Is the Ride Reports section dying?

[CUZZY]

I am 59 years old so you know my age. I read almost all the ride reports and appreciate the effort involved. I occasionally comment. Fuzzy Muzzy hit the nail on the head!! I am not completely computer illiterate, but surely there has to be a way in 2019 of making it easier to post pics and a ride report .It  is such a hack  and time consuming exercise I don't bother. I believe if you could do your report with original size pics and story and copy and paste  there would be 50 % increase in ride reports  .If  FB and Whatsapp can do it surely the boffins running this can sort. Let us know if you can and if not why not.

[Gerrard]

I used to contribute and became lazy. Also my camera broke and I did not bother replacing it. Schlep to post from my phone. And I have a lot of other good excuses...

[Vis Arend]

I am 59 years old so you know my age. I read almost all the ride reports and appreciate the effort involved. I occasionally comment. Fuzzy Muzzy hit the nail on the head!! I am not completely computer illiterate, but surely there has to be a way in 2019 of making it easier to post pics and a ride report .It  is such a hack  and time consuming exercise I don't bother. I believe if you could do your report with original size pics and story and copy and paste  there would be 50 % increase in ride reports  .If  FB and Whatsapp can do it surely the boffins running this can sort. Let us know if you can and if not why not.

True words spoken.      But they will tell you they do not have space to store the pic's.   

[CUZZY]

Trying not to show my ignorance here but surely they can have some kind of mechanism that automatically down sizes all the pics that come through. Nothing wrong with the size of the pics just looking at Losper and Xpats recent post. Stunning photos. I did a ride report a few years back and it took me forever to post. I've not done one since because of the mission.

[JonW]

Trying not to show my ignorance here but surely they can have some kind of mechanism that automatically down sizes all the pics that come through. Nothing wrong with the size of the pics just looking at Losper and Xpats recent post. Stunning photos. I did a ride report a few years back and it took me forever to post. I've not done one since because of the mission.

Cuzzy if you use Fast Stone Image Viewer, which you can download free, it takes about 5 minutes to downsize a batch of 50 pics 

[Highsider]

I have to agree that I found it too frustrating to do a RR from the antiquated web based forum.  I find it easier to type the text on my phone and import all pics to my phone, then use Tapatalk to construct the RR.
When I say easier, I actually mean “less difficult”.  Typing long tracts of text on a cell phone is laborious and you end up shortening the story.
It shouldn’t be such a mission.  I agree more people would do RR’s if it were simpler.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Grunder]

Last night I did some RR surfing...
Devoted my "social media time" to it.

What a treat

Sent from my ANE-LX1 using Tapatalk

[JonW]

For the second time on this thread:

THE RIDE REPORT SECTION IS VISIBLE TO GUESTS

[/quote]

Not entirely true Jon.

Log out and go have a look at that alwyn report and tell us what you see. No pictures. I will save you the hassle - guests don't see attachments, hence if the poster loads photos directly on WD these are visible only to logged in members - guests don't see them. Same for for example attached GPS tracks. The only photos visible are the ones linkes from other sharing sites like flickr and such.

Look it is none of my business as these locked down state actually helps me move away from the forum, but unless you guys are going to reslove the chinesse attack and unlock the forum back to where it was before when only Jou Ma and Trading section is locked to guests, I think its just downhill for the forum. Unless one is logged in (I prefer not to be logged in all the time) they can see only very few sections and even in those they cannot see uploaded pictures so many threads don't make any sense.

Get it back to the original state and the traffic will improve. I suspect most people reading my RRs are guests, not members here.
[/quote]

@Xpat  this issue has now been addressed.

The situation now is that guests can see the Ride Reports section and all pictures posted in the section are visible to guests.

[Eisbein]

@Xpat  this issue has now been addressed.

The situation now is that guests can see the Ride Reports section and all pictures posted in the section are visible to guests.

Awesome !

Thanks for sorting it

[Xpat]

For the second time on this thread:

THE RIDE REPORT SECTION IS VISIBLE TO GUESTS

Not entirely true Jon.

Log out and go have a look at that alwyn report and tell us what you see. No pictures. I will save you the hassle - guests don't see attachments, hence if the poster loads photos directly on WD these are visible only to logged in members - guests don't see them. Same for for example attached GPS tracks. The only photos visible are the ones linkes from other sharing sites like flickr and such.

Look it is none of my business as these locked down state actually helps me move away from the forum, but unless you guys are going to reslove the chinesse attack and unlock the forum back to where it was before when only Jou Ma and Trading section is locked to guests, I think its just downhill for the forum. Unless one is logged in (I prefer not to be logged in all the time) they can see only very few sections and even in those they cannot see uploaded pictures so many threads don't make any sense.

Get it back to the original state and the traffic will improve. I suspect most people reading my RRs are guests, not members here.
[/quote]

@Xpat  this issue has now been addressed.

The situation now is that guests can see the Ride Reports section and all pictures posted in the section are visible to guests.
[/quote]

Yes, it works now (even in other sections like Zog's Yankee blog) - good job Jon & team 

That deals with the problem in RR and other open sections. I still feel though that having most of the other sections locked (apart from Jou ma and Trading) diminished traffic on the forum greatly. For example Planning a Ride section is one that may interest many guests and/or members like me who don't like to be logged in all the time. Not sure what is involved in getting forum back public as it was before, or even if there is intent to do so, but without it the forum has very circumcised feel that drives traffic away IMO.

And as someone who works around IT space, I appreciate the work that goes on behind the scene to keep this forum running and dealing with issues like this. 

[Xpat]

Trying not to show my ignorance here but surely they can have some kind of mechanism that automatically down sizes all the pics that come through. Nothing wrong with the size of the pics just looking at Losper and Xpats recent post. Stunning photos. I did a ride report a few years back and it took me forever to post. I've not done one since because of the mission.

CUZZY, the thing is I load those pictures into sharing site - in my case flickr and link them from there. And while I downsize them somehow otherwise it takes for ever to load to flickr, I load them there in high quality, when every photo is usually 3 - 5 MB big. And that is part of the reason why they look better than pictures just attached directly on WD, which have to be much more downsized and hence lose detail and probably color definition.

While I understand calls for easier posting to WD, especially for pictures I think people are missing the point. Loading pictures directly on WD means massive storage space and its maintenance is required. I think people underestimate how much work and money this cost (not just storing the pictures, but back-up and all that jazz). And this all on free forum. There is a reason why the biggest companies in the world like Google and Yahoo now limit their free storage and make people pay for going over the limit - hence I have to pay annual subscription now to flickr, when before for years I had free 1TB of storage. Same for Google. Same thing happened with photobucket - I don't think there is any sharing service left now that allows big storage (at least big enough to store my pictures for RR) for free.

So expect that free forum like WD will basically grant its users unlimited storage space is not realistic.

[Highsider]

I don’t know how Tapatalk works in terms of where pics are stored but it is so easy to upload from my phone, I usually select the 1024x768 resolution and off it goes...  I’ll try here to load an image 3 times at progressively bigger resolutions:

Above is small

Above is medium

Above is best


Above is how Tapatalk presents the options.

Very easy to use, only thing is if you use a device other than your phone, those images need to be sent to your phone first.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Xpat]

Tapatalk actually stores the images you upload on their servers (i.e. provide storage I talked about) and then just link them on WD (i.e. the same scenario as if I load them to flickr/googlephoto/any sharing service and then link them in my report myself).

And it costs - a lot -  so that is why they try to push you to buy subscription, or if not you get your tapatalk overrun by adverts. I.e. they have two revenue streams - adverts and subscriptions, none of which exist on WD. And it remains to be seen if Tapatalk model will workout - if not and they go bankrupt, kiss goodbye to all photos in your ride reports or elsewhere, same was as what happened with Photobucker photos year or two ago when they started charging for storage. Plenty of reports with Photobucket photos are now useless. Probably not a big deal if it is weekend quickie, but if you spent month scribling and photo processing your year long trip through Africa, not that good.

The bottom line is, there is no way to work around the hard problem of data storage (which photos and videos explode exponentially) without throwing a lot of money on it. Facebook may have that money (for the time being, I suspect they may go bust in 10 years time, with all your nice pictures and videos and memories), but everybody else including Google is already charging for storage over some limit. I don't see how WD can pay for it unless they go subscription and or advertisement (as advrider.com already went, and even so advrider will not host anybodies unlimited pictures).

[Highsider]

I’ve just checked the auto resize of Tapatalk.  The original image taken with my iPhone is 1,4Megs.  The “biggest” image above which I sent to my email and checked the size, is 314 KB.  So Tapatalk instantly resizes the images for you.
Now 314KB is not great but for the average point-and-shooter it should suffice. 
As far as ease of use goes, why can’t the forum be as simple as the Tapatalk interface?


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[Highsider]

I guess I’m still small fry in the upload Dept however I’ve never been asked to pay for Tapatalk not seen any ads YET. 
Personally I dont mind paying for storage, I use Dropbox pro or something, it’s just about the EASE of doing it that is in question.  If people could easily link pics on FB to a ride report for example, or to their Dropbox pics, or google docs, I’m sure a lot more RR would be forthcoming.


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[Xpat]

I guess I’m still small fry in the upload Dept however I’ve never been asked to pay for Tapatalk not seen any ads YET. 
Personally I dont mind paying for storage, I use Dropbox pro or something, it’s just about the EASE of doing it that is in question.  If people could easily link pics on FB to a ride report for example, or to their Dropbox pics, or google docs, I’m sure a lot more RR would be forthcoming.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Kevin, I understand the point about ease of posting pics (and I agree that one thing that can be done is on WD is automatic downsize function for image loaded directly on WD as attachment), but I'm afraid unless you have your owned controlled storage, its difficult to control how easy/difficult it is to link photos from each specific sharing site. It used to be much easier on Picasa where I started and is much more laborious now with flickr - but that is sharing site option, and WD cannot do much about it (only about stuff that is loaded directly on WD - and then the storage limitations apply).

I checked Tapatalk now (I don't use it much) - there are definitely adverts in between threads and between posts in threads, and if you click on remove you get sent to App store (I have iPhone) with option to buy Tapatalk Pro for R15 per month subscription or R80 for annual subscription. May be worth getting that, but as you said, while it is good for pictures it is useless as far as I'm concerned for text, so you just half way there.

And again, if Tapatalk doesn't work out business wise, your pictures are gone (That is true for any sharing site, but I kind of have higher hopes for Google /Yahoo to survive than Tapatalk).

I understand the comments about ease of posting and its impact on quantity of reports, but apart from automatic downsizing facility for photos uploaded directly to WD (which I don't use, as downsized photos do suffer in terms of quality) I don't see right now what else can be done, unless WD decides to charge for the storage via subscription, adverts.

But hey, I may be missing something. If there is anybody here with an idea about how to make RR posting easier without costing arm and leg, let's hear it. I post quite a lot of reports and they tend to be long so nobody would benefit more than me.

[Highsider]

I must have paid for it then, probably through the App Store.  Last thing about Tapatalk then I’ll shut up.
If you follow other forums it batches then neatly and makes a common inbox, making it super easy to access your forums and current discussions ON the Fly on your phone.
Ok that’s me done selling Tapatalk


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Nimmo]

Personally I feel a lot of guys write a report (not to gain anything from it) as a way of storing memories and having access to the photos etc.
I also think if 1500 people read it and you get 10 replies on something that took you hours to prepare it tends to make you ask why go through the effort.

If you enjoyed a report as a common courtesy at least say something. 

[Mev Vis Arend]

 

[Weedkiller - Adie]

We had a looonnngg discussion last night about ride reports.  The WHY, WHERE, .........

For me there are only ONE issue with posting pics directly in WD.  You can not structure your report nicely. -- there are no way to put text between pics. - that I know of. 

My take on the topic.
1. Resizing is so easy and quick from Windows with 'Image Resizer'.  I do the whole batch in one go.
2. I also use the resize step to sort the pics. (all resized pics that are posted will go into a 'Posted' folder.  This helps to keep sanity and duplications in control.
3. All non used pics are deleted from the 'Forum folder' and all masters are saved on external backup.
4. I even rename the DICIM folder on the phone every month for additional ease of management. (Android will create the folder again with the next picture taken.)  sometimes I even create a folder for a trip on the phone.
5. In my view there are no reason to upload a moerse hi-res picture for a tripreport - or any social media.  It is just counter productive. I size to 1336 x 768 and don't think the quality is an issue (for the intended purpose)
6. The video route 'detatch' me from any 'loss of host' issues and I can mail/give/send/... my report to anyone- even without social media etc.
7. The reason I post ?.

At this point in time (and I did mention it in the fred already) I will do a trip report (mostly video in my case)  to share it with other like minded souls that might not have the TIME/MONEY/SKILL/PERSEVERANCE to go and enjoy our country.

I've been involved in the filming of the two 'Look what your missing' seasons and can tell you, IT WAS A MASSIVE UNDERTAKING in both labour and finance.  BUT the feedback we received (fokol geld) from viewers that will never have the chance to do even a small trip to some unknown destination made it worthwhile.  (there also were those who just find fault -  this is also good as it was a constant gauge if the producers was 'on the right track'.

In my case I like to share MY experience (even about a well documented route) with anyone out there and hopefully the viewer close the screen on a more positive note about what is out there.  I hope I will never get so low to become one of the 'Whatsup guys, please click the LIKE button' brigade or let adverts ruin the experience for the viewer.

I actually don't mind if no-one comment (good or bad).  I do go to the 'analytics' page of my youtube channel and look at the 'hit rate' and how long the video was watched.  for me that is the REAL indication if the content was presented in a captivating way.  Some of my first video's had a watch time of less than 15%.  I knew that would be the case until I could put voice in to explain the where/when etc.  The last two got a MUCH higher watch duration which could be linked to the voice and I now have a standard intro and are working towards a 'theme'.  (I am still an absolute beginner in this whole process.)

Lastly.
I have so many things/hobbies etc that I basically only visit about 4 freds on the forum - and Trips/Reports is NOT one of them.  I probably go there once or twice per MONTH and than just scan through the pics. - only if the title draw my attention.  If I find them interesting only then will I read (a bit)  There are freds I've NEVER even visit on the forum. 

To sum:  WD is the only forum I joined.  My phone do not have any social media activity other than WatsAp.  I despise it when I am with a group and 80% of them are constantly on their phones.  I think it is an addiction.  I will rather sit for 30minutes and watch a goldfish swim in an empty bowl than listen/watch other people acting stupid or whatever.  But that is just me. 

WD 'management', keep up the good work.

Adie