Why move to largeformatphotography.info (lfphoto.info) ?

by Q.-Tuan Luong for largeformatphotography.info, Sept 2003.

Summary: In June 2002, the LF forum was moved to photo.net. As the person who created and helped made this forum a success, I have given my personal perspective on that move. In this document, I will not dwelve on the past, but instead explain why I think that for the best long-term chances of success, the LF Forum should continue on largeformatphotography.info (lfphoto.info). It is my opinion that there is no technical advantage in having the forum at photo.net, as it would work better on largeformatphotography.info. On the other hand, many regular contributors have expressed concerns about intellectual property, commercialization, and the long term future of photo.net. A number of them have withheld or radically reduced their participation on the LF Forum as it was moved to photo.net. Based on the information that I have, I can confirm those concerns. We have now a very real possibility to operate a non-commercial LF site. I strongly suggest that for the benefit of this community as a whole, we all continue our discussions on largeformatphotography.info instead of photo.net.

lfphoto.info works as well as, or better than photo.net

• Functionality: lfphoto.info runs software especially designed to closely replicate the greenspun.com/photo.net interface you are all familiar with, and adds several improvements. These improvements include a user-management system that protects email addresses, yet do not require registration, user history, display of the whole thread while replying, and several important improvements on the admin side. They allow the lfphoto.info forum software to match or exceed photo.net's forums functionalities.
• Long term stability: lfphoto.info runs from a server donated by a person with an important position in the internet industry, who is committed to helping non-profits, and has a long record of contributions to Usenet (in the non-commercial days of the internet whose values lfphoto.info is trying to preserve). Because it uses the very popular Php/mysql technologies the LF Forum could be moved easily to another server if needed, including QT Luong's, which has plenty of bandwidth to spare. Beyond the programming (now finished !) and moderation, lfphoto.info does not require a single dollar to operate. As a matter of fact, I have never asked for financial contributions, and have turned down quite a few ones. All this makes lfphoto.info the healthiest long term location for the forum.
• Performance: The photo.net server is often overloaded, with more than 1 million unique visitors per month and lots of image activity, which is now the main focus of the site. There have been repeated complaints about various photo.net posting problems which didn't seem to occur in greenspun.com. People also found greenspun.com to have better performance (when not down). lfphoto.info will have two orders of magnitude less users and serve mostly text files, all from a competent server with a fast and stable internet connection.
• Ease of search: On photo.net, you cannot search the archives just for LF contents, and you cannot search the valuable static contents oflfphoto.info (which is not part of photo.net). On lfphoto.info, you will be able to search all the LF contents exclusively (static page and Forum). Using Google to do so will be effective since everything relevant is just under our domain name. More generally, lfphoto.info will be a community of LF participants supporting a multiplicity of LF resources, the forum, the technical reviews, the lens related information, etc. Having the forum at lfphoto.info would offer the best possibility of improving all the LF related resources there. For instance, new forum software could made it possible to automatically link to a location where participants could offer suggestions for new articles, or contribute to existing articles, facilitate the creation of an extensive list of FAQs, etc...
• Data integrity: The database of older postings of the LF Forum at photo.net has problems (such as misattributed postings, missing postings, and inconsistent links) and we don't know how extensive the problems are. The database of older postings on lfphoto.info just replicates that of greenspun.com. This database was directly copied from lusenet with the permission and help of Philip Greenspun, the author and owner of lusenet. It comprises more than 60000 postings.
• Support: Our volunteers concentrate their efforts exclusively on lfphoto.info. On the other hand, photo.net has not been responsive to solving obvious problems in the LF database, like having large positive counts in empty categories, and not being able to delete categories that are no longer needed. Recently, the email alerts quit working, and photo.net has not been able to fix the problems yet. The photo.net management seems to have identified other areas as more critical to their revenue generation. As of this writting, we have both Tom and Bjorn onboard to fix technical problems and make improvements. It is expected that as the Forum picks up momentum again, some others might join.

What can be said for photo.net ?

• photo.net is here to stay. I have already outlined why I think that the lfphoto.info has a good long term stability. In its current set-up, it could go on forever with just a minimal amount of volunteer admin efforts, requiring absolutely no funds. While photo.net is most likely to be around for a long time, it is not certain at all who the owners will be, and how they will manage it. Changes can happen overnight. Currently photo.net is barely profitable, so either commercialization has to be increased, or it will have to be sold.
• We are already at photo.net. We have not elected to be at photo.net. In fact, the greenspun.com server is still running one year after the move to photo.net, and if not for the photo.net forcing the move on us, we would just be quietly moving to our new server without any fuss. It is possible that another move would divide the community further, but to begin with, the community has already been divided with many staying away from photo.net. Moving to the new server is the normal course of action we would have taken, and is an opportunity to reunite the community. The more we stay at photo.net, the more divisive the move will be. It is better to do it as soon as possible, now.
• We would have the opportunity to educate more new participants at photo.net. The same effect would be easily obtained with a direct link from photo.net. The only thing missing would be the "unified forum view" that I think is clunky anyways. The LF site was very visible through search engines (Google #1 for "large format photography") and will now be even more visible, while the LF Forum is buried in that mass-market entity photo.net. Any motivated photo.net members who seek LF education from the community's experts will find lfphoto.info, even if photo.net declines putting up a link to us. While it is true that the original charter of photo.net, as envisioned by Philip, was education, things have been changing there (and much to Philip's displeasure).

• Many LF users are photo.net members. Surfing to lfphoto.info is as easy as surfing to the LF Forum on photo.net. Most of the people who prefer lfphoto.info (including myself and the developers) are photo.net members. We recognize that photo.net has value, otherwise we wouldn't be members there, but lfphoto.info is better. Lacking a willing wealthy benefactor, it is likely impossible to operate a community as large as photo.net in a non-commercial way, but it is possible to do so for the LF community, so why not do it ?
• Brian did a lot of work in migrating the forum. This must be acknowledged, however if Brian had asked before proceeding to do the migration, all this would not have happened. The LF developers (Bjorn Nilsson, Tom Westbrook, and a few others) have spent much more effort than Brian, since not only they migrated the forum, but also they wrote from scratch the new Forum software. Unlike Brian who is a photo.net employee, they have absolutely no financial interest in the outcome, as lfphoto.info is purely non-commercial, and did all their work in the spirit of sharing.

Issues with photo.net

Commercial v. non-profit. There is a difference in ethos, which translates into several consequences.
• When someone contributes to the LF page, (s)he can take pride in donating knowledge back to the large format community, in the spirit of the generosity of the early days of the internet. When someone contributes to photo.net, (s)he also increases the value of a commercial venture. Some readers (including key contributors) are uncomfortable with their contributions to their own community being used to forward a commercial venture.
• The lfphoto.info is run as democratically as possible, placing priority on the interests of its members. As an illustration, I proposed a vote on the location of the LF Forum, a proposition that was eventually refused by Brian Mottershead, although he was initially favorable to it. Only the few photo.net shareholders will have a say if the company is sold. More concretely, recently participants appear to be favorable to worshop announcements on the Forum, but this was not permitted by photo.net.
• The charter of largeformatphotography.info is to be the site of the LF community. A commercial site places its efforts where most of the money is. As a result, the needs of minority sub-communities become secondary, as shown by the lack of attention to several technical issues on the forums.
• A site relying heavily on commercial sponsors inevitably loses its objectivity.
• The photo.net site is blocked by network administrators at several large organizations.
• As a grassroots group, it is easier for us to seek contributions for the site from outside sources, as well as to get people to volunteer their time to help.
• Copyright. On photo.net, you "grant photo.net a perpetual non-exclusive world-wide royalty-free license to modify, publish and reproduce that material for the purpose of operating, displaying, distributing and promoting photo.net". It has been pointed to that as it reads in a court of law this is virtually an unlimited license. Another owner could exploit their licence to whatever degree desired. The terms of use on lfphoto.info make it clear that lfphoto.net doesn't claim any right beyond a revokable licence to publish on its site, and will remove on request any of the contents you posted.
• Community focus. While the initial focus of photo.net was education, it is now trying to be a mass site which favors quantity over quality (as noticed by many photo.net old-timers, some of them moderators) in order to be financially profitable. The main efforts are directed towards areas such as the image gallery and its rating system. photo.net's title page nowadays reads "Photo.net home page and recent digital cameras reviews". The LF community has little in common with the typical photo.net reader nowadays, and is best served on its own site, one ran by people who care about Large Format Photography.
• The future. Photo.net as a corporation is a commodity subject to acquisition. While the current officers and management seem to be of good will, there is no such guarantee down the line. Why should we take the chance, knowing that if we wait it would be much more difficult to move than now ?
• We have given photo.net a chance. One year ago, despite dubious way photo.net had taken over the site, I initially asked the community to move there to see how it would work. The net result is that the forum has not improved, with many thinking it has in fact degraded. A distinct increase in amateurish behavior can be seen, but the main reason why the discussions have dropped in quality is that we have lost many valuable contributors on the way.

Conclusion