Yes, DP Review discussion forums suck. It’s not really surprising in and of itself because most online forums suck; it’s just the nature of the internet I suppose. The reason most online forums suck is because of crappy moderation.
But this is a photography blog, what gives with this disrespect for online forums? Well, as you probably know, DP Review is digital photography gear news and review site. It generally has pretty good information. Their online forums, like all online forums, are mostly crap, but there can be some very useful information to be had in some of them. The most useful for me were the forums on lighting, retouching, and portraiture. Each one of those forums has a small number of regular participants that are truly experts in their given field, and they demonstrated it often by example.
But somewhere along the line DP Review apparently took it upon themselves to crack down on uncivil behavior; perhaps they passed word down to their mods, who knows. Combined with huge page long rules for each forum along with mods who may or may not have reasonable notions of what “civil” is and it’s pretty much guaranteed that DP Review’s discussion forums are going to fall into a deep suck hole.
Anyway, the DP Review discussion forums have now largely lost their appeal and usefulness.
In my opinion here’s how DP Review (and all online forums) can become tolerable, and more importantly more useful . It’s very simple, really. Outside of stalking, doxxing, personal threats, and off topic responses, anything should pretty much go.
In other words, treat people like adults and don’t try to police civility. Just let people easily block those they don’t want to interact with. That way, the system will take care of itself.
Really, it would.