New Forum for Challenges ?

[bassrock]

The idea of PAD seems to be losing favour. I note that in the PAD metagallery there are less than 50 pictures showing, representing those people that have uploaded a new picture to their own PAD gallery in the last 24 hours. Yet this PAD forum is full of threads and posts related to the challenges, but most of the 'challenge pictures' are not showing in either the PAD metagallery or people's individual PAD galleries. So it seems to me that Challenges and PAD are two separate things now.

Don't get me wrong, I am not against the challenges, but the sheer number of challenge threads here seems to be suffocating any discussion and posting about PAD. So I suggest that a new "Challenge" forum could be started to avoid confusion with the original intent of PAD.

What do others think?

I would also be interested to know how many people are actively keeping a PAD gallery. I know life gets in the way sometimes, and posting every single day can be difficult. But how many people manage a 90% plus PAD upload rate ?

[laryl]

I've done pad monthly in the past and took a break. This year I'm doing a challenge to myself to do an entire year. So far I haven't missed a day. To me, challenges and pad have always been totally seperate things. I choose to do one or the other or both but they are seperate challenges so I don't understand the thought that you have that they are "now" seperate?? When I do a challenge, I put that photo in my 'newest images' gallery, some people put them in a wic challenge gallery etc.. you can only have ONE pad gallery selected, so of course if you do a weekend challenge and post it somewhere else, it won't show up in the stream of pad images, how could it?

I don't get the sense those other challenges are too numerous or suffocating the pad threads.. there just aren't enough threads for me to feel that way, and the challengs and pad discussions are easy to spot and select for me. That being said I LIKE having them all in the same place and wouldn't like having a seperate forum!

[kstuebin]

I think I understand what you're saying. The title of this forum is PAD Discussion yet the threads are 90% about challenges.

I sometimes do the challenges, sometimes don't. I do try to have a PAD every month. When I do a challenge I make it my PAD gallery and I'm sure others do too.

I don't know what would go into a separate PAD discussion forum. What would you post? It doesn't seem like there would be enough topics but I could be wrong. It's happened. :)

The reality is getting the people who run Pbase to implement something like this whether you think it's a good idea or not is just not going to happen soon.

It is interesting to find out that few people do post PADs though. I never actually have checked. Maybe they don't know how to make the their gallery a PAD gallery?

[lynnh]

I've kept a PaD since 2008 and monthly Challenges since 2010.

My PaD is not posted daily. I do take a picture (or more) every day, but normally I am about one day behind in posting them due to time constraints. And I do have my gallery ticked as being PaD.

I do not use the PaD as my monthly Challenge either. In fact, the Challenge preface usually says that the photos should be taken expressly for the Challenge, but not necessarily one per day. I take most of my monthly challenge shots on the weekend and then post during the week.

Not sure about how many Pbasers are Padding, but perhaps Pbase is only showing certain ones on the PaD gallery page?? Right now there are about 13 PaD posts for today and that seems very low. I think my friends posted more than that today.

[borisalex]

.....but the sheer number of challenge threads here seems to be suffocating any discussion and posting about PAD. So I suggest that a new "Challenge" forum could be started to avoid confusion with the original intent of PAD.

True!

I would like the idea of having a separate forum for challenges!

[lynnh]

I see 88 PaD galleries listed this morning, so I guess everyone got caught up from the weekend.

Anyway... I agree that a separate forum for Challenges would be a great addition.

[kstuebin]

PAD was broken.

http://form.pbase.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=46694

[1designguy]

Having been involved in PaDding since 2005 (with a few months off between a couple of PaD years), I have almost always tried to pair the monthly and weekly challenges with my personal PaD challenge. When I first decided to stick to a month long theme to push/challenge myself, I ended up with others who wanted to join in for the challenge of it. Back then then numbers were small and we often posted thumbnail links on our own daily images to the others joining in.

The Weekly Informal Challenge (originally the Thursday Challenge with Bev and Lee) started out from the PaD community as have most of the other on-going challenges. I guess that is how they ended up here and maybe to some extent are great tools to push others outside their comfort zones and the help move forward toward completing the PaD challenge. It not only makes it fun but also challenging (kind of a repeating word in this).

I understand what you're saying about needing another forum designation for the challenges but it would feel weird to many to look away from the go-to PaD Forum. I'm pretty sure most people still use their PaD images and galleries for these challenges. There has been some debate in the past about wanting separate galleries set up for each of the challenges. The opinions could go on-and-on as could this discussion.

[abrazo]

The idea of PAD seems to be losing favour. I note that in the PAD metagallery there are less than 50 pictures showing, representing those people that have uploaded a new picture to their own PAD gallery in the last 24 hours. Yet this PAD forum is full of threads and posts related to the challenges, but most of the 'challenge pictures' are not showing in either the PAD metagallery or people's individual PAD galleries. So it seems to me that Challenges and PAD are two separate things now.

Don't get me wrong, I am not against the challenges, but the sheer number of challenge threads here seems to be suffocating any discussion and posting about PAD. So I suggest that a new "Challenge" forum could be started to avoid confusion with the original intent of PAD.

What do others think?

I would also be interested to know how many people are actively keeping a PAD gallery. I know life gets in the way sometimes, and posting every single day can be difficult. But how many people manage a 90% plus PAD upload rate ?

I can understand what you mean about a separate forum though it might get confusing to start with as the PAD Discussion has been going for so long now and people know it's the place to look. I'm not against a change but have no strong opinion, sorry I'll sit on the fence for this one. PADing seems to be just as popular as when I started in June 2007 - (not missed a single day!) I rarely use the same photo for my PAD and for a challenge, though I did yesterday..tut tut!
Ann

[amoxtli]

I don't mind one way or another if there is a separate Challenge Forum. I am just curious what would then be posted in the PaD Forum. Besides the three permanent posts on the top of page one there are only two other posts on that page, the generic "Tell us about your newest non-PAD gallery" and "Pbase meet-up in South of France to come in 2012". On page two there are only two non-challenge posts "People asking for votes" and "Online Magazine Run by Longtime PBaser". The latter post goes back to 08 Aug 2011. So in over a year there were only four non-Challenge posts to the PaD Forum and only one had anything to do with PaD.

As for my PaD Gallery, I have been posting without missing a day since January 1, 2008. Sometimes I use my PaD Photo for the Weekly Challenge, sometimes not.

Best Wishes,

Walter