Ways to increase forum participation

Hi All

I enjoy Wetpixel and the wealth of knowledge that can be drawn upon when required. As others have said the forums seem almost completely gear focused.

What are ways we can increase participation in relation to just diving and taking photos?

How about a weekly dive thread?

Talk about where you dived and with who

What the condition/profiles/dive site were like

gear used new & old

And maybe attach a photo or 2 if possibe

New species sighted

Highlights

Can a thread automatically generate each Monday "Weekly Dive Report ##/##/2019"

Photo of the month competition

Photo of the month competition

Great idea!!

I think themed image sharing threads might be a really good idea. An above water camera forum I frequently visit (mu-43.com) has image threads for about every thing you could imagine from horses, to car racing and waterfalls. More interestingly it has a dedicated thread for each camera lens, which has been an invaluable tool to see what each lens is capable of doing when put in the hands of a skilled photographer.

Considering the smaller community here I imagine that it might be better to keep the categories broad, but even having image threads for compacts, mu43, APS-C and FF could help making discussions about image quality and what can be done with smaller sensors much more informed.

It would also provide a better basis for discussion in general than countless individual posts about a single trip, which often only get a handful of comments. In addition to that, it would be nice, if (maybe once every two weeks) one of the mods chose one of the higher quality (or more informative) threads to be featured on the WetPixel front page.

I think an area where photos are shown with various system settings used for others with similar systems can experiment.

On 6/24/2019 at 9:11 AM, subsea said:

I think an area where photos are shown with various system settings used for others with similar systems can experiment.

I love this idea. As a beginner, this would be really helpful. I saw a flickr album of some great underwater shots with the camera settings and lenses used, and that is what sold me on getting a GH5 for my u/w setup, and I’m sure more of those albums will help me to learn new techniques with it!

The updated software has increased my forum participation :-) Making it easier to follow what is going on and easier to post has done it for me.

Being really picky, the number of pinned topics in some areas gets in the way, pushing current discussion too far down the page. Especially when some of the pinned topics haven't been updated for 10+ years. So anything to thin out pinned topics such as archiving them off to an 'info-base' area would help remove clutter. 

Good point John...

I wil have a prune!

All the best

Adam