No, not needed. DPreview's PC forum contains a lot of support questions because Microsoft doesn't help much and lots of things go wrong with Windows and x86 applications. No sense trying to duplicate that here.
A post processing forum could be good, with participants.
I've got "Digital Video talk being subsumed into "General techniques and ideas". Is that no good? There hasn't been a thread started there for 3 months.
At the current size of the userbase of this forum won‘t be able to support lively exchanges and conversations in every sub and even if it succeeds as a whole this might stay like that for a while.
However I feel like now (or even more so after the changes) is a significant point where many people will need to decide if they really want to participate and try to make this site work as its own unique thing, or if they‘d rather go on comparing it to dpreview, in which case it will always stay a woeful failure in their mind.
I for one am thinking about things I want to discuss, share and ask others which never seemed like a good fit for dpreview and also some other topics which could be some light hearted fun or visually interesting. Not sure if anything works out as intended, but that‘s what I‘ve set my mind on trying.
The trolls might bw a hindrance in some of that, I give you that, but I‘ll ignore as much as possible of the mean spirited stuff and try to give those whom I perceive as slightly rude, but not necessarily malevolant a second or third chance. Sometimes people just need a reminder that they‘re welcome even if they don‘t agree with your approach or philosophy 100%. To the contrary sometimes such people might have developed into trolls without a real intent and could be very interesting contributors with their own different perspective otherwise.
That‘s my thoughts and feelings on the matter, of course everyone‘s approaches and limits are different.
"Image discussions, critiques and challenges"
No one would ever guess to look for critiques there unless it was mentioned in the heading,
I'd suggest that each master category heading have a pinned post that describes the contents in a bit more detail. Just a few lines of explanatory material, especially since in this compression, you're making some combinations that are unique to this forum as opposed to DPR or most other photo forums.
The layout looks clean. It's easy to scroll from top-to-bottom in just a few swipes. It's organized and simple to grok where to go. I like it.
I do have a couple of suggested edits.
- Change "Beginners' Questions" to either "Beginner Questions" or "The Basics" in News & Discussion
- Add a "Photo Art" section to Photographic Genres. Let's give artists who use photography in their work a forum.
- Change "Post processing workflow" to "Digital Darkroom" in Photographic Techniques
Also, I would suggest making the main chapters collapsible. Tap to expand and see the forums within. Tap to collapse to see just the chapter header. That would make the initial appearance even cleaner and would allow a person to swipe from top-to- bottom in just one or two motions.
All good ideas. Let me play and I'll come back to you. It may not be till next week as I am busy on other things tomorrow and the weekend. But I may ge time tonight.