Dorkroom v2.0: Rules & Suggestions, Now With Accurate Thread Title!

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > The Dorkroom > Dorkroom v2.0: Rules & Suggestions, Now With Accurate Thread Title!

East Lake: Sep 13, 2007

I like King Hotpants ideas. SAD is sort of like a Dorkroom tumblr/black hole sucking the life out of every other thread. Dozens of landscapes go by in SAD before one is posted in the landscape thread. Generally it seems people are more likely to talk about technique and whatnot in themed threads like portraits or landscapes but they sit unused since nearly everything is funneled into SAD. Snapshot or not.

I wouldn't mind seeing what King Hotpants said + increased themed threads activity.

PAD - Critique encouraged/serious photo thread
SAD - Actual Snapshots
Theme threads for the rest. Portrait/long exposure/landscape/whatever. Some of these can be consolidated to make the topic wider and the thread more active. Like landscape/cityscape or something. There's plenty of those being posted.

Also wouldn't mind seeing a hate thread. Where people post their photos and everyone else explains how it sucks no matter how good it is. Somewhere to post terrible rants. :pseudo:

I mainly lurk these days because of school so take what I say with a grain of salt but I do feel people post in SAD because it has become THE PLACE to show off your stuff and there's no way to redirect some of that activity without reworking it. Reworking it might decrease overall forum activity for a while as well but I don't think there's any way around it.

East Lake fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Dec 28, 2011

# ¿ Dec 28, 2011 22:55

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 07:39

East Lake: Sep 13, 2007

Yeah the themed threads are doing ok. I feel like they'd be thriving if most SAD posters used them more though. For the Tear Me A New One thread (good name!) I was thinking it would be the place to be be an elitist dope. Sort of a non-serious hate thread like the post terrible photographers thread but with our stuff. I think it would conflict with PAD a bit if it was serious critique oriented. But really I or any other Dorkroomer can start up a thread like that anytime. King Hotpants' ideas are the most important.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2011 06:34

East Lake: Sep 13, 2007

King Hotpants posted:

The themed threads are already a great resource when someone needs specific technique advice for that kind of photo. I get that you're saying that people don't post their photos in there, but I don't think they need to in order for those threads to be successful.

Just as an example, the bird thread starts off with a great technical primer and is mostly focused on giving advice to people who want to take pictures of birds. However, once someone takes a photo of a bird that they're proud of, there's no reason they shouldn't put that in SAD or PAD -- they want to know whether it's a good photo, not just if it's a good photo of a bird. SAD and PAD provide the biggest audience and thus the highest chance of useful feedback, so people post there the most. It's a bit of a feedback loop but it works.

Basically, if everyone cross-posted every theme thread photo to SAD or PAD, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. They serve different purposes.

I don't know if we need any hard-and-fast rules to make this work. I think the existing rules about high-volume photo posting are not bad, but could be loosened a bit. If you have a series of seven photos that absolutely must be shown together, you should be able to put that in PAD, but I think anyone posting over three at a time should have a compelling reason for doing so. The people around here aren't dumb and it ought to be pretty obvious when someone is abusing the privilege and/or spamming their poo poo. At that point someone can punch the report button.

You don't even have to phrase this negatively: just point out in the OP that fewer pictures will lead to more focused, more useful critique. It's easier to go in-depth on a photo when there's only one photo to think about.

I guess I just feel like the themed threads are a lot less active than I wish they were since they do seem to generate a bit more discussion. I will say though that people post in the places they do because that's where they like to post and as much as I'd like to see it change I wouldn't want everything changed so quickly it alienates people posting here. A really active PAD would be awesome though.

I do wonder if many will migrate to PAD if SAD is remade primarily for snapshots. Most of us rarely post snapshots. Just encouraging people like you mentioned would be a good start though.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2011 09:50

East Lake: Sep 13, 2007

SoundMonkey posted:

Snapshot A Day: This is now for photos that don't fit in themed threads,

Probably just axe this theme thread stuff and then you're good. Reworking SAD/PAD should be fine for now. I'm probably the only dude clamoring for theme thread stuff and I can increase activity by posting in theme threads! :downs:

I'm definitely going to do an MSD3K though when I get around to it.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2011 10:16

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