I love this site, but lately I’m noticing that I am not receiving much feedback at all on a lot of my uploads. I am very disappointed with this as at one time years ago I would recieve a lot of comments on most of my uploads and there would be good conversation going on but that just does not seem to happen anymore?

The last bunch of uploads I have put on in the last 24-48 hours have done very poor with little to no comments at all and are now mostly off the page. I would consider them uploads to be of interest to a lot of collectors here??

I know I am not alone in thinking this as other members here have also expressed concern? But Why is no one making the effort they used to once upon a time here?

Why is this? Am I just wasting my time uploading? Should I start referring to this site as Antisocialgallery.net LOL

I'm sorry to hear that. I've felt the same thing with a few of my older uploads, however that seemed to just be me being new to this site. I usually find that my posts of my American streetlights get much more attention than my posts of my Aussie lights or lights forgen used here, such as my GEC Z8420. After all, I think that the country with the most LG members is the USA. Another thing I've noticed is that there are hundreds of abandoned accounts here with members not logging in for years. Some have pictures though and therefore seem to not be able to be taken down. That's just an observation though.

Hello Danny,
I noticed the same. The problem in my opinion something I would describe as "a social negative feedback loop". In my opinion that is still the result of the destructive work of former administrator. This has been partly discussed in thread that lead to the "liberation" on May 28th last year.  Sadly that Thread has been purged and now we are not allowed to talk about it, likely in order to keep up some kind of facade of peace (idk really, in my opinion purges of dissent is what tyrants use).
However enough of poking at the rules... or maybe not.
See, we concluded that many members went away from for this Site or were purged out of this site. Now the question is who was especially effected. I noticed that most of the collectors displaced were the type of collector like you or me, who collect lamps for their historical value and are deeply interested in their history application and mode of operation. We take pride in that hobby and take it seriously.
For example: had i registered here and would have received a message when registering like "Welcome to the Madhouse" I would have been offended and never bothered with site. Why? Because being called mad for collecting lamps,  is something that is done by the uninterested people who seek to degrade you for a hobby they don't understand. However there is nothing mad in being interested in a technology is it electric lamps, cars or battleships, one is thankfully just way less popular.

However that led to a shift in the user group of this forum. Away from the described type above to a more generic type of lighting enthusiast who just genuine enjoy lighting.  These people are generally not interested in the kind of discussions you and me are interested in. This in conjunction with the loss of other more interested collectors leads to lower participation. This again amplifiers the lack of participation spiralling out  of control. This was further amplified when this site started to used like a facebook page in the early 2020s.

I think you could summarize it this way: LG has moved away from a collector dominated forum to an enthusiast dominated forum, due to general demographics and malice by a former admin.
Thats also the reason why I joined TLR and will focus on that Page. TLR is much more of a collector dominated forum, and most of the people with whom im interested in conversation are there as well.  At the moment I am only here fo the few interesting post that pop up far inbetween.  So I am also trapped in the spiral, and I think we are past the point of no return.

May you remember what happened here and prevent it from happening to TLR . I think there is a market for a collector dominated forum.

Best regards,

Alex

Yeah, it’s kind of hit or miss whether I get any feedback on my uploads, but honestly it’s always been that way.

I haven’t had much that’s very interesting to share lately. And most of what I would have to post would be the same old AEL, GE or Cooper stuff so there isn’t a lot to discuss about it. I got quite a few new fixtures later last year in the fall, but since about Thanksgiving up until now things have been pretty slow for me lighting wise.

I’ve also been going through a lot lately with my parents aging and just general boredom and depression in life, and the way the world is going, so I haven’t had a lot of energy or enthusiasm for lighting as I did say 2018-19 when I first got on this site and life was just better and more positive…

Plus a lot of lighting topics have already been discussed so many times there’s not much new for me to share in the gallery that hasn’t been seen or talked about tens of times.

Try not to worry about fewer comments than usual.  I think it comes and goes.  Heck, I don't get much comments after I have uploads some pictures here.  Time will come when the comments will be made

Comparing frequency of comments on my gallery to earlier last year, there is a noticeable decline. The lamps in the pictures are just as interesting as those I posted previously, yet comments are less.

There’s been a decline in comments for well over a year I remember a time when I’d upload and every photo in like an upload of 10 would get a comment or two within a few hours. Activity here definitely has gone down a lot in the last few years. But hopefully the damage that was done will repair in time

Be aware that forums and subject-specific websites are a thing of the 2000s. This is one of the few holdouts still surviving well past the time when forums initially started dieing off.

There are a few big forums left that survive due to large enough numbers of active users, but facebook groups took over the social and sharing aspect in the late 2000s from many of the sub-100 active user ones, and private discord and telegram groups in turn took over from facebook (at least for the droves of people who are very uncomfortable with the political direction Meta has been choosing for its platforms in the past couple of years).

So while you might want to blame it on moderation, people moving from dedicated sites to universal platforms is also just a 'natural' phenomenon on the internet.

If you want more people, you'll have to invite them. Anyone younger than about 30 is incredibly unlikely to search for a forum about a subject, but you need new people to balance out the natural outflow of people. People who have been members for a decade or so can eventually lose interest, find a different hobby or die (happens on the regular in the old radio collector's world). If you don't actively start acquiring members, interaction will dwindle.

It's up to the admins and mods to decide if they want to make a plan to attract new people. I reckon starting a tiktok channel with clips of worthwhile lamp-related videos, with a link to the forum and gallery, could be a start. But don't be demotivated if you need 100 views to get 1 active user.

I think forums are still the superior way to disseminate information. Easily indexed by a search engine, well sorted by category, and not tainted by popularity-based algorhythms. It always hurts when i look for technical information and the only things i find, are 2005-2012 era forum posts with loads of dead photobucket or imgur image links.

I love this site, but lately I’m noticing that I am not receiving much feedback at all on a lot of my uploads. I am very disappointed with this as at one time years ago I would recieve a lot of comments on most of my uploads and there would be good conversation going on but that just does not seem to happen anymore?

The last bunch of uploads I have put on in the last 24-48 hours have done very poor with little to no comments at all and are now mostly off the page. I would consider them uploads to be of interest to a lot of collectors here??

I know I am not alone in thinking this as other members here have also expressed concern? But Why is no one making the effort they used to once upon a time here?

Why is this? Am I just wasting my time uploading? Should I start referring to this site as Antisocialgallery.net LOL

Hello Danny.
Alex's statement pretty much sums up my opinion.
However, I would also like to point out an aspect that is perhaps not considered enough in my opinion: users are not generally interested in all areas of lamps and luminaires.

Before I point the finger at other users, I will first point to my own personal view. For example, I am only interested in small areas of lamps, namely medium-pressure and high-pressure mercury vapor lamps, as well as low-pressure sodium lamps. These two areas interest me internationally.

Simply put, this means that I am not interested in MH lamps, HPS lamps (I only have very few types in my collection), fluorescent tubes and incandescent lamps, and certainly not LEDs.

These are my very personal preferences, so I would hardly write a comment on such lamps. This has nothing to do with the people who make these uploads.
I write comments on lamps that interest me and am happy to add a small addition if I have some waste paper with information about them.

I sometimes experience this non-commenting myself with my uploads. It's acceptable to me if people are NOT interested in MV lamps from Germany or Europe, for example. But that won't stop me from uploading more pictures. I have some uploads that are still “virgin” for quite some time. Yes, that's the way it is.
So: just keep going on ...

reckon starting a tiktok channel with clips of worthwhile lamp-related videos, with a link to the forum and gallery, could be a start.


Well you can also immediately euthanise the site... I generally think that it is consensus that this should remain a forum and not become anything close to tik tok etc (see my first post)

I think TikTok is banned in the US? Plus I am not on there

Maybe it would help opening (at least a part) of your gallery to public instead of only logged-in members for more views and then more comments.

You’re possibly right there. Actually. I will do that

I suppose several reasons, different users are interested in different aspects of lighting. For example some are interested in the technical aspect of lighting, some more in the historical aspect and some are interested because of nostalgia of what was in use in the past. Furthering this, some people are only interested in lighting from their locale, some only in luminaires, some only in lamps, and some only specific lamp types such as HPS, MV, fluorescent, incandescent, etc. Because of this, I think some uploads will only attract comments for a certain subset of the userbase. 

And newer communities on social media sites, eg Facebook but even Reddit and Discord have caused a decline in the popularity of forums over the last 15 years. When you think about it, the barrier to entry is a bit higher to participate here for a outsider as you have to make a account. On social media communities you probably already have an account so it's a lot easier to just dive into a community.

And sometimes the site just seems a bit less busy from time to time.

I was thinking that too, as some users are more drawn to lamps or fixtures of certain countries (often the native one) so that may limit commenting as well, while others are interested in lighting of all parts of the world.