[Adam]

This section of our forum is dedicated to Pentax K-5 topics. It can thus be seen as a sub-set of the DSLR discussion section.

All topics specific to the K-5 camera should be posted here.

Adam
PentaxForums.com Webmaster (Site Usage Guide | Site Help | My Photography)



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[cbaytan]

I wrote my ideas on the suggestions thread additionally, IMO separating dSLR's into three sections will slow down the visibility of the threads hence will decrease the communication. A lot of confusions will appear on camera comparisons. We'll see if I am right.

[inferno10]

Personally, I would have broken the DSLR section to 4 sections:

645D/645/67
K-5/K-7/K20D/K10D
K-r/K-x/K200D
Pentax DSLR Discussion

That somewhat follows the body class order and isn't too granular to allow comparison threads to fit nicely.

- Jason

[hcc]

I am a bit disappointed by the introduction of the K-5 Forum and K-r review. I do not wish to criticise the generous efforts of the Forum administrator, but rather share some constructive comments. I hope that the feedback will assist to continue a successful and fruitful forum.

I feel that it will separate some Pentax members the rest of Pentaxians, and this goes against the thrust of this convivial Forum. I prefer a broad-based forum because many questions are relevant to several camera bodies.

If there was a need (& I am unsure about that) to separated the discussion/thread, I would suggest to follow the advice of Jason (Inferno10):

Medium format bodies - 645D/645/67
Semi-pro/WR bodies - K-5/K-7/K20D/K10D
Entry level bodies - K-r/K-x/K200D
Pentax DSLR Discussion

Even the above setup will not favour exchange between Pentaxians with different bodies.

---

Last edited by hcc; 11-13-2010 at 01:07 AM.

[bobmaxja]

I love the new format

[jake14mw]

I don't like at all different forums for different cameras. There is no need to separate them. People will miss many interesting threads I think because they don't go to all of the sub forums.

[AlexJ]

I love the new sub forum. It saves me time scrolling through the different threads involving different camera models especially at this time that I only want to read about the K5. When the K4 comes out, thats all what I want to read, too. This is the idea of sub forums - quick access to a specific topic. Just imagine if there is only one forum for everything. It would be frustrating to wade through the sea of threads just to get to what you want.

[cbaytan]

I love the new sub forum. It saves me time scrolling through the different threads involving different camera models especially at this time that I only want to read about the K5. .

When I get my K-5 I will put comparisons of my both cameras on non-K-5 section just for you, because K-7 doesn't belong to K-5 section. go figure.

[falconeye]

With this many forums, it may be good to have support for user-defined virtual forums:

A forum given a name and parent forum which collects all threads matching some criterion, like a list of forum names.

This may be hard to implement. But if there is support for "dynamic" or "virtual" or "smart" folders in the forum software, it may be a good thing to activate the feature now with this many forums. There is a risk to get lost. A K-r vs. K-5 comparison now has four places to go ...

[Adam]

There's no such feature as far as I'm aware, but I can probably write one. As the site evolves, expect the software at your disposal to evolve as well.

[falconeye]

There's no such feature as far as I'm aware, but I can probably write one. As the site evolves, expect the software at your disposal to evolve as well.

Our company supports this feature in their software (a platform for enterprise computing) and if you need any ideas about the precise feature set I may be of help.

We implement it by turning arbitrarily customized searches into something indistinguishable from a folder, except that if creating items in such a folder, you would have to specify its origin (one may as well disable item creation though). A side effect is that all (parent) folders support a flat view.

In this case (i.e., the platform implementing a forum), an item would be a thread and a folder would be a forum. But we could mix arbitrary things in a folder, like a thread and a DoF caclculator. Anyway, I'm just mentioning it because we have been thru it. It's not normally easy to implement without some support from the underlying software.

[Adam]

One feasible way to do it, that I see, is as follows:

-User-defined "custom" forums in the user cp, either an unlimited number, or a fixed number
-forumdisplay.php?f=custom_x as the access parameter
-When the custom parameter is passed, the query inside forumdisplay pulls threads from all forums defined in the user's custom forum option for that particular x.

Doesn't seem that bad, I don't think, but I can see it taking a good 12 hours to implement.

[sebberry]

Search based virtual forums? Something tells me that will be far from organized. Sort of like the awful "libraries" feature in Windows7. You sort of know where your stuff is, but not really..

[Adam]

Well, that sounds more like the tag system (which is actually great when properly expanded as I've done here), but I think it might be worth giving a shot someday. At the moment, I'm working on others things (more content-oriented), but when the time comes for technical improvements, this would definitely be an idea to consider.

Here's an example of another user-inspired idea that I wrote form scratch: Pentax Serial Number Database - PentaxForums.com

[falconeye]

One feasible way to do it, that I see, is as follows:

-User-defined "custom" forums in the user cp, either an unlimited number, or a fixed number
-forumdisplay.php?f=custom_x as the access parameter
-When the custom parameter is passed, the query inside forumdisplay pulls threads from all forums defined in the user's custom forum option for that particular x.

Doesn't seem that bad, I don't think, but I can see it taking a good 12 hours to implement.

Adam, great to see that you may have found a way.

I can see traps in the details, so, let me address them first.

1. The feature may be difficult to access for a user. A predefined custom forum for the set of first four subforums now under "Pentax Cameras" may solve this, accessible from the Forum homepage in the same Pentax Cameras category. After all, we want to counteract the "every topic is started four times" effect, so it must be easy. And it must be named properly too. So that everyone knows that visiting this custom forum saves a visit to each of the other four.

2. The listing of threads should be the same or very similiar, e.g., ordered by last modification. Just replacing the "new thread" button for a button leading to a selection of the four individual forums. So, it would just be a flat view.

So yes, it would look a lot like the tag search result page, except for the new thread button and the page being accessible as a sibling to "Pentax DSLR discussion" w/o user intervention.