Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Reply to This group has been shut down (was: this group is on indefinite hiatus)

Caffeination / Joseph Dunphy posted a reply:






As if I needed any help in feeling more comfortable with my decisions ... guess what? Somebody deleted the update microblog for this group on Tumblr. At the moment, I can't get into my email to find out why that was done, but I have a suspicion. Some of you guys filed copyright complaints, didn't you?

If so, that's classy. Join a group where you're told that content in the pool will be sent to the update microblogs, agree to this, and then complain to a provider about the fact that an automatic posting of which you were informed and to which you agreed took place after you chose to post in a location from which that automatic posting occurs. You trigger machinery that you've been told is there, and then complain that it went off.

If this is what happened, that's it. No more chances. What kind of game playing, pettifogging shitheel would pull a stunt like that? If this isn't what happened and Yahoo just did that because ... yay! ... they're busy being Yahoo and screwing stuff up, then that just becomes a different (but equally good) reason for me to stop bothering, doesn't it?

Yes. Either that, I think that this group is locked down for good. Either way, my life is being made miserable by people who enjoy being bastards. Why should I volunteer more of my time just to experience more of that?








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Monday, November 2, 2015

Reply to This group is on indefinite hiatus

Caffeination / Joseph Dunphy posted a reply:






I could go through the various ways in which you guys have gone out of your way to be douchebags. There was the member who kept submitting portrait shots promoting her line of avatar fashions, even though there is a posted rule against the posting of portrait or fashion shots, and for a very good reason: they're boring. But there are even better reasons: because it's my group and I said so, and you all agreed to respect my wishes in this matter when you joined the group, so one has to ask, are you as good as your word?

Once again, somebody who was 100% in the wrong got a mouth on her, and got her sorry ass banned as a result. There should no surprises in this: if you were a guest in somebody's home and you abused the host, would you expect to get to stay? If your answer to that question is "yes", were you raised by wolves? Who thinks like that? The answer would seem to be "most of the membership of this group", because as some of you will remember after this girl was thrown out of her (and deservedly so) the rest of you staged a little mutiny and started submitting nothing other than portrait and fashion shots, with the thought of putting me in my place, I guess?

Again, I had to ask, why am I bothering to help these people?






The latest issue doesn't involve any rules of the group being broken, but it does reflect a growing problem at Flickr: mass crossposting of images. Almost all of the several dozen images in the queue this morning are already in over a hundred groups, apiece, so I find that I'm being asked by the members to take my time to approve images that provide little added value to the groups in which they appear, because they are the sort of content that visitors have seen again and again. My time as a volunteer is not being valued and my efforts are not being respected by those on whose behalf I have offered them. The group has failed to function as a community, the discussion section having been shut down after I discovered that the only new topics being posted came from mass crossposting assholes who wanted to post abuse because they were told that they couldn't do just whatever the Hell they felt like.

There are other things I could mention, but a beautiful autumn day (and a cup of tea) is waiting outside for me as I write this, and most of those are far more interesting than the basic lack of civility that I've seen out of most of you, and the failure of socialization that this group keeps putting on display. I don't need this shit and I'm out of here.

Maybe I will come back in a few months, reopen the pool for submissions and see if you guys have since developed an interest in the possibility of acting like human beings as opposed to ... I don't know, rabid baboons? Probably, I won't. Some of you know what I am in real life, when the Internet is not involved, and one thing I've never been short on is things to do with my time. My social life might not be everything I'd like it to be (whose is, really), but when I turn off the computer, it is a Hell of a lot better than this shit, that's for sure.

The Internet consumes my time and my good spirits, and I really don't see what it is giving me in return that I really should want to hold onto. If something occurs to me, maybe I'll give you guys another chance, but I can't imagine what that would be, so for the duration I am done promoting your work. Go find yourself another sucker to abuse.

One other thing - this is not baseball. I don't have to give you guys three strikes before you're out. If I do give you another chance and you make me regret that, I'm not going to try to win your over and I'm not going to wait for you to come around. I'm going to lock this group down for good, and we'll be done.








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This group is on indefinite hiatus

Caffeination / Joseph Dunphy posted a new topic:






Indefinite doesn't necessarily mean permanent, but it can. Whether it will or not is up to you.

Lately, you guys have been a problem. While running this group was fun in the beginning, over the years this group has become a far richer source of drama than of art, as one by one the more active members of the group developed their own cases of special snowflake syndrome, deciding that the rules did not apply to them.

Even though there is a companion group set up for 18+ images, linked to from the main page for this group, I still have people submitting 18+ images to this all ages group. I've repeatedly explained to people why this is a problem: because Yahoo! Flickr's nudity policies have already been spelled out by company employees in the Help forum. As far as the company is concerned, naked art is the same thing as naked people, no matter how stylized the nudity. This is literally true: we're not allowed to show pictures of unclothed manikins to the general public.

If one wishes to argue that this company policy is insane, one will get no argument from me. This very point was raised in the Help forum when the policy was spelled out, and when another user asked the employee "what happened to common sense" the employee responded in a very postmodern sort of way, asking

"what is common sense?"

instantly putting an end to any sort of notion that we were going to be able to reason with the staff on this point. Not that most of us thought we'd be able to, in the first place. The whole thing was bizarrely prudish by almost anybody's standards, and made even more bizarre by the fact of where it was that Flickr was headquartered: the san Francisco Bay area, home to a major city (San Francisco) where (until a few years ago) one could walk down the street stark naked without breaking a single. One could hardly attribute the company's seeming prudishness to the quirks of its local culture.

But asinine or not, company policies have to be enforced. We don't get a choice in the matter, as admins. As others have complained in the Help forum, groups have been shut down because of the behavior of "one or two members" and a group that is deleted does nobody any good. I am not a company employee, and neither are almost any of the other admins. We're just other users of Flickr who have volunteered our time to get these communities going. Let's emphasize that: we don't get paid. So where, might I ask, do so many of our members get the idea that we will or should take crap out of them, in the course of running those groups?

I've explained the nudity policy problem to member after member, and seen nothing but abuse in reply, from brave, brave users who wouldn't dream of saying a word to the company staff about the company's policies, but will attack the volunteers who bring them the bad news about what the company has done. This is real cowardice, and it really pisses me off. I think that's the idea. I'm being repaid for the volunteering of my time by being trolled by those on whose behalf I've volunteered it.

Thanks, guys. That warmed my heart. Really, it did.

I still remember the last airhead who had the policy explained to her, and responded by reading from a script. "Who is offended by this sort of content", she asked me in a great show of self-satisfaction. This was neither here nor there, as I do not put freedom of expression up to a popular vote, I merely respond to TOS (Terms of Service) issues, but the smug condescension continued until the ban hammer got deservedly dropped on yet another obnoxious member and I was left wondering exactly why I was bothering to promote your work, at all.

I certainly was not seeing any appreciation.








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Friday, October 30, 2015

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Willow's Oasis

Tripp Nitely has added a photo to the pool:

Willow's Oasis

Sunlight seeps through the trees casting a magical glow over Willow's Oasis, one of the many wonderful sites at Hestium, a truly beautiful and fascinating place to visit.



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A House On the Cliff's Edge

Rose (aka Rosy Highwater) has added a photo to the pool:

A House On the Cliff's Edge

Taken at: .::Vivaldi::.

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