Been taking a look at the THE BRIDGE CAMERA FORUM again

[[Geoff Slocock]]

http://www.flickr.com/groups/1023848@N25/discuss/

I did a page search for post processing, but no there was nothing there. It does have a map.

I would think talk of upgrading to a dslr is not etiquette, also.

It is a forum which started nearly two years ago. It s on the FLickr site and has good links to it and lots of visits, for those reasons. But it is a site in hibernation and that started to be so some twelve moths ago.

I personally would be scared stiff of going down this sort of road. There are members we have who I think would like that style of forum and level of discussion. But the plain truth is that we would be gone within six months, if changed BCUG in that sort of way.

Others of our members more recently wanted to turn our site into a sort of facebook clone and I was told the forum was too far stuffy to succeed and was bound to fail if it did not move with the times, and for instance freely allow off topic posting.

There are members with years of experience of BCUG. To my surprise I have discovered it has its niche, too.

But I would ask those who do not like the present BCUG format to take a closer look a this FLickr site and maybe share some perspectives of what went wrong with it.

[[GRUMPY OLD MAN]]

(17-01-2012 09:58 PM)Geoff Slocock Wrote:  http://www.flickr.com/groups/1023848@N25/discuss/

I did a page search for post processing, but no there was nothing there. It does have a map.

I would think talk of upgrading to a dslr is not etiquette, also.

It is a forum which started nearly two years ago. It s on the FLickr site and has good links to it and lots of visits, for those reasons. But it is a site in hibernation and that started to be so some twelve moths ago.

I personally would be scared stiff of going down this sort of road. There are members we have who I think would like that style of forum and level of discussion. But the plain truth is that we would be gone within six months, if changed BCUG in that sort of way.

Others of our members more recently wanted to turn our site into a sort of facebook clone and I was told the forum was too far stuffy to succeed and was bound to fail if it did not move with the times, and for instance freely allow off topic posting.

There are members with years of experience of BCUG. To my surprise I have discovered it has its niche, too.

But I would ask those who do not like the present BCUG format to take a closer look a this FLickr site and maybe share some perspectives of what went wrong with it.

There is more activity on this forum, some posts on the above have had no response for 2 years.

[[Geoff Slocock]]

Very rarely does a site kick off just because it has been built and stuff.

I think the display of photographs of the week has an impact, as does having the user's icons displayed on the index page.

Guests not being able to just view posts for ever, has made a difference... they have to join up!

The higher visibility of stats on new posts and posters also make it appear to be a going concern of a site.

The distinctive look and feel... the branding of the site and cultivation of google links play their part, too.

So it is all about having specialist skills mobilised. Colin for example worked on and designed the logo; and all of that was carefully thought through.

Many many factors overall, improved self confidence for instance also!

This site has been going for several years but getting all the polished stuff together is only a very recent accomplishment... there is always room for improvement, too. The much greater awareness I have of all the sundry detail and factors makes a difference. Also I have improved my style of asking nicely for help and tips... very important, I think!

[[Geoff Slocock]]

Returning to the Flickr site, I can do them justice by saying that members had lots of nice pics to show. But relative newbies lack confidence in making comments on shots; and of course there was no culture of giving constructive criticism cultivated.

This together with the lack of any technical discussion made this site dead in the posts department.

Referring back to BCUG, always there has been the tack that you can and should do advanced things with Bridge Cameras; and I have made it my business to investigate and get to know a whole range of cameras.

When there was a low turnover of posts on here, it was difficult. But at earlier stages this site had been more than viable. So I knew that it was possible to hit "Gold" again.

The case with "Sleepy Hollow" http://pictures4now.com/NewForum/index.php is different. They have always been closely bonded and are all now dslr or "advanced" Bridge Camera Users.

There is quite a lot of common philosophy between this site and that. But they have rather exclusively recruited friends and contacts and do not seem to do anything about cultivating bots and the body of links which that gives you. This site in contrast had developed very good bot-based links form early on and always has a stream of guests observing.

The Flickr site has an enormous benefit of links but I think it's apparent failure is to do with the inherent uselessness for those who want to improve their work or have a bit of an ambition.