Wow, photo.net has become a mess.

Folders have gone away, throwing hundreds of images into an unorganized pile.

I just created a folder and uploaded 80 images, and they are nowhere to be found.

This is likely to be the end of my participation in what used to be a superb site for sharing and learning.  If staff can point me to an online user manual that explains why I am mistaken about all this, and shows how to use the new site, I will gladly apologize.

21 hours ago, gdrastal said:

staff

There is no staff. PN is what it is, definitely not what it was.

Only advice I have is to make the best of what little is left (which is enough for those who still participate and especially those who are proactive in starting new threads and maintaining regular camera-specific, genre-specific, and No Words weekly threads) ... or not.

The personal gallery side of the site has probably devolved the most from previous iterations. I can't advise on that, since I gave up trying to maintain a portfolio or gallery. I do know that some people seem to have solved that riddle to the extent possible with this new software, but I haven't put in the time or energy to do so. So I stick to forums. My participation is way down from what it used to be, but I still enjoy stopping by somewhat regularly and checking out what's going on, commenting and posting as the mood strikes me.

Good luck.

20 hours ago, samstevens said:

There is no staff. PN is what it is, definitely not what it was.

Only advice I have is to make the best of what little is left (which is enough for those who still participate and especially those who are proactive in starting new threads and maintaining regular camera-specific, genre-specific, and No Words weekly threads) ... or not.

The personal gallery side of the site has probably devolved the most from previous iterations. I can't advise on that, since I gave up trying to maintain a portfolio or gallery. I do know that some people seem to have solved that riddle to the extent possible with this new software, but I haven't put in the time or energy to do so. So I stick to forums. 

@gdrastal you will probably not find more salient and concise words to describe the PN community as it exists today.  🤔

The idea of a standalone forum being the basis of a community has changed over the decades since such was possible.  Now the 'collective' chooses social megasites that push a gamut of experiences in their faces at all times.  We can choose to inhabit those spaces or participate in smaller ones.  But the diaspora to these new mediums--and bad corporate management trying to figure it out--has led to the decline or demise of many formerly 'world-class' special interest communities.  Here we are in a prime example.

Much of the activity at PN is in the topical clusters and image-posting group threads.  The core members that still make up the creative heart of PN are to be found there.  As Fred noted, the majority of the core have learned to successfully navigate and manage the limitations imposed by the current version of Invision Community, our software platform.  As to a FAQ library or manual, the best there has ever been since 2016 is found right here in the Help section.  Since the first "Great Platform Update of 2016,"  various members have stepped forward in volunteer capacities to help other members.

PhotoNet is software stable, and the platform could become better with enhanced features added.  Remember that our last migration was installed 'plain vanilla', so additional plugins and enhancements were not included That takes money, expertise, and staff.  Oh, a vision for the future is rather helpful as well.  In the meantime, until our silent owners decide to do something or just quit paying to host the platform--we will muddle through!  

"I just created a folder and uploaded 80 images, and they are nowhere to be found."

Can you tell us what steps you took to create this folder, maybe one of us might be able to figure it out. I'm not even sure why there is is still a "PhotoNet site Help" thread since there is no help at all when you ask for it. The owners have probably decided to take a "hands-off"  approach and are out playing golf somewhere.   

"The Owners", which is Fiveer--inherited PN as surplus property with their acquisition of Creative Live, our previous owner.  PN does not really fit with what they are doing, and the fact that it is a collection of users with distinct habits that settled in a long time ago helps nothing in that regard.  I doubt that the trendy millennials in charge of this play much golf...

Even though it's a horridly inefficient way to stock a FAQ-like answer system, this help board does work and has helped many.

I actually have a better question, one that comes to the heart of what PN is today.  Once upon a time, this was a booming enterprise, and things such as Flickr, Instagram, Imgur, SmugMug, and a host of others did not exist.  Hundreds of members daily were uploading--and incredibly had time to discuss some, review others, and engage in general 'like' petting parties.  Hundreds more daily came to read and comment.  This is how we have come to host nearly 5 million images today.  We are lucky currently to have 100 registered members a day visit.  The usual number of people signed in at any time ranges from 15-25.

The original intent of PN was to help photographers improve their photography--not as a free photo storage bucket.  Which brings me to the question.

Why would anyone want to deluge the front-facing pages with batches of 20, 40, 80, or 400 images?  Not only would readers not view very many of these, but what happens when someone else decides to do the same thing in three minutes?  Did you know that in our image inventory, over 60% of the members who uploaded them have not returned here in over a decade?

No one really sees or discusses any of these loads of images.  Why would anyone want to post that many images at once to an image discussion site? 🤔

4 hours ago, PapaTango said:

Why would anyone want to post that many images at once to an image discussion site?

 🤔

Because they can?

4 hours ago, PapaTango said:

Once upon a time, this was a booming enterprise

On 10/28/2023 at 12:05 PM, PapaTango said:

No one really sees or discusses any of these loads of images.  Why would anyone want to post that many images at once to an image discussion site?

There was once a Gallery Section that was used to display images. You also had the option to purchase those images. I'm not sure if that on-line Gallery is still available right now ? I purchased a few of those images some of which I gave away as gifts, some of which I framed and are now hanging on my walls. The Photographers who participated in this Gallery rarely participated in any of the Forums. I'm not sure why, it was a mystery ? I think there was a limit on how many images you could download to the Gallery daily.

I would say that from the late 90's till about 2010 Photo.net was pretty popular. There were some things I didn't like, like the sometimes overbearing moderators, but overall it was an engaging website. The wild and whooly Critique Section is what I think made this site very popular. There were other threads like the Canon EOS thread, the Nikon thread, the B&W thread that were swarmed with different posts by the minute.

Well, you ever heard of the term "Leave well enough alone".  Around 2010( ?) they decided to upgrade the entire website, to one that I think was supposed to garner greater profits. Ironically, this new website is what actually killed the popularity of Photo.net. It has been on a downward spiiral ever since. This newer version improved things a bit "technically".  By technically I mean this new version is a lot slicker that the previous one, but unfortunately,  it wasn't able to bring back the popularity that Photo.net once had.     

17 hours ago, hjoseph7 said:

There were some things I didn't like, like the sometimes overbearing moderators, but overall it      

Haha yes, I remember one in particular who felt very much empowered by his "volunteered" status as a moderator  .. but we did enjoy PN nevertheless in the old days!!

Unfortunately, yes, a mess. I haven't been here for a while. I think I had some lenses stolen and was checking here for my information. There was a place to list all equipment with serial numbers, etc. Gone? Damn. I hope Philip made enough selling this to set up a scholarship fund for MIT students.

Scott

13 hours ago, syano said:

I hope Philip made enough selling this to set up a scholarship fund for MIT students.

Didn’t Philip sell it back in 2007? Those original MIT scholarship students would be pushing 40, though still quite young, I guess, compared to the average PN geezer. 😊

1 hour ago, samstevens said:

Didn’t Philip sell it back in 2007? Those original MIT scholarship students would be pushing 40, though still quite young, I guess, compared to the average PN geezer. 😊

Phil Greenspun sold PN to NameMedia (of sketchy domain registrar fame) for $6M USD.  No idea what he did with the money, but he became a commercial airline pilot from the time of the sale until 2012...  ✈️

Philip Greenspun did not become rich from selling photo.net, but from selling ArsDigita Corp. in 2001, after which he retired and took up flying as a hobby.

Philip build photo.net using Oracle and AOL Server in combination with TCL scripting which was a very potent and adaptable technology compared to anything else at the time.
The TCL scripts were made open source by Philip, AOL Server was already free. ArsDigita Corp's business was to make money from support and consultation related to above technologies, not photo.net - although the site was certainly a showcase of the scaleability of the technology.

I have been around since 1997 and don't recall him being particularly active on this site after he retired in 2001, but he was seemingly administratively involved up until the sale of photo.net to NameMedia in 2007.

From the horse's mouth:

https://philip.greenspun.com/teaching/photo.net-history/speaker-notes

Philip was most certainly still active in the operation of this site in 2007, as that was when he reached out to me to ask me to become a moderator(a role I gladly accepted and enjoyed for the time I did it).

Shortly after that, however, I recall dealing mostly with Josh Root, who I believe was with NameMedia. In fact, I shipped Josh lenses to use for reviews on a few occasions, and that was the name I recall being on the Fed-Ex account he told me to use...

A ghost of what it was. Stagnant backwater now.

I'm curious as to how Glenn Palm fits into the picture ...

such a nice fellow, even under duress during the troubled period of PN, always replied to messages with kindness and consideration.