Exceedingly Quiet Forum

[marcfs]

Bob,

Why is the forum so quiet?
Any theories??

Regards,

Marc

[Bob Atkins]

It has been quiet but I can't think of any reason why. Maybe it's because Canon have been quiet. They're still getting themselves together after the earthquake and tsunami.

I was over in the UK most of last month, so I haven't written much for the site recently. Maybe that's the reason.

[KeithB]

Also, we don't have any general chat areas, so assuming that people who have been around for a while have no more questions, we require new blood for content.  I think that Bob should open up a discussion area for his articles and maybe a "places I like to photograph" area.

[Bob Atkins]

Interesting thoughts. I'll look into a general chat area or articles comments section.

On the subject of "new blood", I've pretty much shut down new registrations. I'm not joking when I say that at least 95 registrations out of 100 are bogus, i.e. spammers in waiting. Despite having a "captcha" check on registrations to make sure bots can't register and requiring email confirmation,  the VAST majority of registrations are still bogus. There a people in China, India, Eastern Europe and SE Asia who seem to be paid 5 cents for every forum they register on. I guess they sell the registration info on to spammers, then sometime in the future - might be a day, might be a week, might be a year, they use that registration info to flood a forum with spam. The last thing I need is 1000 potential spammers just waitinmg to pounce, which is what I'd have if I accepted all registration attempts.

I'm now personally reviewing all registration attempts, which means there's often up to a week's delay. Rarely do I find anything that even might be genuine. I won't go into how I identify the bogus attempts, but generally they aren't too hard to spot.

I'll have to take a look and see if there are any new addons for the SMF forum software that can do a better job of filtering out the bogus stuff.

[marcfs]

I’m glad you are back. 

I enjoyed looking at the UK images and reading your article on the photography travel kit. 

One thought for a topic is for forum members to suggest their favorite local site (s) for capturing images, their rationale and maybe submitting an image from the location.  It might be interesting to identify and share locations in local areas – e.g.,  NJ

Taking this topic one step further you might consider an article with your favorite local sites, rationale and image examples.  Other subtopics could include "best place" to capture the ...

Regards,

Marc

[KeithB]

Yes, marcfs, any good places could lead to guest articles (assuming Bob approves!).  I have been itching to write one about shooting the balloon festival here in Albuquerque.

[Bob Atkins]

In principle I'm not against guest articles, but my previous experience as an editor for a magazine and other websites makes me a little cautious. Not all that many people can write well and I find it very awkward if I have to reject something. People can get offended and I hate to do that. Often the submissions aren't in the requested format either. Obviously I can edit, but that offends people too!And in addition to all that I can't offer any payment and the way the site is set up, ads will appear on the pages. There are also legal issues related to copyright.

However if someone has an article they are bursting to write and they think might be of interest to readers here, please contact me viia email and we can talk. As I said, in principle I'm OK with the idea, it's just that it has the possibility of getting messy if everyone is invited to submit whatever they want. It could end up being pretty useless as happens at sites like ehow.com. All the articles there are for is to attract viwers for their advertising. The content generally sucks.

[marcfs]

OK…some good and fair points…need to think about other alternatives.

Regards,

Marc

[Johnf]

Bob

Your take on bogus registrations is interesting.  I guess I am naive but I wouldn't have thought there would be so many bogus registrations. 
That being said, I like the idea of a forum category or even a thread of interesting places to shoot.  The category can be divided into country, region, state, whatever.   I photograph only for fun and I have a job so don’t have too much time to travel for new venues.  Locally I feel like all my opportunities are spent.  I would love to hear from people locally with interesting places to shoot.  The few times I do travel I bring my gear but it would be great to consult the region or state category to see interesting subjects in the area where I am travelling.  I have some great places to go in New England!

John

[Bob Atkins]

I'm also amazed at the volume of bogus registrations. I'd say that I get at least 10 every day, while a genuine registration seems to show up maybe once a week!

I just checked 38 pending registrations of which one, just one might be genuine (though I even have my doubts about that one). Apparantly this site has a huge following in China, India, Nigera, Eastern Europe and the Far East. I also have photo enthusiasts with names like "Mesothelioma" and "vitaminproducts", registering from websites like "getitnow.com".

I can now easily see why some forums claim 100,000 registrations or more even though they don't seem very busy.

I'll look into the best way of doing the location thing. Might be a forum or might be a separate database. I'll see what software is out here that could be best adapted to the task

[rixtix]

Ugly Hedgehog forum is fairly busy but there is a lot of Nikon people there...you know THOSE PEOPLE.

[sshegde@aol.com]

Bob,

Thanks for the informative article on channel clipping. I just wanted to leave a short compliment but couldn't find a way to do so.
It would be nice if the forum members are able to leave a short comment, say 120 character limit or so.
Here are couple of thoughts...

While optics and Canon cameras and lenses (and the problems encountered) have been rather extensively covered in articles and forum discussions, however, there are no discussion (or sharing experience among members) about the newer editing, retouching softwares, like, chroma key, Topaz / Onone plugins, HDR, Bibble or similar RAW converting softwares etc. etc. 
I recently have begun exploring the green screen photography and I am quite impressed with the Green screen Wizard software. 

There are about 1200 members in the forum right? It would be interesting to see how many are enthusiasts and how many are professionals? May be initiating some sort of interactions among the members via discussions would enlighten the forum.

Thanks

SS

[Bob Atkins]

I'd been thinking of some way to allow comments on articles, but I haven't come up with anything yet. If I was starting the site from the ground up the pages would be in php rather than html which would allow easy linking with a database for comments integrated onto the page. There are possibly some ways to do this involving the use of Javascript but I haven't looked into the details and figured out just what would be involved.

I'd have to check how any active accounts are here. The number of registrations isn't the same as the number of people actually reading the forums. I suspect that number is much smaller. There are far more active forums out there. I get dozens of new registration attempts every week, but they are 99.99% from spammers and robots. Right now there are 2000 new registrations in the queue from the month of January and not one of them is legitimate :-( All of them will be rejected.

In fact over the last week only 10 registered members have visited the forums, though there have been many visits from non-members. They can read anything here, but they can't post. This thread has been read over 1200 times, even though only a handful of people have posted here.

[klindup]

Hi Bob I have joined a number of forums over the years (and before that news groups) and stay with very few because they seem to drift away from what they were set up to discuss.  This is the only photography forum that I stay with because of the quality of the postings.  I would love to see more activity but not at the expense of quality.  I have a potential subject that might be of interest.  A photography group that I belong to has been challenged to try to work out how to create images in the style of Ansel Adams but digitally.  OK I know he used big cameras (10"x8"?) and did a lot of work in the darkroom, but those images, wow.  I am sure that there are members of this forum who might be able to shed light on this question.

As regards vetting applications to join, might you find one or two members that you trust who would be willing to assist?
Ken Lindup

[Bob Atkins]

Thanks Ken.

Regarding registration what I've done is to create an alternate registration page, i.e. a page that is unique to this forum. The bots and potential spammers hit the standard registration page for an SMF 1.1.14 forum (this is an open source forum package) since I presume they work by crawling the web for any installation of an SMF forum, then flagging it for registration. The registrations generally come from the far east, India or former soviet block countries and I can only assume that people there are paid some tiny amount for each forum they register on and these registrations with passwords are then sold on to some spammers. I run a Captcha challenge-response application to (try to) prevent machine registration and which should require a live human. However that doesn't stop them since labor in the areas from which the bogus registrations come is cheap.

In the last 24 hours there were 50 bogus attempts at registration. The last actual real registration I got was sometime last month!

So it's not hard to tell who is real and who is bogus. The ratio is probably something like 1:2000 at the moment!

Anyone is welcome to personally invite anyone they know to join here. If someone actually reads the registration page they will be directed to the correct form which will allow them to register.