Crazy stuff happening at Rob Galbraith...

[Lord_Malone]

“Hello to all,
I am shocked by Drew and Melissa ‘brutal’ and ‘dictatorial’ changes in the policies of this much respected forums.
I want to thank Rob and Mike very warmly for their passion and dedication in making these forums so open and useful to thousands of photographers, professional, amateurs or otherwise beginners during all these years.
While I understand and respect the need for a different financial model, I can’t understand or as a matter of fact begin to tolerate the arrogance and pretention with which this new management is appropriating to itself, not the forums and the work they will have to accomplish to make them better, which is fine and legitimate, but the actual PAST CONTENT of the RG forums and REMOVING that past content from the reach of the very people who created it. This content was created in all openess by thousands of dedicated people who wanted to help and share with the entire community, for free. This historical content doesn’t belong to the ‘owners’ (present or future) of this forum, it belongs to the community in its entirety. Rob and Mike always put the community first, now Drew and Melissa want to act otherwise, this is fine with me, but please don’t ‘steal’ the archive of this community. I believe you have no legal right to do so. In posting in a ‘free’ forum, we have contributed to openly help and devellopp the photography techniques of this time, I resent and refuse absolutely that under the pretense of a new financial model, this new management confiscate this wealth of knowledge and effort for their sole commercial profit.
I refuse categorically to have any of my past posts part of this commercial venture (not only my name, but the actual content as well) , and I strongly believe my position is shared by many members of this community.
I repeat, I refuse that this new management makes a single word of my past posts (except this post…you have my blessing!) part of their ‘pay per view’ vision of the photographic community.
I have nothing personally against Drew and Melissa, I wish them good luck in their venture, however I urge them not to cut the branch on which they are seating by adopting this new ‘model’. I have nothing against paying a nominal fee to post in such a rich series of forums, but the posts themselves (past, present and future) SHOULD be free for everyone to access. Also I believe $25 per year is a hefty fee when multiplicated by the several thousands of members, and it should be clear that it won’t grow every year in the future, unlike what some of Drew’s posts seem to imply.
I feel sad and sorry for the probable loss of what was an invaluable source of knowledge and experience, as well as the inevitable dispersion of so many generous and talented contributors.
Bruno Stevens,
Photojournalist,
Brussels, Belgium
bruno@dada.be”

Wowzers! :shock:

[cosworth]

Maybe the old way of doing the forum was not a sustainable business model.

That being said, advertising should have been sought out, increased revenue from said adverts or existing advertising could have been informed of the change as to not affect their revenue streams.

Either way, it appears the wrong decision was solidified.

[liza]

Interesting indeed. It sounds similar to what's going on at Fred Miranda's forum. Here's a post made recently by the man himself.

http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/377743/0

[jbkalla]

Wow. Just when I find out there are other decent forums out there, they disappear! Too bad. Glad I'm happy with this one!

[jbkalla]

Just went over to fred miranda. Seems like a pretty good forum, too...

Everybody at rob gailbreath is quite angry. I can't see that site lasting another six months...

[Moppie]

Its an old story, one that has happened to many, many forums.
I know of only one free forum that has come close to making money, I belive it managed to break even once through advertising sales, and did so with over a 1/4 million registered members.

Quite simply forums rely on the generosity of others; modern philanthripists who are prepared to invest thier time and money into starting and running the forum, then the good will and knowledge of a small number of enthusiasts who are willing to donate thier time and knowledge to help as mods etc, and finnaly an enthusastic group of members to pull it all together into a comunity, ask and answer questions and generaly come together to share in a common passion.

The whole system revolves around the generosity of others, especialy since the content of a forum is largely generated by its members.

Unfortunalty there are always people out there who see a large number of people getting together in the pursuit of a common interest and they start to see dollar signs.
The publishing indusrty caught onto it years ago, the magazine print industry is based around exploiting common interests by gathering together information about a spefic interest and selling it to along with targeted advertising to those who are interested.
Many people see internet forums as very similar enterprises, they are at the most basic level very similar, a gathering of information that is then shared amongst others, and so they believe that like a magazine they should be able to charge a fee to have access to it.
At the most basic level it makes sense, but there is one serious differnce, and its alluded to in the quote in the start of this thread; the information and knowledge contianed with in a forum is gathered by its memebers, and in a very real sense can be considered to be "living" as much of it is stored with in the experiance and memories of the membership. The information is scattered in many differnt threads and forums, and in many cases may not yet be posted, its just resting in someones head waiting for them to come accross the right question, and realise they have the right answer.

A magazine however consists of information gathered by dedicated and paid proffesionals, journalists who do the hard work of asking the questions and finding the answers, then putting it all together into an easily digested and convnient format.
Its this very important differnce that gives people a reason to pay for a magazine.

There is another imporant differnce, when reading a magazine you might get a sense of personal interaction with the editorial staff, but thats it. When participating in a forum you become part of a comunity, hundreds or even thousands of people who you can interact with and comunicate with.
People don't like to pay for thier comunities, the idea of paying to visit and spend time with your friends is quite offensive to our society, its goes against everything we know.


Unfortunalty it won't stop people buying forums and trying to make money out of them by charging a membership subscribtion.
Fortunatly there will always be people who care enough about sharing thier passion that will start and run free forums. :cool:

[primoz]

I agree with Bruno (the guy who you quoted) to some part. Those two guys bought forum and I guess they paid some money for it. I don't know how much and I don't care how much. Now they own forum and they can do whatever they want with it. But here's part in which I agree completely with Bruno. Unless it's written really good in forum rules which you need to accept when joining, and I doubt it is so, they don't own my "work". And so as my photos are copyrighted and owned by me, also my posts are owned by me, and not by forum or owner of forum, which means they might (and probably will) run into bunch of legal problems. Not with me, and probably not with most of others, but I'm sure there will be few from all those 1000s of people who will be ready for something like that.
Personally I don't consider posting there (or here or on any other forum) as something in same range as my photos. I simply consider it as my "gift" for community... worth or worthless :) So if someone decides to close their forum (including this one) I won't have problems with it, and if I will think it will be worth paying subscription I will otherwise I won't and I won't be hanging around anymore. So as I won't be on RG forums anymore... not that I was there much anyway... except that it was great to have Kirk for support of Photo Mechanic. But when thinking about this I do think RG forums (or better their new owners) took a bit weird way for future, but it's their problem not mine :)

[peacock]

Unless it's written really good in forum rules which you need to accept when joining, and I doubt it is so, they don't own my "work". And so as my photos are copyrighted and owned by me, also my posts are owned by me, and not by forum or owner of forum, which means they might (and probably will) run into bunch of legal problems. Not with me, and probably not with most of others, but I'm sure there will be few from all those 1000s of people who will be ready for something like that.


Photos aside , the majority of forums will have it in their rules that they own the rights to the contents of post and the rest will probably have a passage pertaining to their rights of use over the contents of posts.

[Double Negative]

That's the beauty of the Internet... Just find another forum, or start your own. :)

If a forum does go pay-only and you want your posts removed, you're well within your right. You haven't given any permission for commercial presentation and they're copyright by you.

"For a small fee, I would be open to granting limited usage permission on my content." :-P

[peterdoomen]

"For a small fee, I would be open to granting limited usage permission on my content." :-P

Like, the same fee you would ask for membership :D

P.

[ssim]

I actually don't have an issue with pay for membership forums. It doesn't have to be alot. Look at this forum, if Pekka charged even 10.00 per year for registration, yes we would lose some users, but I bet he wouldn't have to be financing it out of his own pocket. There are donations but at the end of the day if those don't meet the obligations, he steps forward.

I haven't spent alot of time at RG forums as their rules were always a tad on the dictatorial side but it was still a good resource at times.

[RichardtheSane]

Part of the migration plan includes a free read-only archive of past posts that will cover up to the transition announcement. We've come up with a solution for this that will enable public viewing of the historical content here without hurting the financial viability of the forums going forward.

Taken from the forum down page at http://forums.robgalbraith.com/ubbthreads.php?Cat=0

Seems like some back tracking happening

[Double Negative]

Interesting... Probably the path of least resistance and problems.

Just now:

"We have had a slight change in the transition timeline. To best prepare for the migration we need to go ahead and shut things down temporarily while changes are being made. Please finish up all replies, or things that you may want to do. The board will close today (Monday, April 24) at 1:30pm Eastern Time and re-open as soon as possible on the new server. Realistically, it may take up to three days to complete all aspects of the migration, though we're pushing hard to have it done sooner. Part of the migration plan includes a free read-only archive of past posts that will cover up to the transition announcement. We've come up with a solution for this that will enable public viewing of the historical content here without hurting the financial viability of the forums going forward. Thank you all for your input. More details as they become available. Thanks, Drew"

[lon10c]

Off topic but a British forum http://thephotographyforums.com/ sorta evaporated overnight.

Was a fun read.

[Tom W]

Interesting... Probably the path of least resistance and problems.

Just now:

"We have had a slight change in the transition timeline. To best prepare for the migration we need to go ahead and shut things down temporarily while changes are being made. Please finish up all replies, or things that you may want to do. The board will close today (Monday, April 24) at 1:30pm Eastern Time and re-open as soon as possible on the new server. Realistically, it may take up to three days to complete all aspects of the migration, though we're pushing hard to have it done sooner. Part of the migration plan includes a free read-only archive of past posts that will cover up to the transition announcement. We've come up with a solution for this that will enable public viewing of the historical content here without hurting the financial viability of the forums going forward. Thank you all for your input. More details as they become available. Thanks, Drew"

That's the best development I've seen over there since the sale of the forum. The amount of outcry over historical content was strong, and I'm glad to see the new owners responding to it in a positive direction. Perhaps the threat of a major loss of forum members might have carried some weight.

[Double Negative]

Indeed. Keep in mind that without members, a forum is nothing...

[Sean-Mcr]

Off topic but a British forum http://thephotographyforums.com/ sorta evaporated overnight.

Was a fun read.


I've not posted there for a few weeks, when did it die? It was a really well meaning site, very small but a good little site

[Brian Puccio]

Sadly, this sort of thing is not a new problem, it has happened at many forums for years now. Some call it the free rider problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropayments#The_Internet_and_the_.22free_rider.2 2_problem).

[Sean-Mcr]

"Off topic but a British forum http://thephotographyforums.com/ sorta evaporated overnight.

Was a fun read. "


It's back as

www.talkphotography.co.uk

[mattym]

cheers for the mention Sean

as he says, its back. Egos are a big problem with forums, i dont know of a single forum where its not been a problem. Some people just forget that the forums are there for the members, as has already been said, no members = no forums