Any interest in a Film Forum at PR?

[Sebastian]

Those stories should be in their own forum, so that those active in it can go there and encourage the others.

I completely disagree. These stories should be visible to everyone and belong in the busiest forum, Viewfinder. I think putting them aside into their own forum guarantees that few will see them, and even fewer will participate.

My thinking is that these experiences that you mention can draw people that might otherwise not be interested in the subject, but these same people would be unlikely to go outside their comfort zone and visit a niche forum for something that doesn't really interest them YET.

So here you'd have a bunch of interesting stories that might draw in new folks and you'd be sticking it in a place that they're unlikely to visit making sure that they'd never lay eyes on it.

IMO these specialty forums do little to expand the draw of the different areas, instead they seem sot be places where preachers preach to those already converted. If we want to expose our community to different subjects and draw new faces we need to be consolidating to show just how active and encompassing this community is. I think separate forums run counter to the desire to grow.

I think some sort of filtering would be a good thing to try. Give new people access to everything this community is about without having to wade through different portions while allowing them to either display or flag the items they are most interested in once they find a niche they'd like to stick with. Wether or not that's feasible is beyond me, but this desire to create specific forums has done little but remove active subjects from active attention and moved them to their own little corners to grow stale. I'd love to know what Photo John knows about the use the extra forums get. Just from browsing, I get the feeling that they don't get much use.

Now I'm moving away from the subject of a film forum to a broader discussion on how to keep these forums growing and, so mods please feel free to move this to a new thread if you feel so inclined.

[mtbbrian]

I completely disagree. These stories should be visible to everyone and belong in the busiest forum, Viewfinder.
I'd love to know what Photo John knows about the use the extra forums get. Just from browsing, I get the feeling that they don't get much use.

OK, if anything having a Film forum would make these stories and experiences easier to find, which will make it easier for new people to the web and this forum, to find.
Which in my opinion is a good thing!

I'd love to know that information too.
How to attract new poeple is a big concern of John's, he and I talk about it regularly. I am sure it is big part of his job description.
With the exception of the Web Forum I think all of the extra forums get enough traffic.
Brian

[Xia_Ke]

...I'd love to know what Photo John knows about the use the extra forums get. Just from browsing, I get the feeling that they don't get much use...

That would be very interesting to know. I'd be curious to see what the actual views per day and posts per day are in comparison to other photography forums out there. Not just APUG and RFF but, also others like dgrin or photo.net or...