THE FUTURE OF THIS FORUM - PLEASE READ

[Jim Chinn]

I would just add to previous posts about contributions. The only problem is do you charge an access fee? If so I think you eliminate the most important audience and that is the newbie to large format. This site is invaluable for answering the many technical questions about the format, but I fear that charging a mandatory fee, unless a small one time registration fee would discourage those that get the most use out of the forum. Remember, the more people that use the format, the better it is for maintaining availability of film, papers etc.

[Mike Mahoney]

Sal, there is a LF forum on photo.net, but the link I posted is not valid, it must be one of those addresses that changes with each post. Try going to the main Photo.net page, then "community", "discussion forums", "general photography", then scroll down the page to the large format section. I'll try the link again, but if it's no good, just follow the above. http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-one-category? topic_id=23&category=Large%20Format

[Sal Santamaura]

I just posted a suggestion to Steve Simmons on his current thread:

http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=007EUq

Why not have View Camera's Web site host this forum (software and data). Perfect synergy!

[bill zelinski]

First, I want to really thank Phil from the bottom of my heart. I would be a much poorer photographer if I had never found this forum. Thanks also to just about everyone on here for thier help, assistance and for their generosity and willingness to share with others what they know. A big round of applause for all of you. I sincerely hope its not time to turn out the lights yet.

[Sal Santamaura]

Michael, now I see what you're referring to. That's only a category (currently holds 280 posts total) within the general photography forum. I suspect that it relies on a poster selecting that category when asking a question. Not even close to the value, depth and breadth of what you find here.

[Ellis Vener]

Philip and I talked about this briefly over Thanksgiving when he was here. I know there are a lot of people who hate to think that they might be 'contaminated" by contact with small format, or ven (go forbid) amateur photographers, even neophytes. well you can choose not to have the "unifed or any other photo.net forum come up on your screen. Frankly I think sticking with this tried and true interface and model is the best idea so I think he is right in his intent to pull this forum into the photo.net sphere. He tells me that he will be taking a more hands on approach to photo.net now that he has finished with the Ars Digita mess and is returning from his sabbatical, the previous discussion was what, a year and a half ago? As we all know circumstances have changed.

To make it clear: ifyou go to a Yahoo! format, I think a lot of us are going to lose interest in participating pretty quickly.

[Eric Pederson]

It seems like a proper poll may be in order if you don't get enough interest in someone hosting off of photo.net. My personal concern (shared by one other so far) is that I would like to continue to download to Palm OS. If there are only two of us doing that, ignore us, but there might be many. This is the sort of question which only a systematic poll could evaluate properly. So, pursue other offers to keep this format first. If that doesn't pan out, then post another query asking what questions to ask on a poll and then create a poll of needs/preferences. I've been with this gang for a bit over a year now and I love it!

[Howard Slavitt]

I vote for Photo.net.

[Ellis Vener]

Luong, What is the average volume of daily traffic on this site for the combination of the homepage and the Q&A forum? Do you know what the peaks are as well?

[Huw Evans]

Like many so far, I too would have to vote for Photo.net, albeit reluctantly. I remember the MFD back in its early days, when it was just a mailing list, and to be honest I don't think its character has changed much, apart from becoming bigger and more comprehensive as the years have gone by. Integrating the LF Forum into photo.net would be far better than the Yahoo option.