To be part of the solution.

[cyrus khamak]

I very much like the new changes Brian has made to the critique

request page. Now, although a lot of scrolling but one gets the

chance to read the poster's description of what the image is all

about before they put a number on it. In the spirit of cooperation to

make this even a greater site, I wish the same kind of approach,

somehow, would be implemented in the rate recent and anonymous rating

page as our friends will put numbers on photos without actually

realizing what the photo is all about.

Now, having a programing background, I have an inkling of what it

takes to make all these changes and maintain this complicated site

and I think Brian is doing a TREMENDOUS job doing it. If you have

been around the net, you know that there is no other site that would

compare to this, in terms of it's layout and it's interactive nature.

Considering all that, I'm compelled to make two suggestions, one to

Brian and one to our dear community members.

To Brian:

I really "do feel your pain"! I could NEVER begin to imagine doing

what you have been able to do here, truly!

Having said that, I feel the anonymous rating page can do with

some attention. I know, you are sick and tires of hearing all this

and believe me, rightfully so. I am not interested in numbers as I am

in good, sincere critique, but right now, as it seems like, the

following is possible on the anonymous rating page:

1- If I have a photo on TRP, I can easily go through the images and

down-rate other photos on that page anonymously.

2- I can tell all my friends to watch for my photo being posted at

around a certain time and get favorable ratings.

3- I can rate a photo favorably when I recognize a friend's name

under it and down-rate a photo by a member I may not like, with

impunity.

 

There are a few suggestions but I'm sure you are ahead of everyone on

this or maybe you are aware of all this and things are under

considerations.

My suggestions to our community members:

We are what makes this system work. Our constant complaining will

probably make us feel better by letting some steam out but what we

can really do is to offer some tangible cooperation. All these

changes and services being offered by this site comes at a great cost

and effort. If you have any idea of what it takes, then so much the

better and if you don't, please allow me, it's much more than you can

imagine.

If you check around, any site that offers you gigabytes of

storage with some decent services, will ask you for a membership fee

to be able to afford all those services, you probably know who they

are. So, please, be generous, be cooperative, be fair and consider

becoming a paid member. Twenty five US dollars are not going to kill

most of us but collectively, it will compensate for all these

tremendous effort being put in this site by the administrators.

I, for one, will make a pledge to pay for TEN members to become

paid subscribers. Now, if you can afford paying for one, two, ten or

more members, so please, be the generous, cooperative person you

always thought you were and make your pledge. Also, if you like to

become a paid member but you REALLY CANNOT afford, or you are in a

country where $25.00 is a lot of money or simply do not have the

means for transaction, also put your name down so everyone who'd like

to help you become a member knows who you are. The administrators

will probably be able to confirm that we have lived up to our

commitment.

Thank you for reading this.

[cyrus khamak]

Sorry, I did have quite a few paragraph breaks but did not show up in the final post.

[dancingdove]

The lack of responses here concerns me, somewhat. If a harsh or negetive tone elicits debate then what does this say about us when one proposes such generousity? If I am missing something please excuse me, I may just not get it... d.d.

[donreid]

An extremely generous offer! I wish I could afford such a gesture myself. Maybe a member fund that people can contribute to would be an idea.

 

Also, I love your statement about how we are what makes the system work. We can complain all we want, but until we practice what we preach the system won't work.

 

Don

[cyrus khamak]

Thank you DD and thank you Don for showing up and commenting, it means a lot. I think if this thread was better promoted it might have led somewhere but I can't do that because it might have negative effects. No one is showing up to pick up their membership either. I am not getting any help from the administrators maybe because they can't do it either or they just know better!

Thanks again for your courage.

[mmmee]

I wonder if you changed the drop down menu from "plain text" to HTML. Might be why your paragraph breaks are not showing up. I always have to review my postings before I hit the confirm button, so as to make less mistakes.

 

Thanks for this post Cyrus. It gives us food for thought about ways to make this a more pleasant place to spend our on line time. It washes away a lot of the bitterness that has been obvious in so many posts about the ratings. But nevermind ratings. Like you said, Photo.net is much more than its ratings games.

 

About your generous offer, personally, I don't think people will show up on this particular thread to claim the free membership. I think it would be an embarrassement to do so, even if they did need the membership paid because of the reasons you have outlined. We have the ability to donate to anyone we feel needs the membership. Perhaps you will get emails from people about this, and can donate without the disclosure of the name of the beneficiary. So, perhaps it is a good idea for anyone who wants to make a certain number of donations to put their names and email address on your list and anyone could email them. Again, personally, I like to choose who I might be interested in giving a membership to, and just do it anonymously.

[cyrus khamak]

M.M., thank you for commenting.

 

First off, I didn't know you could anonymously pay for someone. Last time I made someone become a member, I had her mail me her password and paid for her through her own account. I guess I have to spend some time finding my way around this site.

 

Second, this thread was actually meant for members to make a pledge to pay for whatever number of subscriptions they are willing to pay. That's why I said the site administrators can probably verify that we have fulfilled our commitments, so that it won't be empty promises. Also, I was expecting some members to say O. K., I was just a member before but now I'm a paid subscriber

 

Third, it's amazing how often we think everyone on this site lives either in the US, Canada or at best, in Europe. There are members here from places were people simply DO NOT have credit cards. Even if they have Internet connection at home, they would have to go to their bank every single month to make a deposit towards their Internet fees. These are the lucky ones. I know of members who go to Internet cafes and pay a good portion of their daily income just to be able to upload images and be part of this community. Now, I don't see any shame for a person such as this to say yes, I'd like to enjoy all benefits of being a paid subscriber including not having to pay for all ads to load up.

 

I guess I could have, lets say, pay for all the Iranians on this site. But, it didn't look right and I didn't really want to make them feel like they owe me something. Besides, I could not pay for everyone anyway. The whole idea of me making a commitment first, was to encourage everyone else to do so as well. I thought if we are making all these demands for change and improvement of this site, why not contribute, if we can, as these changes take a lot of time and effort.

[mmmee]

If you go to a non-member's page there is a little blue box in the top right corner, click it and carry on. It is a fairly new feature. We can pay by credit card now, also, where a short time ago it was just PayPal. Perhaps, someday we will have a concise index of the features and the rules. There are a lot of them. So, as you say, all this takes time.

 

I am sure the Administrators have seen this thread even though it has only been up a short while. I think we would need some feedback from the Administrators (all in good time) before anyone would consider this as something sanctioned by the site, and that they might be willing to participate by making their choice of number of subscriptions available to the needy.