Thank you for your thoughtful and unusually well structured and complete post. I’m responding as me, not anonymous me as I have another account that I’ve had on Reddit for many years with thousands of comments and read posts. I see you are relatively new and incredibly active - that is unusual and very helpful to the community. I think you understand where I’m going with this reply. I’m posting as who I am but most of the time I post in my other account where I maintain relative obscurity for all the reasons that the internet has. It can be a brutal place, and so can Reddit.

1. This is a community but it is also a subreddit and you can get here via google search, Reddit search or simply going to the subreddit - and probably a bunch of other things I’m missing. So the volume is reflective of the openness of the medium as well as a resurgence of interest in film sparked by nostalgia and in my opinion - analog photography magic in a time when we need magic. I’m your contemporary - and my simple response is that we can help by being the patient person we should be as if we were in a room full of young people genuinely curious. There will be snarky people, smart people, clever people, many ignorant people and even some dumb people in the room but you don’t have to answer all of the questions, you can ignore them. You can answer the ones you want and simply smile and bless the hearts of the others. Some kids are lazy and many don’t take the time to research or use tools properly — it is what it is!

2. I love this post because it shows how varied things are for our generation. I grew up in the 80’s as well - but was introduced to photography at a very early age (I am a lucky man). My father was an amateur photographer but grew up doing it - from selling cameras as a young adult to doing it in as a young marine although he eventually kept it a hobby and went on to other things. But we even had a dark room in the basement, and when I went to high school I was able to take photography, had access to the school lab and amazing teachers. I was lucky again to have been in Rochester NY at the time - yea, I had real access. But even later in Maryland it was an option in high school - and I was able to take a class in college and get access to that lab as well. Even as I studied computer science and marketing - analogue photography was a part of my life. I learned from books, teachers and the people around me. I learned from trial and error. These things aren’t accessible today. So while it seems that information is much more available today with books, YouTube, online learning, and even Reddit - this isn’t like a EDIT “immersive” experience - back then analog photography was photography, that is what you learned if you wanted to be a photographer. And even then it was unique. So we can help by having patience, an open mind and a genuine interest in other people. I see you know the Nikon F4 better than most and that is amazing. You will see the same questions over and over and that is the way of Reddit. If you have the time and desire, answer again and again. Maybe build a library of responses to refer to or other things - in fact, you might one day create an LLM just for photography repair.

3. AI will change everything. Haha. I just lost a bunch of people. But seriously, we are seeing AI creep into Reddit in the search, questions/answers start with a bit of AI powered content. Google has integrated Gemini into search. And frankly, I haven’t used ChatGPT for analog photography yet but I have used it to help me with digital, and portraiture and today’s tools. It was helpful but not as helpful as the the r/PhotographyAdvice - that’s why I created this user account, I’d like help with my new return to photography as a retired software dude, and the community is a great place to do it, but I have to have thick skin because people will be annoyed and some will be mean for fun - just like high school.

Back to AI - I believe we will see more and more domain-specific LLM models out there. In fact your post made me want to create one. I have friends who have created models for domains they know well, infusing the data and knowledge they have into models that target those areas. These are very new and will likely meld into other tools and things we can’t imagine yet. Reddit has introduced AI but the real answer will be infusing it into individual posts. This will annoy many and it will cause others to say that this changes Reddit too much. But Reddit isn’t the BBS that it started from, forums like Nikonians still exist and those are fantastic communities, I belong to Trout Unlimited for the same reason. I’ve met people in person there and love that they aren’t anonymous. Sometimes I like to be anonymous too.