one" forum and there will always be the odd post where someone makes a mistake. I can easily live with that. However, this morning when I opened the dSLR forum, there were perhaps 40-50% of the threads which really should have been in a more logical forum. With that percentage, I think it goes beyond people being misinformed and to me it becomes the same as some who can't be "bothered" with grammer, punctuation and the occasional use of capital letters.

Kim

it may be how people use the forum...
I usually do a search, for posts since last visit. followed by clicking on the little icons beside the name of the last poster.
half the time I'm not even sure what thread I'm in......
this could just as easily be in "troubleshooter" as it could be in "Dslr" for all I really know....we may not even be here......

This being a case in point, which has got only the most tenuous link to anything about photography at all. I'm with you on this one.

But you've done it again...

I know, you di'dnt menshun speeling.