I want to say something in appreciation of this forum and it's members. I asked a question last week on the Photo.net Original Q&A regarding "updated" information about 35mm Delta 3200 and I was deleted in a nanosecond! I then posted my question here and I have received the most helpful responses and suggestions, and I want to thank all of you for saving me much time and money, and showing so much interest in my "trivial" inquiry. It is a pleasure to be a part of this forum. Todd

-- Todd Frederick (fredrick@hotcity.com), August 27, 2000

Answers

Yes, I'm afraid that photo.net has "lost it", mainly through the sheer arrogance and rudeness of its present moderators. The Q&A, which used to be excellent, has now deteriorated the point of being laughable. Why bother, when these forums are so much better.

-- fw (finneganswake@altavista.net), August 29, 2000.

thank heavens... I'm not alone.

-- Trib (linhof6@hotmail.com), August 29, 2000.

To be fair to the Photo.net guys, they get 100's of more posts than here. They just announced a new policy today, where there will be two posting areas. One, unmoderated for quick questions that will be auto-deleted after 24 hours and a second that will be moderated more closely, retainded for the archives, and auto-deleted after one week.

-- Gene Crumpler (nikonguy@worldnet.att.net), August 29, 2000.

But it's the attitude's over there that annoys. The amount of times people say 'search the archives' when it would have been just as quick to give an answer or even ignore the question in the first place. A lot of the information in the achives is old and out of date, and hard to find anyway... you put in a search and get so much irrelavant stuff. Why even click on a something that has a topic like 'which camera'. Which brings me to another point, peoples abilities to title their question appropiately...

just my views

-- Nigel Smith (nlandgl@unite.net.au), August 29, 2000.

Photo.net just gets too much traffic. Understandable when you consider the range of topics covered. I haven't had a problem with deleted questions. Rather, I've found that the question just gets pushed down to the bottom of the list too quickly (a consequence of high flow-through). With regard to searching the archives, I agree that that's a good first step. It often happens, however, that some questions are open-ended -- e.g., questions about film, paper, darkroom techniques -- and new viewers/readers can give new answers or perspectives. For that reason, I revisiting topics is sometimes worthwhile.

-- Christopher Hargens (ldmr@cruzio.com), August 30, 2000.