How come the golf thread got closed for being not "Pentax or photography related", but the Pointless Thread runs and runs?

General chat is "An area for open chat".

If there's a general chat area, why should anyone care what's talked about, providing it doesn't break any rules?

I really don't understand the moderation rules around here. There seems to be no consistency at all.

We're not, I agree. But it's the people here and their contributions that me make want to participate, not any loyalty to PU, since I'm not a PU customer, as far as I know.

PU presumably wrote the site with proprietary code rather than use an existing package, since they believed that it was beneficial to them. They're entirely at liberty to do that if they want, but there's no actual benefit to the members resulting from that decision. Indeed, at risk of opening old sores, quite the reverse might be argued.

I'd completely concede that to do what Adam and his team over the pond has done with vBulletin would not be cost or time free. But we don't have any of that, so I don't think the development cost argument is really relevant.

The bottom line is that you and Ken and Matt (or anyone else) could just as easily moderate a Pentax User forum that had nothing to do with Magezine. With the inevitable vested interests and consequential rules and terms that we seem to be forever at risk of falling foul of, I'm not sure it would be that bad an idea.

I wonder how much it actually costs to run, though?

I ran a forum not that long ago, with another person, and we stumped up the 80 quid for a copy of vBulletin between us.

With my business partner, we have two servers online in a hosting company in Manchester, and for both of them, as well as a 100GB per month allowance each, we pay about £100 per month. We host about 25 web sites.

This site is hardly Amazon or Google, so I can't think it really costs all that much to run. Most of the images aren't even hosted here.

Ah, so there is a reason for the legendary Pentax QC these days...

I downloaded Registax 6 today, thought I'd see if I could improve my moon images.

Fell at the first hurdle, really - I tried to stack three images taken within a few minutes of one another at the same focal length, converted to JPG and cropped to the same number of pixels in height and width.

It identified lots of alignment points, but when it superimposed them, they didn't quite line up so the result was rubbish.

I only had a very brief go, so I'm probably doing something wrong.

Any pointers and suggestions gratefully received - including that I should RTFM, but I know that already

Nothing of any great merit here, just thought I'd share a few from the K-5 today.

Sadly I didn't have the camera ready when this chap arrived...

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Aviation/IMGP0263-1.jpg[/IMG]

Nor this, a replica of another British fighter from a previous era..

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Aviation/IMGP0264.jpg[/IMG]

Something a little more recent (built in 1979):

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Aviation/IMGP0265.jpg[/IMG]

And proof, if any were needed that a lot more Bigma practice is required before any airshows next year:

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Aviation/IMGP0268-1.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Aviation/IMGP0269-1.jpg[/IMG]

Annoyingly, I also just missed the Messerschmitt departing, it was just not to be. Ah well, tomorrow's another day.

Sorry, but I think this is a really bad idea.

We want to know what people think? Well, we already have a perfectly good medium for debate, where all affected people are able to join in the discussion, listen to others' points of view, and after honest exchange of views, be appraised of the decisions reached by those actually running the thing.

It's called the Pentax User (.co.uk) Forum, and if it's good enough for our international members, it's good enough for the rest of us.

What we definitely do not need, IMO, is an undemocratic, behind-closed-doors, series of regional get-togethers, requiring tons of organisation, where only the people that happen to be free at the time can participate.

If anything, what we need is for the people that actually run the forum, to be more active participants in the forum.

Then perhaps they'd have their finger on the actual pulse, rather than popping in for a flying visit when some real crisis hits. And we could have actual discussions with them, hear their actual points of view - and tell them ours.

Then they'd no longer be faceless overlords, rather actual people, subject to the same frustrations and conflicting priorities as the rest of us.

Now that's an interesting observation. I'll have to take a closer look at this.

I take it you can see a difference between both on and both off?

Let me Google that for you...

Go on then

Are the aforementioned 'good people of Pentax' the sort of types that could withstand a few choice questions about such things as the K-5 Electronic Level that isn't, and what to do about an otherwise mint 17-70 that back-focuses a bit more than the K-5 adjustment will permit?

I could probably think of one or two others if they still seem too relaxed after that.

If so, are they also the sort of types that might provide sensible answers?