Greetings, o wise and kindly administrators of this forum,

I was wondering if it's possible to email members directly via the forum? This was a feature of the old forum which I rather liked, because amongst other things it allowed you to sound out a person to see what kind of feedback they would like; and how public they would like it to be. Not to mention ensuring you have understood what the person is thinking of, before you comment.

In my mind's eye, I see (hear?) folks say "Well, it's only a picture, people should be comfortable with any feedback they get". I don't think that's always true. I can recall many justified murmurings of discontent from photographic colleges who entered the ANZANG competition with what should have been an award winning entry (even if this was just their and my opinion), only to find themselves shortlisted. Often the talk is some of the more curious selection decisions too, but we won't go into that here.

Even the most professional photographer can be sensitive about feedback. The point I'm making is that due to the internet nature of our group's interaction, communication can only be by one person at a time, never truly two way. That makes it difficult to judge how a person is taking their feedback. Often folk are simply seeking an affirmation of their work and nothing more. Facebook is full of such sites. Other folk definitely do want constructive feedback and would welcome quite strong criticism, so long as it's handled skillfully..

So the possibility of being able to do some private questioning before giving public comment isn't a bad thing at all. You are far more likely to achieve a good balance between criticism and encouragement that suits the needs of the recipient if you do..

Greetings, Les.

I've just had a delve into the administrator section of the forum module that we're using, and don't see this capability per se. However, if you click on the poster's name, their profile page will open, and their email address is available as a mailto: link. Not as perfect as possible, but pretty easy.

Rob