Thinking about growing the S.C. Network, again...

Ray has some good points (as usual). And I understand Kristen's concerns, but would point out that the Leica shooters around here are some of the nicest folks around. So if there is some sort of negative underbelly to Leicaphiles in general.....the negative Nellies stay away from here. WHich is good.....cuz I'd just bounce 'em. If Bill and James and Antonio (I know there's a couple others too, but they escape me right now) start posting their Leica photos somewhere else, I'll have to do a once a week check in somewhere else....no biggie.
 
I say, "let folks do what folks wanna do, and folks go where they wanna go".

Go for it Amin. I cannot "walk in Leica shoes", ( too expensive). But who hasn't wanted one, sometime in life? You build it and folk will come. I will even hang around, from time to time.:2thumbs:
 
That Benny Hill song is now playing in my head. And Paul you are hardly an innocent.. you ALWAYS start it. :laugh1:

When I was a kid, I used to watch Benny Hill secretly to see all the scantily clad women. It used to come on late at night. I had to switch channels whenever my folks or sisters walked by!

On a more serious note ... a Leica forum would be cool.

I think there is a misconception about Leica users that gets perpetuated around various forums. I think most Leica users are not snobs. One exception is Seal, with whom I've had a couple of ugly run-in's with. However, the misconception generally stems from the anti-Leica ranting propagated by some who do not like Leica for a variety of reasons -- the primary reason being the extremely high price point. So the anti-Leica people constantly harp about the unreasonable pricing, the 1% target audience, the 1229 "limited" or "commemorative" editions of the same camera, the invocation of HCB's name, etc, etc, etc.

The Leica users in GetDPI are very friendly. If we get a group of folks like that added to the Leica users we have here, it'll be a great forum.
 
I kind of wished everyone could just hang out on the one SC spot though, one big happy family under the one roof, of a house that has many rooms for all kinds of interests and cameras, with the one big living room where all of us can get together and hang out.

+1. Since I use different cameras. I find that I would rather post about them in a unified forum rather then the one dedicated to a specific camera.

Gary
 
The idea of a Leica site sounds great. But would you inherently have a lot more established competition globally for Leica than for, say, Fuji - or even micro four thirds or NEX? Just a thought. If you do create such a site, I'll be happy to register as a member and recommend it whenever I can. But I would probably lurk more than anything. Just too rich for me. Even the used gear. BTW, when you talk about using a giveaway to jump-start a forum site, perhaps you could consider a single Leica lens - perhaps a great all 'rounder. Even if a non-Leica owner wins it, he or she could always use it with an M adaptor on a variety of other cameras. In fact, such use could also be included as a specific forum on the site.
 
I agree with the people who wish SC was the "home base" for everyone, but it doesn't seem to have worked out that way. It seems that most people prefer to talk about gear rather than photography, and apparently it's easier to talk about gear at the system-specific sites. That's where the "community" of knowledge and user experience is found. I first joined mu-43.com when I was looking around for a camera to replace my old Canon P&S and wanted to learn more about the E-PL1, and only later joined up here. Maybe a Leica-specific forum would bring some more users to SC rather than taking many away, but I know that I already don't have time to follow people who have left mu-43 to post at TalkNEX or the new Fuji site. :(
 
I think there is a misconception about Leica users that gets perpetuated around various forums. I think most Leica users are not snobs. One exception is Seal, with whom I've had a couple of ugly run-in's with.

Really? You'll have to tell me the story - I'm too curious.

The idea of a Leica site sounds great. But would you inherently have a lot more established competition globally for Leica than for, say, Fuji - or even micro four thirds or NEX?

Could be. There's not all that many people using Leicas these days (look at the Flickr camera meter for Leica M9 - very low numbers), and both the Leica User Forum and Rangefinderforum are pretty big. I think there's still room for a smaller Leica forum with a different personality than those two.

BTW, when you talk about using a giveaway to jump-start a forum site, perhaps you could consider a single Leica lens - perhaps a great all 'rounder. Even if a non-Leica owner wins it, he or she could always use it with an M adaptor on a variety of other cameras. In fact, such use could also be included as a specific forum on the site.

I really can't afford to buy a Leica lens. Their great all-rounders are $2500+, which is out of my league. I was thinking maybe something like a $50 B&H gift certificate to a random member once weekly for the first 10 weeks.
 
Of course I am still leaning towards balance and a unification through photography. Seriously Amin, you really don't see any success in a photography forum where discussions revolve around the images and perhaps how to achieve them rather than the gear? I would be all over a photo based site..

maybe once everyone who wants to talk about their kit goes to their specialized forum, the SC will morph into the forum where people just share and talk about photographs.

About 4-5 years ago, before Mu-43.com, I invited everyone I knew and liked from various places (people who followed the old Serious Compacts blog and some who I knew from other forums) to a new photography forum I was starting called the Camera Work forums at www.camwk.com. It was fairly photgraphy-centric. Not so much about gear. I think we got a group of about 500 very nice, interesting, talented photographers together, and the place slowly fizzled away despite the best efforts of myself and a number of others, some of whom are members here at S.C. today.

Then I became excited by the Micro 4/3 system, started Mu-43.com, and that site took off like a rocket. Sure it took lots of work in the early days, from me, BB, Brian Mosley, Streetshooter, and too many members to name, but a similar amount of work led to the CameraWork forums fizzling out.

People generally have more to say about gear than they do about photos, and without a critical mass of activity, forums die off. Do I think a forum centered on photography and how to make the images without co-emphasis on gear could prosper? Yes, I do. But I think it would take a lot of time, energy, hard work, dedication, and money to make that happen, and I'm not up for that mission right now.
 
But that's not to say we shouldn't try to push the emphasis on photography on this forum or any of the other system-specific forums. I think we need to do that. Just saying it can't all be about the photography either - that makes it very tough to sustain.
 
I don't understand your thinking

As I understand it, the more traffic a site has, the more your can charge for advertising. Yet you keep fragmenting the site, siphoning off traffic to these ancillary sites. It seems to be that you are "diluting the brand," unless, of course, you feel that it is advantageous in some way to have these smaller, specialized sites. Frankly, I prefer to have all the information aggregated in one place. But then again, I am interested in all of the serious compacts systems, and I would not be interested in having to visit several different sites to get the information that I want.

Cheers, Jock
 
As I understand it, the more traffic a site has, the more your can charge for advertising. Yet you keep fragmenting the site, siphoning off traffic to these ancillary sites. It seems to be that you are "diluting the brand," unless, of course, you feel that it is advantageous in some way to have these smaller, specialized sites. Frankly, I prefer to have all the information aggregated in one place. But then again, I am interested in all of the serious compacts systems, and I would not be interested in having to visit several different sites to get the information that I want.

Cheers, Jock

I think the point, though, is that the total # of viewers across mu-43, talkNEX and Fujixspot is greater than if only seriouscompacts existed.
 
I put a thread up at mu-43 asking about maybe making a subforum for lightroom pp on m43 cameras. Many are agreeing with me, but some want to just leave it general. The more I think about it, the more I see the need for specialization. For me, personally, I don't get a lot out of talking to people who are using CaptureOne or Aperture, because I can't really test the same things. But, if I could talk to someone about specific formula (+30 clarity, -15 blacks, etc.) in LR applied to their m43 camera, I could test that myself, and see if I like it.
 
But that's not to say we shouldn't try to push the emphasis on photography on this forum or any of the other system-specific forums. I think we need to do that. Just saying it can't all be about the photography either - that makes it very tough to sustain.

It appears that photo.net tries to balance this by having a weekly photo thread started sometime that week in each of the major equipment forums by I guess the moderator of that forum.. As well as the normal picture forums. Example of one of the weekly photo threads below from mirrorless forum...

Mirrorless Monday_Monday, February 25th, 2013

For me after trying fujixtogs for a while.. I decided the unified style is more for me.

Gary
 
I think the point, though, is that the total # of viewers across mu-43, talkNEX and Fujixspot is greater than if only seriouscompacts existed.

There's no way to know, but my guess is that if only S.C. existed, it would be less active than it is now. I think the other sites feed S.C. more than they siphon from it.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk 2
 
Well, I keep coming back to S.C. even if I'm not using my most-compact cameras at the moment. The people are too nice and the conversation is too good. I'm glad a good portion of us migrate together across most of Amin's sites.
 
One thought:
SIZE. As a site gets bigger, it is harder to keep up with a single thread, as it gets "shoved" of the page by other traffic. Mu43 is an example. I still scan the posts, for interesting threads, but don't spend much time there. This is my forum home, with "look-see" at the others daily.
 
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