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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