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Thread: Articles & the non Forum part of the site

  1. #1
    IanG's Avatar
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    Articles & the non Forum part of the site

    Isn't it time some of the site was upgraded, and the articles illustrated.

    I appreciate the site started when many people were on slow dial-up modems but surely it's now time to embrace the 21st Century and give the site a make-over & add some graphics, revamp some of the articles.

    I'm sure there would be a number of volunteers ;D

    Ian

  2. #2

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    Re: Articles & the non Forum part of the site

    I've still got a dial-up modem. (I'm paying for high speed service, but it won't connect and everybody involved says it's the other guys fault.)

    You're right. I know some of my articles need updating. I'll see what I can do about it. It won't be soon, though. Now long retired, I wonder how I ever had time to work.

  3. #3
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    Re: Articles & the non Forum part of the site

    I've thought about rewriting my article. However, after six years, i still get inquiries and suggestions about developing 4X5 film using my compact dip-and-dunk method.

    I consider the articles on the main page as archival. Similar to the information in past issues of View Camera and other publications.

    This morning I was looking through A.A.'s book, "The Negative", written in the 1980's, and I learned something new.

    Why not write an article yourself, and encourage others to do the same. If I can do it, anybody can.

  4. #4
    IanG's Avatar
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    Re: Articles & the non Forum part of the site

    Gem, I might, well in fact I have some in the pipeline destined for somewhere else, but who knows, they could be re-jigged or re-written for this site.

    My feelings are that re-writing's not the main issue rather revamping with better page layouts & some illustrations. For newcomers to LF adding some simple graphics/illustrations would make many of the articles far more readable and useful and allow better explanations of some of the principles of using LF. I've been using LF for well over 30 years and I know when I started the illustrations helped more than the text.

    Ian

  5. #5

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    Re: Articles & the non Forum part of the site

    I'd love to see some added illustrations and reformatting. I've suggested this before, but there wasn't much of a response. I'd be happy to shoot some photos and caption them to serve as illustrations. I usually have a tabletop setup ready in my studio. The obvious place to start would be the static content that receives the most views.

  6. #6

    Re: Articles & the non Forum part of the site

    I've been looking for a place to post this. If you think it fits better somewhere else please feel free to move it.

    -----------

    I have recently been doing a reorganization of my large format site.
    http://www.prairienet.org/b-wallen/B...NeedsEval1.htm
    One of the questions that I posed to myself is, "Why am I maintaining a site independent of the Large Format Photography site?"

    I started my site, somewhat later than the LFP site and both have followed interesting evolutions. Some of these have been in parallel, designed to exploit new ways of presenting information. My site started as a place to explain LF photography to those just beginning to explore the format, as I was a few years before. I want it to continue to appeal to that audience, both in its content and in the way I approach explaining that content.

    As I have done revisions and reorganizations, I have broadened my own knowledge of LF technology and I have explored areas that went beyond simple beginners questions. In that expansion, I want to be careful not to lapse into overly specialized knowledge and terminology that leaves the beginner scratching his head.

    As I have used the LFP site and particularly the forums I've been impressed with the wealth of information there. Forums provide an easy way to contribute collective knowledge incrementally, but they depend on search technology to organize that information and collecting information this way is often laborious and not very integrated. Summaries and essays help to provide a different perspective on information and the LFP essays and surveys provide a good alternative way of providing information. Not all forum threads are equally interesting and well organized. I frequently see threads where it is clear that the contributors spent considerable time analyzing and writing material they present. I think we should be looking for ways to highlight those to improve navigation. The number of responses and reads are a good place to start. Additional ways of steering people toward them is to data mine when we are writing summaries, then point readers to forum threads with links in essays we are developing about particular topics.

    Here is an example of the data mining approach. I couldn't find much Web-based information about Horseman technicals other than that in forums. I found most of that, distilled it, found graphics and developed a page. You will note that this is my lame attempt at an interactive page. I don't have the technical resources for something fancier, but I'd like to polish this up with email messages from those who can offer corrections and additional content:
    http://www.prairienet.org/b-wallen/B..._Horseman1.htm

    I also appeal to all contributors to think about how they name a thread. If you ask yourself, "If I were looking for help for this topic, what would I search for?" you will be doing a favor to all those who come after you searching for the same information. Often, the reason that regular readers see the same question being repeated is that searches don't find the threads that contain relevant information.

    As I thought about ways that a newcomers audience might be served by both the site I developed and a more general site like the LFP site, a greater use of links between the sites seemed like a strategy I wanted to explore. One of the ways I am trying to do this is with specific logo-like graphics that identify where a link leads and using link names that respect the organization of information of the target site.

    I also have tried to exploit greater use of graphics and have ideas for expanded use of graphics to better explain subjects. An example is a page I recently developed to survey different composition and focusing aids. I have tried to use a consistent set of link IDs to help readers get to additional information and to sources for the equipment.
    http://www.prairienet.org/b-wallen/B...xFinders1.html

    These kinds of pages are easier to design, integrate and manage on a local site than on a shared site like LFP, so I want to continue to enrich my site design, but I would like to think of this as a complement to what is being done on the LFP site and to interweave navigation between the sites.

    And a final admission--I get a kick out of designing Web sites.

  7. #7

    Re: Articles & the non Forum part of the site

    Quote Originally Posted by Dakotah Jackson View Post
    If you are going to add a lot more images and graphics, warn us so we don't open the posts and get nailed with a ton of download information that will push us way past the allowed bandwidth our providers limit some of us to. At least make the bigger files optional so we don't get shut off for roo much use.
    I can think of a couple of Web page strategies to try to provide the kind of support that Dakotah describes. It is possible to develop text only pages and provide branches in the Web page coding that allow a browser to select text only or text with images. That makes designing the page more challenging, since good page design doesn't use graphics gratuitously, but because the graphics add value to what the text is trying to describe.

    As both a Web designer and a frequent user of dialup service, I am very aware of being careful with the size of graphics. It is often possible to greatly enrich text with small scale graphics that illustrate the topic you are discussing. Warning messages can be used in pages that link to other pages which contain large scale graphics. There are always questions that arise in page design that balance increasing the size of a page to contain more information vs. breaking information up on multiple pages that may cumulatively take longer to load than the single page, but don't subject the visitor to a single long wait time.

    I'd say that the early comments in this thread explore that issue and recognize that page design standards and available bandwidth have changed considerably over the lifetime of the LFP site.

    Since the site relies on volunteer effort, I'd argue for guidelines that provide flexibility to make contributions that are congenial to the contributors. Nothing throws cold water on an inclination to create something more than constraints that the developer knows don't have to exist. But some group of us ought to be able to develop some guidelines that are vetted, then published which could improve site usability.

    As I've noted, I have a preference for maintaining my own site where I can establish internal site organization, navigation, include graphics, modify pages and reorganize as I see the need and have the time. Yet I want to make my site as complementary to the LFP site as I can.

    I am finding that in writing pages for my newcomers-oriented site, I should first become familiar with what is on the LFP site, then write my new page with an eye toward integrating the two. This often works very well. I can provide a general introduction to a topic that is consistent with the pages I am developing, but easily points readers to a more detailed and often more technically complex discussion in some LFP forum. The reader of my page can elect to shift gears and is aware of doing that in clicking on the LFP link.

    For those who don't want the hassle of maintaining an independent site, the LFP articles are a good way to share knowledge on a more incidental basis. Authors could be free to include as many graphics as they thought they needed and visitors to those pages should expect that load times for those pages would be greater.

    Some sort of guideline for graphics in the forum area could keep this part of the site responsive. There is a long tradition of text-based posts that forum users seem to value and if site contributors have alternatives, it is more reasonable to limit graphics in the forums. If a particular thread develops a rich content that might need more graphics, the contributors could collaborate on converting this to an article and it could be moved to that area.

    When we start a thread, we don't always know that it will be significant, yet those that turn out to be insightful exchanges ought to be ones that are easy to find. Providing some way to identify these threads, perhaps in the search algorithm, through some sort of flagging, or by moving them to a different part of the site structure could be useful. Perhaps the Google technology that is used already does some classification in determining the sequence it uses to present results. If not, perhaps that is part of the parameter setting available to sites that use the Google technology.

    Making changes to the software/sites that affects users succeeds better it those changes get aired before they are made. Threads in this part of the forum seem like a good place to do that openly. I'd be willing to be a part of an effort to develop some guidelines.

  8. #8
    IanG's Avatar
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    Re: Articles & the non Forum part of the site

    Brian, I just looked the links & at what you've written and to be honest it's exactly like I'd expect to see on this website, rather than the drab very early 90's style zero graphics look.

    Your pages aren't exactly over heavy with graphics and many pages here in the forum have far greater graphic content.

    Ian

  9. #9

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    Re: Articles & the non Forum part of the site

    Brian, that is brilliant!

    Mick.

  10. #10
    Founder QT Luong's Avatar
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    Re: Articles & the non Forum part of the site

    The only reason the non-forum part of the site has not been updated is lack of time on my part, and lack of proposed contributions. If you send me something ready to post, I'll post it.

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