Peter Chant wrote:

I don't agree with the concept of commercial hosting /
sponsorship etc. There is nothing wrong with the existing
PBASE hosting, or alternatively shifting to Flickr or one of
the other free hosting sites. Actually, flickr might be a
good place to host - we could create an SI group, then

What advantage does that offer over pbase?
There is nothing wrong with PBase, I'm only suggesting
Flickr because it has a slightly different workflow which
could encourage better participation. A group can be
created, then interested people can join that group. The
group has a photo-pool, that members of the group can add to.
With Pbase, contributors have to format their image, then
email it to an administrator (currently Jim) who has to take
the time to upload them etc.
With Flickr, you upload to the site yourself (no special
formatting needed, flickr takes care of reducing it to a
web-only size). Once you have it on your flickr page, you
simply link the photo to the Pool(s) that you want it to
appear on.
An example:
my flickr page is www.flickr.com/photos/gdaj
one of the groups I am a member of is Main Range National
Park. The photo pool for this group is:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/428207@N22/pool/
You will notice that in the group pool there are photos from
myself and quite a few others.
As I said - PBase seems to be working, but I'm just
suggesting an alternative that would reduce the admin-load,
and potentially make it easier to contribute. I know there
are a few contributors who already use flickr. For those
that don't, it is free to upload 100MB/month, and very easy
to use. For anyone who is using an alias and wants to retain
their alias rather than their real name, it is also very
simple to create an additional account for that.


The only drama I can see with using flickr would be the risk
of people using that forum for discussion rather than rpe35.
Potentially it could reduce the signal in this group and let
the noise take over.

I have made my killfile much more restrictive. I know there are some good
posts lost but overall it has made a huge difference - a lot more signal
than noise.
I haven't been able to work out how to use filtering in
thunderbird. seems to come in phases - the S/N of the group
varies from day to day and week to week.

Pete