Photo.net, the site!

<p>I happen to agree with one of Pnina's suggestion and not with the other ! but that is not the problem here, as far as I understand Pnina.<br>

The problem is that we all have had experiences with suggesting something in view of further improving Photonet, and never (almost never, to be fair) we got a feedback from those in charge. Personally, I find it rude.<br>

It is not difficult, as a first step to send an automatic acknowledgment of having received the suggestion. Other sites do that systematically. It is neither very burdensome to group people who have suggested changes in a specific field and informing them when a decision has been taken - and why not ?- thanking them for their proposals. Not doing it, as it mostly has been the rule in Photonet is not optimal to the functioning of the site. Some would call it arrogance.</p>

<p>Fact is, quite often threads are started about improvements and we want to see a discussion around the topic by the community. Getting multiple viewpoints on a suggestion for improvement is ideal from our perspective. BTW - It is not our intent to be rude or arrogant, but I'm happy to answer any questions you might have - you can email me directly or send an internal message. I believe that by and large we are a pretty accessible. We're much more inclined to reply to polite users than ones that are generally rude though....its just human nature. </p>

<p>Pnina has never, ever been rude, Glenn ! We know here maybe better than you.<br>

Me neither, by the way. Tuff, maybe. Rude, never.</p>

<p>Glenn,<br>

I'm afraid I somewhat disagree with your previous post and the "general meaning" I take from it.</p>

<p>In this very Forum, here; <a href="/site-help-forum/00c2U7">http://www.photo.net/site-help-forum/00c2U7</a> I tried to point out some possible site "glitches/problems" and for the most part was simply ignored!</p>

<p>15 Days to receive "half a response!" And, part of the thread was never or, will ever be responded to! Seems somewhat arrogant in my book!</p>

<p>Was I rude?</p>

 

<p>Anders,</p>

<p>Thanks for your words, as I think you really know .!</p>

<p>Please Guys 'n Girls, let's call this <strong>Game, Set and Match </strong>with no winners. The thread has wandered so far away from the original post, that it is no longer interesting.</p>

<p>Time to find something new to chirp about............... !<br>

Regards</p>

<p>Grayham, you are totally lost about what is going on here. There is not competition and no searching for winners or even losers. Just an exchange of viewpoints and and useful information. If you are not interested, read or write something else elsewhere. There are no <em>Guys 'n girls</em> around either, by the way. <br>

But you are right we have been around the subject, by now, if Apurva agrees, that is.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>"Your moderator Lex knows that I have spent hours making carefully thought out posts for beginners and others for whom my advice might be welcome. Yet he dismisses me out of hand in this very thread (and you do too) trying to categorize me as a mere rabble-rouser. He intended to insult me, to silence me and to drive me off. That is clear to anyone reading his response to my post. And this is the person you to whom you are entrusting the forums."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Rick, there must be a misunderstanding. This is my first post to this thread. As far as I can recall we've never had any issues.</p>

<p>Lex, I suspect that Rick was referring to a comment made by Jeff Spirer, who often drops by threads to tell contributors that they should go elsewhere, which is exactly what Jeff did in the case of this thread.<br>

Jeff's comment to Rick.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>I would suggest that there are far better places to spend your time.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Over time, repeatedly telling your customers to shop elsewhere can only lead to them doing precisely that.</p>

<p> </p>

Oh, well... I've written enough stuff myself that annoys folks, I wondered

whether I'd done so here and just forgot about it. Ask me about the

ratings system. I'm usually good for an annoying comment about that

topic.

<p>Gordon is correct Lex. I apologize. You and I have never locked horns before. In fact I always find your comments thoughtful and interesting. I misspoke. </p>

<blockquote>

<p><a href="/photodb/user?user_id=5149289">Grayham Allott</a> <a href="/member-status-icons"><img title="Subscriber" src="/v3graphics/member-status-icons/sub5.gif" alt="" /></a>, Oct 23, 2013; 10:03 a.m. Please Guys 'n Girls, let's call this <strong>Game, Set and Match </strong>with no winners. The thread has wandered so far away from the original post, that it is no longer interesting</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Indeed!</p>

 

<p>Hi Anders.........<br>

I'm sorry that the subtlety of my comment went over your head. I will be more bold next time.</p>

<p>Don't bother, Grayham.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>O/P: "Over the years I believe PN members have become more sedate. What I perceive now is that PN is still an excellent medium when forum discussions are concerned. One can still get an exciting discussion on photography subjects. Some exciting heated discussions too. <br /> But when it comes to pictures themselves, I feel the members' response is quite cold. A fairly good picture by any standards gets far fewer comments and clicks compared with other net forums. My recent pictures of California, Arizona and Utah have been languishing in my portfolio without much notice while the same ones have attracted thousands of clicks- in one case 30,000 plus- and innumerable comments on other forums."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I am new, so my perspective is accordingly based on shorter exposure to the site.<br>

As to the idea of <em>too few critiques</em>. This is my opinion:</p>

<p>1. The internet world is just jammed with too many photos. A stream turned into a river, which became a torrent, which is now a flood of Biblical proportions. So many sites filled with so many millions of photographs that it's now like asking fish to comment on water. The notion you can just grab 100 random, undifferentiated photos, and make a ribbon of images located somewhere on a web page for people to go critique is naive in the presence of the billions of images available on easily searchable sites. Marketing and technology problem.</p>

<p>2. Community or Business? - all sides are confused. We see many calling this a 'community.' But it is in fact a 'business.' Why is this important? Members want to act like it is a community, but that is in conflict with management, which wants to operate (of course) as a business. The two are incompatible ideas. Communities have some degree of self-governance, democratic principle and ownership of outcome. That's not the model here, however, where management (mods and others) dictate autocratically what will happen, what can be said, and what the goals are - just like any business. For example, just read Moderator Jeff's posts in this thread. Does that sound like a community? No, of course not. Sounds like a 'boss', doesn't it?</p>

<p>This tension, or major misunderstanding, confuses the participants. They're asking, "Do I want to invest heavily in an autocratic system where I am bossed around like that?" Some do, some don't. You don't see Amazon confusing it's customers this way. But for some reason these special interest forums continually put up this pretense of community. Serious critiquing takes the formation of real interest groups that invest in the kind of real (authentic) human relations that are discouraged and actually despised here. What the mods insist on is a kind of 'Stepford World' of happy, smiley-faced, tame participants. e.g. "It's ugly" is an unacceptable (and deleted!) critique. You can't possibly get meaningful critique of art under those conditions.</p>

<p>3. The site is clunky, and there is just no better word to describe it.</p>

Funny how the autocratic mods who force everyone to be happy haven't deleted the screen after screen after screen

after screen full of criticism of the site and insults directed at the mods and admins that youve posted in the past couple

of days. But hey, why let an obvious contradiction of your claims get in the way of a good rant?

<p>Indeed. We seem to be a bunch of petty dictators, inflicting our ideas on others, punishing those that get out of line, all along with lining our pockets with wads of cash. We're clearly trying to create "Stepford Users" where everyone is obedient to the whims of the moderators.</p>

<p>And yes, there are too many photos being taken and Photo.net is clearly contributing to the problem. We should be discouraging people from taking pictures....but then again, maybe that's exactly what we are doing by deliberately making the site so clunky. Damn, you've uncovered our secret motive. Next you'll probably find the subliminal advertising that brainwashes unhappy readers into staying on a site they hate and serves no useful purpose other than a focus and outlet for their general disenchantment with life.</p>

<p>The fix is obvious. Get rid of the gallery and critiques, so we aren't contributing to the glut of photographs being taken today and remove all moderation so that users can say exactly whatever they want to in whatever way they want to. And get rid of the advertising so photo.net is no longer a business. I'll propose that out our next secret meeting, but don't get your hopes up...</p>

<p>@ m stephen - does a healthy community have laws? This one does and it comes in the form of our terms of use that community members agree to when they sign up. If they violate those laws/rules then someone must enforce them otherwise you are on the road to anarchy. Does a community have a budget to pave the roads, build new ones, pay the town administrators and police...and etc. etc. The answer is yes and so does this community. Servers, designers, hosting, webmasters...all cost money. Without money there would be no site, there would be no communities online or in your own home town. <br>

Your analogy of Stepford World is I believe inaccurate as we see many discussions get heated, we administer the site according to the terms of use we all agree to when we use the site. Are we perfect, no. Is anyone perfect, no. The "its ugly" comment has been explained in previous threads however I will address it here...as it was not offered with any form of constructive criticism and was done in a tone that we felt should not be welcome here if you are looking to build a community of people that offer “civil discussions and working to provide positive perspectives”.<br>

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community</a></p>

<p>PS. I prefer to call Photo.net retro...not clunky. Don't worry 2.0 is on the way...the costly designers and programmers are ringing up a huge bill which will pay with....ummmm I don't know....money.</p>

<p>" road to anarchy" If that isn't already the name of a band, it should be.</p>

<p>Well, you know, if you're not happy here, there are other sites you can run to. Oh, wait.....it looks like they have problems, too:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.sheenasig.com/">http://www.sheenasig.com/</a></p>

<p>(Ironically, photosig.com has been down for the last three days (500 Servlet Exception error.))</p>

<p>Oh, well, relax and enjoy the ride... ;-)</p>

<p>I thought we were more of an <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAaWvVFERVA">anarcho-syndicalist collective</a>?</p>

<p>Hmm, "Road to Hell" is an album, a song and a movie. "Road to Anarchy" is none of these - but it is a registered domain, so we're too late for that. "Road to Nowhere" is also a movie and a song.</p>

<p>That's it. All we need is a theme song. "Road to Photo.net". Any musicians in the audience?</p>

<p>I agree that "Road to Anarchy" would be a great name for a metal band.</p>

<p>Is there a middle ground? Is it possible to recognize the divergent views as all having SOME degree of merit? To me, yes.</p>

<p>PN is a community, sure, and it has laws and needs money like other communities. And fostering a sense of community can surely be a positive thing for the participants. At the same time, it is not a community that votes for representatives who make the rules we have to abide by. The rules are made by legal minds hired by corporations. (I could be mistaken there. But regardless of who, specifically, makes the rules, they are not democratically made, nor should they be, given business is anything but democratic.)</p>

<p>I can also see both sides on critique. On the one hand, you have the perception by a lot of people that making a simple statement "That's ugly" (and I believe there was more to the comment than that, all critical) is mean-spirited. Though that is an obvious projection, the perception can't be denied and does seem to be somewhat pervasive. My own advocating in favor of allowing a comment such as "That's ugly" and its potential to have a very constructive effect shouldn't prevent me from seeing that a lot of others are offended by it and that I might have to compromise in favor of keeping the community happy. That being said, there does seem to be a sizable portion of the community (me included) who find passion, bluntness, honesty, and candor necessary to constructive, helpful, and authentic criticism. So we can war about it or we can accept the fact, and even acknowledge to those we disagree with, that there is merit to all the different views. Ultimately, however, the site administrators will have their way and there's not much to be said about that, other than adopting some level of acceptance of that reality.</p>

<p>I hear a lot of moderators and administrators talk and find many statements paternalistic and condescending. This recent suggestion by Cara really rubbed me the wrong way, as an adult who is not here to be told how to behave: <em>"When communicating with one another in the forums and via critiques and any other part of the site, ask yourself this: "Would I respond like this in real life? Would I be so uncivil face-to-face?" Let that be your guide."</em> I recoil at being talked to that way and I sense others do as well, however, I have to stand back and recognize that what Cara said really wasn't so terrible and was meant constructively and was meant to settle things down and aid the community in moving forward. When I really look at it, I don't find any more mean-spiritedness in her words than I did in the words of the critique she was referring to. And I can also understand the reaction to some of the criticisms of the site being leveled, which come across to me also as over-the-top in some instances, even if they have some degree of merit buried within the attitude.</p>

<p>I've said it before and I'll say it again. Much of all of this back and forth about personalties, behavior, community, and being constructive is perception, not reality. The minute I start adopting the other guy's perspective, to really try to understand where he or she is coming from, the minute a bit more substantive communication might take place. For instance, my detection of attitude in a post is really only a perception of mine and not a truth. Remembering that helps me stay focused on the prize which, to me, is understanding as opposed to being right.</p>

<p>So something I've been trying to do is not let style mask substance. If someone says something in a way I don't like or find offensive, I still try to hear the ideas being expressed and see if I can find anything reasonable there. Admittedly, I'm human and not always successful. In this discussion, I think there have been many things addressed that are worth thinking about by all sides. Many truths are uttered all the time that I don't necessarily want to hear. It would be a shame to always miss them because I was busy being defensive or combative, or being offended by stylistics, which I know from experience can shut out some worthwhile feedback.</p>

<p>In the meantime, I have a suggestion of my own, which might be a bit of paternalism on my part and would serve as an ironic reminder that we all fall pray to even those things we don't like in others. I've honestly been trying, every time I get involved in one of these process discussions about how the site runs, to offset that by making what I see as a more constructive gesture such as critiquing a photo. Saying this, I am going to comment on a fellow community member's photo. I invite each of you participating here to do something similar.</p>

<p>I've got it. Those who dislike and have given up on the current site and system should follow in the historical footsteps of earlier photographers, break away and form a "Photo.net-Secession" website - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo-Secession">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo-Secession</a></p>

<p>Fred, there is indeed a middle ground. Finding it is the problem, since it's as much a matter or perception as of reality.</p>

<p> </p>