Hey Everyone,

We are slowly going to be doing some changes in the cosmetics of the forum. Specifically, we are going to be decreasing the number of total forum sections on the site. While posting activity has increased significantly over the last few months, I believe that it makes more sense to develop and consolidate where possible. We can always add new forums in the future.

Some changes coming:
(1) The Business Forum and the Workshops forum are going to be consolidated in to one forum. I believe that they are both good ideas for forums. However, I think that we can compress them into "NWP Shop Talk." This will give people a place to talk about professional development.

(2) I am debating the compression of the Nature/Wildlife Photographs forum with the National Park Photographer forum. I generally like the idea of having the two forums split, however, I do not know if it is necessarilly beneficial. What do you guys think?

Cheers!
James

I concur with the changes, James. There is so much overlap between the Nature/Wildlife Photographs and National Park Photographer forums. It seems that a great deal of our best photo ops are in the national parks. That might become the busiest forum but should make it easier to have dialogues back and forth with everything all together. You can always split it again if it gets too big.

Thanks for all your efforts,

Best regards,

Dick:)

Hi James, I think National Parks and Wildlife is a very good "compression".

But most of the helpful Business threads incorporate Pet Photography issues. Would it be worth considering merging these two rather than Workshops. (Like the good portable lighting discussion in Pets at the moment: it belongs there, yet the description of the Business forum also seems correct for it).

Workshops does not get as many entries, and I feel it might disappear down the line and over the page too quickly if merged with Business. (Not that I'll be able to get "over there" to take advantage of any of them, damn!)

Not strong feelings, just a thought.

"But most of the helpful Business threads incorporate Pet Photography issues. Would it be worth considering merging these two rather than Workshops. (Like the good portable lighting discussion in Pets at the moment: it belongs there, yet the description of the Business forum also seems correct for it). "

Do you think it might be a good idea to include all three in the Shops talk section and leave the Pet Photography forum for discussion of technique and sharing of photographs?

I completely agree that the Business Forum really is mostly geared at pet photographers. I like the idea of having a place to discuss workshops and hopefully discuss publishing as well.

HMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

James

James,
I kind of like it the way you have it now. I was always a little confused about the overlap in some of the categories but these 7 seem fairly good.
Workshops/seminars could also include announcements or events and the such. Maybe a title is “Calendar of Events” or just “Events”. It’s a place to tell of or set up outings of all sorts.
I think the Critique and Business forums should stay as is. But then again, I am always looking for Critiques, so if the critique forum were to disappear I wouldn’t miss it.
I am still confused on the benefit of Professional vs Open forum breaks, especially when it comes to Critique.

I like the differentiation of National parks from Nature/wildlife. I think the National Parks theme is a differentiation you created from the start. I think omitting outside of national parks in lue of Nature/wildlife is a good move.
Again Nature/wildlife good as is General for a catch all.
But as I reread David’s suggestion I wonder. Now I am up in the air:)
Pet Photography I like. I agree that the majority of the conversations revolve around the pros, but the majority are also general discussions. If there is a Business type thread with specifics it could go up in the Business forum. Like when Julie asked about the Price lists, she went to the business forum. But if a more generalized thread evolves into more of a business nature, why not keep it in the pet forum.

Are you going to migrate all the posts that were removed into the remaining boards?

Just thinking out loud,

I think National Park and Wildlife sould be combined. If they get too big, then maybe seperate them into wildlife, scenics, wildflowers, waterfalls, etc. I think the rest of the forum should be left as is. Just my 2 cents worth.

Hey David,

Thanks for the thoughts. I believe that we are definitely going to merge the National Park Photographer and Nature/Wildlife photographer. I am going to lock the National Park Photographer forum this weekend. Once the posts get old there, we will then change the name of the Nature/Wildlife Photographs section to "Nature/Wildlife Photographer."

I will hold off on merging the business forum and Workshops forum for a bit. If they continue to lack the warrant of two forums, I will merge them into, "NWP Shop Talk."

Cheers!
James

once the posts get old? what does that mean? somtimes those old postes are good. I hope youre not going to throw then out because they are old. . . My grandma would be upset.

Well, as I put in the e-mail to everyone, I THINK we have the site down. I have decided to keep National Park Photographer and Nature/Wildlife Photographs forums. Most every day there are new posts in them so it makes sense to hold on to them.

I have now closed Habitat Conservation and Workshops (which will disappear in a week or so) and wrapped it into NWP Shop Talk.

Cheers!
James

I think they were good changes. Less is sometimes more, and in this case I think it is