jbregar Offline Upload & Sell: On
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Actually, the post by Glen that I responded to (and quoted) pointing people toward DPreview directly is a not-so-subtle reinforcement of the "if you don't like the way the site is run, go find somewhere else" mentality.
And I'm not disputing at all the rights of the owners of this site to do whatever they please... I'm just saying that when your revenue model depends on traffic to your web site (and in this case, at least partly it does) that pushing traffic off of your site over what would be a simple change that actually makes a lot of sense IA-wise is probably not in the long-term best interests of your business.
The idea of putting a Nikon forum on a brand-specific web site is stupid (the aforementioned Nikon forum on POTN). The idea of segmenting the gear talk at this general-purpose web site isn't necessarily so. Especially when there are a LOT of people on this site using Alpha/NEX. Sure, there's "alternative gear," but when you lump a bunch of people with wildly varying interests together, you create a lot of noise to poke through.
Does this mean you need to create a sub-forum for every possible mount you can think of? No. Throwing out the "but it would be cumbersome to create a forum for Pentax, Hassleblad, Leica, and GoPro" is a really pitiful straw man and slippery slope all wrapped up into one mess of complete crap. The fact is that Sony Alpha/NEX is a decent-sized and growing segment of photographers (and I'd argue m4/3 is there as well, hence my suggestions for gear divisions).
It's not cumbersome to create one additional forum (unless the architecture of this site is so incredibly poor it is, but that's beside the point)... so let's focus on what was ACTUALLY asked, not on the "oh no, the sky is falling" crap.
The goal here is to make it comfortable for people to come here and chat about their stuff or what they shoot, or whatever so that they'll subscribe as a supporter, pay for B&S, or buy some of Fred's plugins. As it is right now, the Alternative Gear forum is a mess because it encompasses so many wildly-differing cameras and lenses. Breaking Sony (and m4/3) out would probably help that.
I'm a Sony shooter (mostly because I shoot video with an FS100 and the Alpha gear works best on that) and I hardly ever venture into the Alternative Gear forums because it's like trying to zero in on one conversation at a rock concert and is generally a pain in the ass.
Anyway, not my site...
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