LOL!!!  My simple suggestions sure have taken on a new line of discussion with a life of its' own. With that in mind, let me also ramble a bit, lol.  I did not think beyond submitting them to the photography forum because they were just casual suggestions and not earth shattering by any stretch of the imagination and this is the only forum I have posted in. I thought the first of them would help me and others gauge more accurately the total views of an individual posting as compared to the actual number of people who were looking at the specific gallery where it was posted instead of to the total number of people who were visiting the site. I have often wondered how many of the 1700 or so visiters at any given time were actually looking at the photo gallery.

Although some have expressed less than enthusiastic opinions concerning their place in the photography gallery, I am a fan of gifs. On occassion they add a great touch to an image or they help the image be more effective. I got no problems with them at all. In fact I was hoping to help prevent myself and others  (especially those using a slow dial-up connection to the internet) from missing the few that do get posted.

I am also a fan of digital editing and that too seems to be considered  as an unwelcome stepchild by hard core photographers. That is also ok by me. It doesn't bother me a bit that many film photographers use filters, special lens, darkroom techniques, or whatever  experimental process they want to create an image.

I have a rather simplistic approach to  all of it. I consider Photography to be an art form. If the art is primarily created from a photo(s) then as far as I am concerned, it is a candidate for the photography gallery regardless if it film or digital or if it has been edited, animated, filtered, layered, blended or had some other experimental process applied.

Of course it should be no secret that I am not a purist when it comes to photography. I realize that many here are and that is ok by me. I realize certain criteria must be set in place to prevent total mayhem but hard, fast, rigid interpretations or catagorizations of art are destined to be more of a deterent than an aid as far as I can see.

As to forums and what they should and should not include, that also seems to be open to more input and participation if the subject matters are not restricted. Having said that, let me hasten to add that I definitely am in favor of streamlining the forum as much as possible. If that involves things such as moving the challenge postings to the overall standard site challenge format or combining multiple individual postings into a single thread (i.e. -  all contest/challenge submittions to one thread) etc., then so be it and gladly so; but as been stated previously, it is no big problem to scroll thru the many to find the few one is interested in (even with a slow internet connection, lol).

Now I feel like I have commented on someone else's thread, lol.

Lee