What's the structure going forward?

Unlike most things here, adapted lenses are not brand-specific nor a particularly timely thing, but rather timeless. That makes the ideal organization unclear, and a scary large fraction of threads get re-awakened years later... which doesn't happen when the old threads are not ported to the new site. There's also forum overlap in the sense that adapted lenses are nearly always 3rd-party lenses.

I'd suggest that there are really two different attributes that were the focus of the Adapted Lens forum at DPReview:

1. How to adapt lenses; commercial adapters and focal reducers, 3D-printed and kludged custom adapters, lens modifications (e.g., re-adjusting infinity focus when a lens is adapted to a mount that was too thick to allow infinity focus with a glassless adapter) -- this part also has some overlap with the old DIY and Photo Experiments forum

2. An emphasis on mostly unchipped manual focus lenses and their identification, use, and maintenance; legacy/antique lenses that can be used with almost any camera

As we're establishing a new home, perhaps now is the time to think about what the new structure should be. Is "adapted lenses" really the right top-level index term and forum name?

Hm.

My main focus was on legacy/film interchangeable lenses and using them on cameras they weren't designed for, through simple adapters. As a rough guess, I'd say that was around 2/3 of the forum traffic, if not somewhat higher. But I certainly enjoyed reading about the efforts of the people adapting projector lenses, re-housing lenses from non-ILCs, and the like; and I respect them, even if I can't hope to emulate them.

I'll repeat something I said in the Sigma forum discussion: I generally prefer forums to be inclusive, not exclusive, as long as the traffic can sustain that. I'd rather see one forum getting 10-20 posts a day than two forums getting 5 posts a day and one forum that doesn't see activity more than once or twice a week. To me, larger forums foster a sense of community; more activity feels more lived-in. The different mix of topics gives more variety than something locked into a small specialized subject. And for me, at least, it's easier to keep up with a single forum than switching back and forth between multiple forums.

Can you clearly state the problem are you trying to fix? That endeavor might help you find the solution. Or it might lead you to discover that there isn’t really a problem.

Regards,

Alan

I thought I did. I mostly see the forum as a mix of stuff about adapting vs. stuff about properties of specific manual lenses, so perhaps I'm suggesting that this forum should be about adapting and there should be a "manual focus lens" forum (which would also include modern manual lenses, which people seem to keep wanting to discuss here)? In any case, now is the time to make such decisions, before we have a mix of postings here that would be hard to separate into two forums. However, if people really think "adapted lens talk" is the right title and all we need, that's ok with me...

Well, you described a characteristic of the old DPReview forum, but characteristics are not necessarily problems. Perhaps I don’t understand you completely. My perception of the old forum is that the emphasis really was on adapted lenses, and that native manual-focus lenses were only mentioned occasionally. Maybe our perceptions are different. If you want to suggest establishing a “Modern Manual-Focus Lens” forum, that that could well be interesting. However, I didn't see the occasional discussion of such lenses being a major problem for the old forum.

Regards,

Alan