Originally Posted by The BATman

You know, I've visited joedios.com almost daily for several years now. And I don't think "this place is changing for the worse". Things now are not radically different than in the previous years.

Okay, so lately the average quality of pictures seems to have dropped a bit. And perhaps there are less comments per picture. I have no doubt those two statements are connected. But have you noticed there are quite a few new names among the people posting pictures ? And surely you noticed there are still good pictures being posted, and those pictures still get more comments than others.

This is all just part of some sort of natural cycle on joedios.com, that's happened in the previous years too. Some older members quit, others come on board. And those new posters perhaps still need to grow a bit. But as long as better pictures get more comments, that will be a motivator to improve, and before you know it there is a new generation of prolific members that post great pictures.

As for the participation in Weekend Warriors, yes, I know, I'm guilty. When you picked it up, I participated a lot, and then winter happened and I couldn't go outside anymore to take pictures. But you know, Weekend Warriors, in several incarnations, has also come and gone a few times on this site, and it has always been like that; a lot of participation in the beginning, and then less and less, until the frustrated organizer gives up, and a few months later someone else picks it up again.

Plus, don't forget, many people that visit this site to view or post pictures, never go to the forum, so they may never find out about Weekend Warriors. It's not like the forum is the primary focus of this site. It's not exactly hyper-visible from the joedios.com home page either, more like a hidden feature. And if someone does click on that forum link, by default only the last month of posts are visible, so they will miss a lot of the history and it won't be easy to "get into it". In other words, the forum, its community, and thus Weekend Warriors, are irrelevant to the vast majority of the visitors of joedios.com.

And finally, Flickr. I suppose it's only natural that Flickr would leech away some people from joedios.com. You said it yourself; apparently there's a Weekend Warriors going on on Flickr too, so surely that is a cause of less participation here on joedios.com. But don't worry, in time, it will fade out over there just like it does over here. And perhaps then someone will say: "I don't mind giving up on Weekend Warriors here, because we're also doing it over on joedios.com, and there a lot more people are involved than here on Flickr".