Announcement Welcome to the life raft for POTN members!

[dirk]

Dear POTN members,

I got to know only today that POTN (photography on the net) will shut down and the content deleted.

I run community forums since 20 years. Forums for photography and for other hobbies. All my community forums are for free.

Therefore I tried to offer my help to take over the forum, but Pekka does not want to change his decision to delete POTN and we should respect this.

This is why I created this new community forum. This is the life raft for all POTN members, who search for a new place.

We copied the categories of the POTN 1:1, so that it is easier for you to feel at home. Of course this software is different than the old one and like with all new things, it needs time to get used to it. But we are humans beeings. We can adapt

I created this forum within hours. So please bear in mind, that there might be still some glitches I need to fix over the coming days/weeks. I am open to change categories or add new ones. This is up to you. But we need to start with something and the transition shall be as smooth as possible for you.

Please help us to keep the old POTN community together. Spread the news, tell your friends about us. It is now up to you that the old POTN community stays together.

I can only offer this free platform to help you. How this forum grows and develops is up to you.

 

[dirk]

Addendum:

several POTN members asked by email/PM me to talk more about me.

That is not as easy as it looks on the first sight. As a European, I take data protection and privacy very serious. I do not want to have my real family name everywhere on the internet. For the same reason we do not recommend to use your real family name as a username in our forums.

But I understand the curiosity and try to make a compromise.

I started with photography forums in 2002, when I was a Contax user and the whole print media was bashing Contax, because they had a slower AF than Canon. I started first with a small website with some articles and MTF charts which had not been available at that time on the net. Carl Zeiss in Oberkochen and their lead designer Dr. Hubert Nasse supported me very much with this. The domainname was Contaxinfo.com.

Within weeks, visitors asked for more and I added then a discussion forum to it. Within 3 months it became the biggest Contax user forum worldwide.

Thanks to this huge success, I started one year later hasselbladinfo.com (called now mediumformatforum.com) and others.

More information about the last 15-20 years here:

About Us - CI is now DPRF!

Photocommunity for taking pictures with every gear - From Smartphones up to Medium Format

camera-info.com

During that time I started also forums outside of photography. Hifi, wet shaving etc. The passion became profession.

The newest addon (before POTNforum) was my "rescue forum" for Dpreview members after Amazon announced to shut down and delete dpreview. That one is called DPRforum.com.

I think that should be enough to proove that I am qualified to run a POTN successor forum

But not me shall be in the first row on the stage. I am just the person in the background who makes sure that everything is working and that it will survive also financially long term.

It is up to the old POTN members what you make out of this platform. I am open for ideas to change things, but at the beginning it should be as easy as possible for old members to get used to this new forum software.

This software is the best out there in the compromise of usability, security and good coding. Especially smartphone and tablet users will love the handling and the options. I.e. light or dark background etc. pp.

I offered Pekka already to take over POTN and import it with all users, postings and images in this forum software, but he was at that time not interested. Maybe you can convince him at a later stage.

Since someone banned me in the original POTN, I can neither answer questions there nor contact anybody or read there.

Please understand, that I can not answer emails individually. I have atm not enough time for this.

Just register here for free and ask here in the forum, if you have questions. Not questions about me, but about how to make this new forum the right place for you.

This shall be an interaction between you. You shall influence what the POTNforum shall be in 1 year or 5 years. I only offer the platforum.

Hope that helps.