:: W4B photography's companion blog ::

:: Sunday, December 10, 2006 ::

NIPSA'd on Flickr.com



Takes a bit to get me steamed. Unless it comes to photos. My photos specifically... Over on my flickr site, NIPSA is a standard that the Yahoo folks that own Flickr enforce on a somewhat haphazard basis. It stands for Not In Public Site Area (or more sarcastically described by users as, "No Illustrations, Profanity or Smut Allowed." ) And if you look at the URL to the FAQ I just linked to you will see something damn ironic.

When your account is tagged as NIPSA, this limits the views by others as you have violated their community standards as described in their terms of service. I interpreted the TOS that full frontal was not good, but it appears that nipples are no go either. Another flickrer, Sol Lang, pointed this out to me the other night and I did some checking. Check his stuff out too. He is brillant. And add him as a friend if you want to see more than blackout spots.

I temporarily created a free account and checked some of the groups I have posted to. I did this to see if my shots were showing up to other people. Another way is to log in as someone else and do a search for tags you know you have used (say "w4b" or "Mike Wood"). It seems that some of my photos are never being seen in the groups I post them to as they are masked/cloaked.

And I am not the only one. looking at the rough counts of pics posted to some groups when logged in as me or logged in as 'not me' there were variations as much as several hundred photos. You can search for me and you get a "no photos by w4b photography are visible to you..." even the groups I administer like the London Ontario and Honda CRV groups. But others group members are seen. And these are not the nudes in question these are anything I have posted. Oh, and did I mention Flickr does this without warning? It is not as bad as Myspace simply deleting your account, but much more subtle and annoying.

So accordingly, I have set my nudes (the ones that show nipples) to friends only. I don't really want to do this as there is nothing at all pornographic about them and they are not graphic. And there appears to be much more real porn on there now and then (including genitalia and ejaculation in really crappy amateur fashion) which seems to be more fodder for the flickr cops but they seemed to zero in on me...

I emailed flickr and told them what I suspected, what I assumed was the issue and asked them to unflag my account. While I can appreciate terms of service, and not having minors see nipples ( because the kids might burst into flames or something - though I understand that doesn't happen too often), what I actually object to the lack of warning. And the underhanded way that this has been going on.

And it has possibly been going on for some time. I posted shots of Safire that got well over 15000 views each, dozens of comments and favourites-ing. Similar shots of others got good view counts (say over 1000 per photo), but no where near as much commentary. In retrospect I am sure that came from my friends and contacts and not those coming across my stuff accidentally. If Sol had not given me the heads up on this I may never have known what was going on.

If you are on flickr, and want to see some of the "friends only" shots, add me as a friend or send me a message. But if you have no pics, or net only pics, I won't add you.

flickr is a fantastic place to share pics, learn about photography and to meet other photographers and fans of photography. I don't think that my opinion of this has changed at all over the last three years. But it certainly has in terms of some aspects of how they administer their community.

I guess I am part of the flickr elite now. And we seem to have our own group too. :)

Watch for a new web site in the future. I am starting to work with someone who is going to cobble a site together for me. Back in the day, I might have done the coding myself, but I find that too picky and tedious. If I am going to spend time doing something that fussy, it will be the post production of the shots I do. :)

/end rant.
--
Mike Wood
w4b photography
London - Ontario - Canada
Carpe Diem

:: Mike Wood 23:10 [+] :: 1 comments
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1 Comments:

Pure Flickr BS I say!

By  Leanne, at 7:05 AM  

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