Hello everybody :-D
It's been a little while since I've last posted here. I have been visiting the forum from time to time but been mostly "lurking" although I have been (sorta) active in the main blog comments.
I agree with all here that the comments have been increasingly spiraling out of control; tasteless remarks about the floods and Thailand, people accusing NR of making the stuff up and even hate messages in a few instances (Admin deleted those). So yeah it's really bad almost to the point where I also considered if it was worth having a comments section all together. But then again I also think that there are a few gems of a comments in that concoction of putridity.
For the majority of the whiners though I wonder what kind of images they get out of their cameras. I mean their outlook is not just negative but worse; some of them feel like rotten tomatoes. I'm a hobbyist so I don't consider myself a photographer per se. Maybe I don't understand what the pressure of being a professional photographer feels like but even so I can't imagine a pro photographer spewing that type of ignorance and taking any photos with any real beauty. Perhaps these people forget that photography is an art because what's captured so closely resembles real life and so we get these ignoramus types posing as photographers just because they're able to push that big button on their D700's. Photography has more to it than that though, at least to me. I believe that before you capture an image, you need to capture what's in your heart. It's a very effective system; gold in, gold out but garbage in, garbage out.
Now, the topic of incorporating a sign-in service into the forum like facebook or disqus was brought up in the main blog a few times but Peter always replied that the situation isn't bad enough or that he preferred the main blog to stay anonymous in nature. I also believe Peter had said on a few occasions that he hates deleting and censoring posts. I think Peter's vision of NR is a place where people aren't so restricted and can speak their mind freely. Of course I don't think he expected people could go to the lengths they displayed lately just because their precious toy wasn't announced in time. The other reason for the anonymity, I think, is the nature of NR and the fact that Peter deals with rumors. It probably lends to a more trustful relationship between Peter and some of his sources.
Ok so I guess this has become sort of a rant but the point that I want to make is that if all the good people stop frequenting the main blog then what are we left with? One of those "chan" forums? God forbid!
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing"
Or something like that. Now I know, we're not dealing with evil and this is just a website set in a virtual world but the idea is the same.
Ok. Stop. Finito. خلاص. End of rant.
