Are you ever just scrolling the Spotting category, expecting to see some photos taken by a user at an airport using a proper camera, but instead you scroll upon a trip report?
I am, and I’ve also had literally 0 DMs expressing the same issue, but fear not!
This is a humble request, on behalf of a rather large group of spotters, to add either:
An optional tag, i.e “Trip-Report” that can be added to the post, similar to what we have in Features and Events
I have nothing against trip reports, but I like to scroll through the Spotting category to see what pictures people have gone out and, well, spotted. Not what they’ve taken from the window of an aircraft whilst in flight. They don’t really fit the purpose of the subcategory, and don’t deserve to be thrown into the Views from the plane window thread.
Similar sentiment here. I never want to gatekeep spotting, as I think is clear by my plethora or guides and advice I’ve put out on the forum. However, while trip reports technically do fit under the “spotting” category by current definitions, it’s not something that I can actively engage with when I’m looking for people that may want advice. Trip reports, for the most part, are not spotting. The photos generally don’t show a large part of the aircraft, and are often cluttered with ground equipment, dirty windows (of course, not a fault of the posters - that’s just what happens when you’re inside the airport). Regardless, I think when a lot of people clicking on Spotting, we’re looking for curated pictures that were taken with the picture in mind first - not the experience. It’s perfectly fine to share those travel photos on the IFC, but I do agree it should be placed into a separate subcategory. Additionally, this could also help people who just want to read/look at trip reports instead of spotting photos.
I agree on this one. It doesn’t seem like trip reports belong in Spotting because it isn’t exactly spotting, but with the way IFC is set up, that’s where trip reports end up.
Thats actually a pretty good idea cuz all of those trip reports are real world, so they end up in the Spotting section, yet they are just trip reports and not ‘spotting’, so a new tab would be splendid to separate the actual planespotting posts and the irl trip reports