This forum had a great start

[Pete_W]

I mentioned 3 weeks before merger, you mention Apr 10 which is before when I mentioned. Threads and posting was still healthy and stable for the following 31 days from Apr 10. It plummeted after the merger. Please check your logs.

I would view that as pure coincidence. My take is that any decline here is related to DPR remaining open past its originally announced closure date, and the fact that they are continuing to post articles so the expectation is that it will remain open.

My view (which I've posted in other threads so apologies if I am repeating myself) is that it is the articles on DPR that drive forum membership and forum posts. So while DPR remains open and staff are posting new content, it will pull in new users and posts.

DPR's future is unclear now, but if Amazon are intending to sell it, any new potential owner would only be interested in the publishing side of the business. The forums are too negative and resource-hungry to be of any commercial value.

When this site was born; I made regular nerdy notes of its growth to see if the forum was here to stay. I liked it here, it has friendliness I like. I'm not a massive social media player, but I am enthusiastic about photography. So, in the demise of DPR and its troubled membership, I thought I'd give this site a try. It showed promise.

I think these forums still do show promise - the friendly nature here is a great strength and will help build a strong community. I do not subscribe to the theory that contentious posts are needed to generate increased 'traffic'. Ultimately all that does is drive long-term committed users away, as seems to be the case now with DPRevived. The only reason the DPR forums retained high forum membership and posting traffic was because the constant posting of news and review articles drew in new member sign-ups. DPR must have a massive list of inactive members.

Regarding asking members to put links in their sig... we can't add active clickable links in sigs.

Actually it does work - I've got a few clickable links in my DPR signature line. Just paste in the entire URL like this: https://dprforum.com/community/

 

[ootanaboot]

It's very late to reply to all your post, I'll do it tomorrow. But I put a link in my sig to my gallery how you said and it doesn't work. I think it is your 'patron gold' that lets you do it.

 

[Pete_W]

It's very late to reply to all your post, I'll do it tomorrow. But I put a link in my sig to my gallery how you said and it doesn't work. I think it is your 'patron gold' that lets you do it.

Sorry, I was talking about putting URL in my DPReview forum signature, like this post: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/67044242

So that others know I post over here.

 

[wklee]

I did put my DPRF Referral in my DPR signature. Not sure if anything will happen.

 

[dirk]

But I put a link in my sig to my gallery how you said and it doesn't work. I think it is your 'patron gold' that lets you do it.

As Pete said, we are talking about the signature at dpreview. Only if you put the https in fron of the url, it will be clickable later in your dpreview signature Just copy the code below and paste it in your dpreview signature, save it and you are done.

https://dprforum.com/community/

 

[dirk]

I understand this thread has damaged my reputation here, but it bugged me when I seen the drop in participation and I wanted to see if others felt the same reason. Apparently not, or those that left won't see this thread to comment.

Do not worry, all constructive discussion and criticism is ok here.

Look again at your statistic and then check the date when dpreview announced that they will keep the forum open for the time beeing. That announcement was at May 11th. See our discussion about that announcement here:

DPR has removed the closing down warning

So now DPR looks like a living website again. Hmmmm?

dprforum.com

I track the log files all the time. We saw a massive drop of registrations after April 10th, at the same time a slow drop of postings. From May 11th on, from that dpreview announcement, both dropped even more.

Not the merger is the reason, the announcement of dpreview is the reason and I am convinced that this is the reason why dpreview published that announcement.

They do not want other forums like DPRF to get all the traffic, while they might still try to find a buyer for the review static pages. They do not care about the dpreview forum. They will be closed anyway, buut the traffic drops significantly to the review site, if they close the forum and then no buyer is willing to pay a good price for the reviews.

If the would not have made that announcement and would have delteted/archived their forum, we would probably already explode here with traffic and users and postings. Then in 2 months, nobody would care anymore to spend money for dpreview.

Always try to find the reason why is someone doing something. There is no other logical reason why they did this announcement on 11.5.2023, if they even do not promise to keep the forum. Until today, you will nowhere find a commitment for the dpreview forums. This is not by accident.

The real reason is that they do not plan to keep the dpreview forums alive. Best case an archive. But nothing alive. Simple as that.

 

[InkedMarie]

Outside of a few posts long ago in the Steve’s Digicams site, DPR has been my only home. It’s what I’m used to, what I know, what I like. I’m registered at DPRevived but not the place for me. It’s nice here, has promise. For me, I just don’t think to come here, truth be told. I hope I will post more in fifteen days when I’m off of my job until September!

Marie

 

[Austinian]

The real reason is that they do not plan to keep the dpreview forums alive. Best case an archive. But nothing alive. Simple as that.

If DPR closes the forums, I'd have very little reason to ever go there. I've learned much more from forum posts than I ever did from the articles/news/videos.

 

[grsnovi]

If DPR closes the forums, I'd have very little reason to ever go there.

I wasn't hoping for published reviews or articles here or at DPRevived however so far DPR remains my favored site. I can easily review the 5 discussion groups I want, the people I know and trust after 7 or 8 years are still posting there. If the forums at DPR do indeed go silent, I'll have to decide if I still need a place to see discussions because so far none of the recently instantiated sites provide the interface that works for me. Maybe it's a familiarity thing.

 

[Austinian]

I wasn't hoping for published reviews or articles here or at DPRevived however so far DPR remains my favored site. I can easily review the 5 discussion groups I want, the people I know and trust after 7 or 8 years are still posting there. If the forums at DPR do indeed go silent, I'll have to decide if I still need a place to see discussions because so far none of the recently instantiated sites provide the interface that works for me. Maybe it's a familiarity thing.

None of the photo websites I'm familiar with has a user interface I'd call great, but none is so bad that I can't use it.

I had to use so many different computer OSs in my early years of computing that these UI differences don't seem to be a major problem by comparison.