Our New Moderator

The forum is a very important part of Luminous-Landscape. It’s been a place where readers can ask questions and openly share their knowledge and experience.  It’s not uncommon to have 400 or more people visiting the forum at any one moment.  It has grown over the years and now has over 35 different sub-forums with subjects ranging from cameras to post-processing.  

The wealth of accumulated knowledge shared on the forum is endless.  Just pick an arbitrary camera or photo term, enter it in the search box and you’ll be surprised at the results.  The whole success of the forum is based on an open dialog and sharing of knowledge and experience. 

However over the last year – more than at any other time – we have seen discussions turn into personal attacks. We have seen language unfit even for the most salty seasoned sailor.  This has resulted in numerous reports to the moderator, locked topics and the banning of certain individuals.  We have seen this overwhelmingly in the Coffee Corner.

As was inevitable, political discussions were the source of the majority of discord and reported posts. Since the Coffee Corner is the place for non-photographic subjects, we did our best as moderators to keep our hands off and allow the conversations to take place.  But with topics as divisive as today’s politics, things went badly off track.  Personal attacks and inappropriate language became the norm. This led to numerous complaints to Chris and myself.  Chris who has handled the forum moderation for all these years got to a point where he was spending more time than ever policing the threads and reacting to complaints.  This resulted in banning certain individuals and also making many readers uncomfortable.  Thus we had to close threads by locking them and in some cases deleting them entirely.    

Both Chris and I are busy as many of you are and do not have the time to watch every single post made.  And, it was taking a tremendous amount of Chris’s time.  Time, that could be better spent on editing and producing our video content.  We arrived at one point believing we should shut down any political banter and insist on photo oriented topics only.  

Even after doing this we had issues and had to ban other posters for personal attacks and language even on non-political topics.  So, behind the scenes conversation took place on how to handle these issues and open up the forum to what it used to be.  It was obvious that Chris and couldn’t deal with it and keep up with our other responsibilities.

Luckily for us, one of our long-term forum members has stepped up to the plate and has volunteered to take over the moderation of the forum.  I’d like to introduce you to the new Forum Moderator, Jeremy Roussak.  

I have gotten to know Jeremy over the last few years on two of Luminous-Landscape’s workshops.  One in Iceland and more recently in Antarctica.  We had the opportunity on those trips to get to know each other pretty well.

Jeremy comes from a highly regarded medical and legal career. He enjoys the discussion and sharing that the forum offers.  He relishes the arguments found in the threads of a political nature.  I know no one more capable of moderating the forum and the many conversations happening on it on a daily basis.

Jeremy will post a statement both on the About This Site as well as The Coffee Corner on his vision for taking over the forum moderation.   Both Chris and I have the utmost faith that Jeremy is up to the task and that the forum will be a better place with Jeremy as the moderator.  Chris and I will, of course, be there to help with any questions Jeremy has and to back him up with this task.

Please join us in welcoming Jeremy as the New Forum Moderator. 

Tips

The forum has some tools that many of you may be interested it.  These are listed the About This Site thread at the top of the Forum,

You can ignore certain members as well as boards.  So if you don’t want to read posts from a. certain member of don’t want to see a certain board follow these steps in Ignore Boards and Members 

If you have problems with Logging in, passwords or your email please see –   Login, email, password problems

All the terms and services are shown here –  Forum Registration Agreement (Terms of Service)

We also receive a lot of questions on Display and User Names. 

Please enjoy the Luminous-Landscape Forum

Kevin Raber
March 2018