DPReview's Forum Changes

[jcass]

This forum came to life because of dpreview's original closure. dpreview's resurrection was a surprise. Now that dpreview is switching platforms, a new opportunity may exist. I preferred the threaded format of the legacy dpreview.com, but that format's support appears to be dying and perhaps with it, dpreview's forum popularity and dominance.

Many users here participate in both, myself included. So, lets not ignore the 500lb gorilla in the forum. Personally, I prefer the threaded view. The more advance a discussion gets here, the less likely that I am to pay attention, simply because of the length of the chain and the difficulty sifting through posts. The more engaging a discussion... the more posts... the harder it is too follow.

I prefer the dpreview threaded format. But, that format appears to be dying. Does that change anything?

 

[Dean Wilson]

What's DPReviews loss is Petapixels gain. I really appreciate Chris Niccolls and Jordan Drakes video reviews... especially the funny ones.

 

[jcass]

That was definitely a solid coup for petapixel and a major draw. I also visit petapixel to watch the videos and podcasts and to read their reviews. But I've stuck with dpreview forums for the most part, and here because its Canon RF specific. Dpreview has a broader, more established participation base. For me, that is partly because I could quickly browse the threaded view of popular posts. Without that, once a post get above twenty replies... that is too much to follow and I don't bother.

 

[David Berry]

This thread has tempted me to revisit DPReview. Here’s what I found: it’s utterly unusable! (Uncropped & unedited screenshot.)

 

[jcass]

Dpreview forums are back online with the new flat format. My first impression confirms my prejudice, so take it for what it's worth. The more replies to a post, the harder it is to track the discussion. Imo, it promotes shallow discussions on numerous posts. I already bailed on a lot of posts where folks repeatedly quoted with reply.

Just scanning the number of replies to posts seems significant. The more replies, the harder to follow the topic. Scanning the number of replies on this forum seems to to reinforce the theory that a flat forum encourages more posts with fewer replies on average. I wonder if dpreview tracked the average number or replies per post, would they see decrease.

 

[jcass]

I've have been intentionally going back to Dpreview after the forum change to try to give it a fair assessment. I am prejudiced in favor of the old, threaded view. So take my criticisms with a grain or two of salt.

Two things that I find that really miss...

• The "Like" count in the hierarchical thread summary view... For popular threads there are too many replies for me to scan them all. So, I used the like count to quickly jump review some replies to see if they were relevant to my interest.
• The usernames on replies in the hierarchical thread summary view... Following Dpreview over the years, within each forum I have found a set of users whose knowledge, opinions, and advice I value. So, I scan the thread summary and look for their posts, especially if they have several "Likes".

Those two things saved me a lot of time. Consider it my workflow.

I am a software developer, so I understand the difference in costs between "off-the-shelf" and supported systems versus maintaining and supporting legacy unsupported frameworks. Believe me... I live in that world. I just can't help but wonder why the threaded forum model is not more broadly implemented and supported.

I remain very interested in other folks' opinions.

 

[AntonLargiader]

I absolutely prefer the traditional forum format (like this one) over the type where each reply spawns its own discussion. I think the latter type (Reddit being the one I see the most) fragments the discussion far too much and demotes good content. To me, that style is aimed specifically at the short-term conversations that are never meant to be referred to in the future. Who is going to drill down each fork to find stuff? Not me.

I use forums very much for reference, and the Reddit format is worthless for that.