The new website - A failure or success.

Hi all'

I personally think the traffic has slowed down a lot since the site changed over. Funny thing is I was talking to Frank Ryan Jr about this very thing at the Galway astro fest. I would like to see email notifications back .

>From an Astrophotography point of view a lot of people feel there work is not been taken seriously. We would like a site that is constructive with positive criticism and no 'lovely image well done' despite the fact that it is all green. We are very lucky to have some excellent Astrophotographers on this site like Anto O' Maitis , Kieran Rooney , Dave Grennan, Gary Clarke ,John Murphy, Frank Ryan Jr ,Steve Roche, Michael O' Connell, Dave Gradwell, Sorry if I left anyone out. I am pretty new to Astrophotography myself and I tell you the amount of work that goes into one image is incredible, sometimes days, weeks ,or months just to get one image. And the last thing I want to see is the lads losing interest in posting there images here because I love to see how people are coming on with there images and help them out as much as possible.

Believe it or not a lot of the Astrophotographers feel like giving up on this site. Some of the things that have being said to me is "I've got the impression that IFAS is no longer a site to place images on any more and I think that most of the imagers on the site are of the same frame" What does that tell you.

Carl.

phoenix wrote:

Then came the loss of the imaging comp........blamed on weather and lack of interest....

We can blame the weather for everthing and if there is no compition then you can insure no interest.

I got tired of receiving one or two images per month, so I said 'what the hell, let's wait a while and see if it gets requested and/or the weather improves.' I only have 2 PM's in 8 months on record to bring back the Photo Competition. It felt more embaressing than anything else that not enough people were not taking a serious interest when such a large community are present here.

Seanie.

JohnMurphy wrote:

The number of PMs I have received since I started this thread has been a revelation to me, I didn't realise how much trouble IFAS is in. Previous Admins of the site and people close to IFAS council have confided a lot and you can ignore a single gripe but not when everyone is saying the same thing.

Nothing personal John, but how many is a 'revelation'? Maybe you should be on the Admin team, as I have got squat PM's about the above, and I am an Admin member...


...either that or not many people like me.

It would be great if these closet complainers came out and showed themselves so that communication would be clearer.

Seanie.

Seanie,

Posted four months ago by yourself

Oh it will definitely be coming back alright lads, I'd just prefer (based on feedback before) to try and keep it as current as possible, and not go back in time for the sake of having a couple of pretty pictures to add to a thread.

I think it was the promise that it would be back that stopped the outcry that we now see here.

DavidBranigan wrote:

As the astrophotography competition has been mentioned, can someone please comment on this and explain why was this not considered unacceptable at the time?

www.irishastronomy.org/forum?func=view&catid=44&id=65006

Why would anyone want to even post an image on this site never mind enter a competition when they see this is the sort of nonsense that is the result.

Hi David,

I just added a little humour into what would have been an otherwise plain post, for which the competition that month had only one entry. What can I say, I'm that kind of guy!

Seanie.

paulevans wrote:

To be honest, to me it looked like the astrophoto competition died out due to lack of submissions..

Possibly because the qualifications for entry were ramped up? It all points in the same direction - a desire by those in charge to control the board membership.

Well guys, it's Judgement Day - and the verdict is that the controlling approach doesn't work!

What the heck Paul! I was the Astrophotography Copetition, no one else wanted to do it, so I did. Had nothing to do with controlling the board's membership.

Seanie.