It's a struggle to isolate Sony related threads for those that use Sony cameras.

Good Luck...A bunch of moss backs run this site.

Good luck. Sometimes it is difficult enough to find a Canon or Nikon thread in their respective forums about equipment, rather than small photos that typically could have been captured with any product.

EBH

There's an Alternative camera forum. I think the logic is the majority of forum visitors use either Canon or Nikon. And for everyone else there's the alternative forum. It would probably be cumbersome to make different forums for Sony, Pentax, Leica, Hasselblad, Olympus, you see where I'm going? It goes on and on. And I'm sure there are other internet sites that specialize in those brands. You just have to find them.

mogul wrote:
Good Luck...A bunch of moss backs run this site.
You're free to leave...anytime!

I think a Sony forum makes the most sense of all the non Canikon brands.

They have not only a growing NEX/e-mount line-up but also plenty of nice DSLR models and Alpha glass and some pretty good looking new models like the A99 there too.

Top it off with some of the most innovate compacts like the RX1 and RX100 which certainly stand apart than yet another 1/1.7" model like the G15, XZ2, LX7 etc

Frankly Sony is becoming as much a player as Canikon these days, especially with their Sensors which are now being used by darn near everyone ie; Olympus, Pentax, Nikon etc

I'd say that maybe 1/4th of all Alt forum discussion is about Sony products in some manner

trenchmonkey wrote:
mogul wrote:
Good Luck...A bunch of moss backs run this site.
You're free to leave...anytime!

+1

millsart wrote:
I think a Sony forum makes the most sense of all the non Canikon brands.

They have not only a growing NEX/e-mount line-up but also plenty of nice DSLR models and Alpha glass and some pretty good looking new models like the A99 there too.

Top it off with some of the most innovate compacts like the RX1 and RX100 which certainly stand apart than yet another 1/1.7" model like the G15, XZ2, LX7 etc

Frankly Sony is becoming as much a player as Canikon these days, especially with their Sensors which are now being used by darn near everyone ie; Olympus, Pentax, Nikon etc

I'd say that maybe 1/4th of all Alt forum discussion is about Sony products in some manner

I agree that Sony probably is the largest non CaNikon brand here. But when you say 1/4th of all Alt forum discussion is about Sony products then you are very wrong.
I would guess 80-90 % in the Alt forum is about lenses. And not Sony lenses then. You have the NEX/Sony threads but they are not at all a quarter of that forum.
You probably have more about Zeiss than Sony in the Alt forum also.

There are 24 forums now. Adding one more is such a hardship that it's necessary to tell people to just leave rather than start a new one?

I don't know, maybe not 25%, but there are 17 different threads mentioning the NEX6, A99, RX1, RX100 and other Sony products.

I post about 95% of the time in the Alt forum and there is A LOT of Sony talk. Far more discussion than Leica, than Fuji, than m4/3 even.

The NEX models are a very attractive tool for those who want to use adapted glass, especially with focus peaking

The NEX lineup native e-mount glass is also growing quickly and just wait til the RX1 comes out, not to mention the A99.

Sony is going to become a major player

If having a Sony Mount forum like Canon-Nikon mount forum's. Where should all the posts in the NEX thread and similar theads about Canon, Zeiss, Voigtlander, Nikon, Pentax and so on lenses with the NEX be? Because they are not Sony mount lenses and still have to be in the Alt Forum when not used with their native mount camera's. Just like all the threads today in the Alt forums where people use Canon & Nikon lenses on different bodies. They are not in the Canon-Nikon forums.
And when actually only having (like the Canon-Nikon forums) threads in the Sony forum with lenses that have Sony mount. Then there are very few threads left.
How many threads do you think there are in the Alt forum where people use Canon 5D2 or other Canon bodies with their alt lenses? About every second thread. That's where the threads when using Alt lenses on a Sony mount body also would be, even if there existed a Sony mount forum

runamuck wrote:
There are 24 forums now. Adding one more is such a hardship that it's necessary to tell people to just leave rather than start a new one?

No, but I think that resorting to calling people names is reason to tell people to leave.

You guys are funny. Seriously, why would it be such a hardship to add a Sony forum? Is it because it then threatens the exclusivity of "having your own forum"?

Obviously, discussions about putting whatever lens on your Sony camera body should probably go into the Sony forum... just like discussions about using Sigma lenses on your Nikon go in the Nikon forum.

I'd argue that discussions about using a Zeiss lens on your Nikon belong in the Nikon forum too.

If it were me running this place (and it isn't), I'd have the following:

Canon
Nikon
Sony Alpha/NEX
Micro 4/3
Everything Else

jbregar wrote:
{Snip}

If it were me running this place (and it isn't), I'd have the following:

Canon
Nikon
Sony Alpha/NEX
Micro 4/3
Everything Else

What about Pentax?!

jbregar wrote:


I'd argue that discussions about using a Zeiss lens on your Nikon belong in the Nikon forum too.



If you read what the forum names are, Then you will see it's not the Nikon forum. The name is Nikon Mount Forum. And if you have a Zeiss lens with Nikon Mount and use it on a Nikon body also with Nikon mount. In which forum do you belive it should be ?
That's why the Sigma , Tamron, Tokina lenses with Nikon mounts on Nikon bodies also belong in that forum

I agree with Lars. Most of the NEX related posts i see in the Alt forum involve non-Sony glass with non-Sony mounts. I don't see that these threads and posts are going to move to a Sony only forum, if only because many of the posters there identify themselves more around their glass than their cameras - i.e. many have several bodies on which they use alt glass and as such feel more "at home" on the Alt forum.

As for the issue of non OEM lenses with correct mounts, i guess i've been bending the rules a bit as i post on both Canon and Alt foums for my 5D with Canon-mount Samyang combo. No one has complained yet though

swoop wrote:
There's an Alternative camera forum. I think the logic is the majority of forum visitors use either Canon or Nikon. And for everyone else there's the alternative forum. It would probably be cumbersome to make different forums for Sony, Pentax, Leica, Hasselblad, Olympus, you see where I'm going? It goes on and on. And I'm sure there are other internet sites that specialize in those brands. You just have to find them.

Not hard.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/

Have fun.

PS edit: There are even whiners on the Canon forum (POTN) that want a Nikon sub-forum.

Glenn NK wrote:
swoop wrote:
There's an Alternative camera forum. I think the logic is the majority of forum visitors use either Canon or Nikon. And for everyone else there's the alternative forum. It would probably be cumbersome to make different forums for Sony, Pentax, Leica, Hasselblad, Olympus, you see where I'm going? It goes on and on. And I'm sure there are other internet sites that specialize in those brands. You just have to find them.

Not hard.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/

Have fun.

PS edit: There are even whiners on the Canon forum (POTN) that want a Nikon sub-forum.


I'm not entirely sure a "if you don't like it go somewhere else" mentality is a long-term winner. Especially for a web site that's supported through advertising and membership revenue (at least partly).

I'm also not sure anyone asked that we make separate sub-forums for every possible mount out there. To act like they did (or that someone is going to honestly believe that there's a call for the Leica or Voigtlander forum) is being intentionally obtuse.

If you want to do it by mount, cool. In that case, do:

Canon
Nikon
Sony Alpha/NEX (there's enough crossover that they could co-exist cleanly)
Micro 4/3
Everything Else

Wait... that's what I already said. This'd round out the camera-or-mount-specific portion of the gear section.

Obviously Zeiss stuff in Nikon mount belongs in the Nikon forum as do Tokina, Tamron and Sigma stuff. If you want to chat lenses that you use across 12 different mounts, that's what "Everything Else" is for.

Of course, the information architecture and organization of these forums are kind of a mess. "Wedding Photographer" is mostly people chatting about the business side of being a wedding pro, but it's in the "Presentation" section. "Pro Digital Corner" is in "Gear" but it's mostly people chatting about legal issues and other business issues related to being a pro.

If it were up to me (and again, it isn't... but I have been a professional UX designer and information architect for quite a few years) I'd arrange it this way:

Presentation
- All of the same sections we have now, but limit them to PRESENTATION. You go into these forums to LOOK AT PHOTOS. You could probably also collapse a few of them once you move the chit-chat about technique out.

Gear Talk
- Canon
- Nikon
- Sony Alpha/NEX
- Micro 4/3
- Everything Else

Technique (I think we could probably do with fewer here than even this list, honestly, but I'm being generous)
- Landscape
- Portraits/People
- City, Street, Architecture
- Nature/Wildlife
- Sports
- Macro
- Post-Processing and Printing
- Lighting & Studio

Pro Corner
- Wedding Photographers
- Photojournalist/Sports
- Commercial
- General Business Discussion
- Critique My Website/Business Card/Logo (I'm only half-kidding here, this is a LOT of traffic on the pro forums)

Assignments & Critique
- Leave them the same

Trading Post
- They could be left the same

Misc.
- FM Photo News
- Forum Issues
- Off-Topic Lounge (takes the place of Misc.)
- Member Meetings and Events

Is it more forums? Yes. Does it make it more clear where to go to post stuff? Yeah. It also keeps the people with like interests and cameras together and gives them a good spot to chat about their subject without a lot of noise.

Of course, just my 0.02 *plink plink*

@ jbregar,

If you read the thread again you will see that the "if you don't like it go somewhere else" comments as you call them. They where made because of this comment. And not because of the extra Sony forum.

Good Luck...A bunch of moss backs run this site.

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...