Screenshot Accounts 'Delisted' on Flickr
An anonymous reader writes "Flickr and Second Life fans seem to have collided head-on over a little known policy on Flickr that 'delists' an account from public areas, including search, when more than half of your content is non-photographic in nature. Flickr stated that most people searching the site are looking for photographic content so the restriction is in place merely to keep the site focused on its original intent. From the article: 'As a result, many screenshots on Flickr are AWOL — at least as far as the general public is concerned. That's angering and confusing some of the people who carefully stage scenes in the popular virtual world and religiously post the results online.'"
Flickr is all about photographs, so it makes sense that that's what they focus on. If you need a place to post SL screen shots, there's still deviantart, renderosity, and myspace. There are quite a few options other than just flickr.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Is true that these digital representations are not real photography but how long until you cant diferentiate from a real scene and one generated on a virtual world.
Maybe Flickr should start thinking about having 2 sections :
Real photography
Virtual photography
The best test environment is production. - Me
chrome://browser/content/browser.xul
Instead of posting an electronic "screenshot," take an actual photograph of a computer screen... with some desk clutter like a soda can or a yellow Post-It note in the frame.
Heck, you could probably take a single photo like that and use an image editor to paste the screenshot into the genuine screen image. If television ads can get away with "picture simulated," why not Flickr users?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
They are simply delisted. Nobody WANTS to search for your crappy 'I'm so awesome' screenshots. All of your stuff can still be accessed, just not by people who don't care.
Big freaking deal.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
And what pray tell, do Flickrs policies and actions have any relevance to my rights online or any rights offline?!!!
If you dont like Flickrs actions, dont use them anymore. This isnt a holy violation of your rights or anything else.
If you're really that obsessed with having people look at your uninteresting life, why not go and get one. Then take pictures of it. Sheesh.
Meta will eat itself
It doesn't seem like it would be too terribly difficult to circumvent the block.
However, Ito's images do show up in the Flickr group pools for his guild, We Know, and for World of Warcraft, because more than half of the images in his account are traditional photographs. In Ito's Flickr account, images he has taken of Helsinki, Finland, and Vancouver, British Columbia, show up beside an image of guild members setting out for a hike in World of Warcraft.
Just upload a crap load of pictures, yours or ones you find randomly on the `net, and then add all the screenshots you wish.
They're pissing off members and potentially generating monumental amounts of useless data on their servers.
Instead of an "on | off" switch for the entire account they need to have it be selective per image. But good luck writing effective code for that.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
You can't create something effective that is everything to everyone. It really is best to carve out your niche and stay in it. This is exactly what Fliky is doing and it is very wise. To do otherwise will only cause problems in the long run for both users and advertisers paying Flikr.
Scott
Slashdot.. where people join together in deliberate ignorance.
This guy's the limit!
This could be a useful slashdot section, but we keep getting these stories that don't have anything to do with 'rights' at all, much less the reader's rights... Somtimes even the online part is a stretch.
So, some website actually implemented their policy, and some self-important people with a misguided sense of propriety got pissed about it. News for Nerds? Absolutely! Your rights online? Not a chance.
This has to be one of the most ridiculous misapplications of this topic that I've ever seen.
1. You have no right, natural, God-given or otherwise, to have your content hosted on Flickr.
2. The accounts have not been deleted, they have just been delisted. That means that they won't show up in a search.
3. As I understand it, you can still provide people with direct links to the screenshots.
Please, help me out here - in what way is this a YRO issue?
It's official. Most of you are morons.
After all, is there any significant difference between capturing a scene from the real world and capturing a scene from a fictional world?
Yes, yes there are significant differences. You see, most pictures taken of virtual worlds are boring, have little artistic merit, and are of no interest to anyone outside the immediate circle of the person taking them, whereas most real life pictures are... Oh, wait...
No, no difference.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Delisted not deleted. Still taking up file space, just not now listed. Apparently flicker has a target audience, and random crap from WoW in the listing is not what the target audience wants.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
The only thing you can't do with screenshots is search for them on flickr's site.
You can still link to them from other sites, use them in [img] tags on websites, etc.
You just can't use flickr's search box to find them.
So... what's the big deal? Does anyone really search flickr for screenshots?
Americans? How do we know these people bitching are American's? nice bias.