Sold,

[photobiscuits]

I bought a membership.<br>

After many months of evaluation, I have finally decided that Photonet is a

continually evolving community where the mods actually pay attention to the

needs of the members. Also as a selling point, unlike a certain other photo

website (coughphotosigcough) I have found there is very little censorship here

and people are treated well by the administration.<br>

cheers.

[rick_gerbehy1]

I did not renew my membership because I thought the monitors were a little too sensitive to what I thought was a humorous but somewhat sarcastic comment. Somehow they just did not get it and they were overbearing with their response to me. It's a good web site, but I found their censorship a little over-bearing.

[jautey]

"It's a good web site, but I found their censorship a little over-bearing."

 

Now if you had said, "heavy handed editing," I'd had agreed with you. But censorship. Nope, ain't seen it on this site.

[richsimmons]

"heavy handed editing" / "censorship" ?

 

Seems like a fine line to draw a difference. I've been hanging around for about a year before I plucked my money down. I appreciate what the moderators do here and I keep in mind that they are human and have their own opinions as well, and that they will not please all of the people all of the time. Ain't gonna happen.

 

As well, as with anywhere, you will meet some genuinely nice and entreating people as well as people who put their noses up. That's life. Wherever you go. Whether we choose to be a duck or a sponge will determine whether you let the water roll off your back or you absorb it. This site is vast with experience, none to liftimes worth. It's one of my favorite places to visit and one of the few I visit every day.

[jautey]

Not a fine line at all.

Photo.net is a privately organization, as such it can 'edit' to its heart content. If if was a government organization then it would be censorship.

That said, when Photo.net does 'edit' it is normally to maintain the sites decorum. The times I've noticed it, even when it happen to me, it was acceptable. Others may complain, but they can also utilize other forums, if this 'editing' is unacceptable to them.

[davidmccracken]

Believe me! There is censorship on this site. I had some of my images removed without warning. Some of them had been on the site for more than a year. If you are a well known photographer you are politely asked to remove the images as was the case with Jock Sturgess.

[photobiscuits]

Aha, so the secret is coming to the surface! I hope it isn't so, but will certainly keep and eye open.

[joshroot]

Just like every site, photo.net has rules and policies. They are enforced. That enforcement/editing/etc is what has kept this site on track for 10 years and what stops small problems from becoming big ones. There are places on the internet where you can do or say or post anything you want, photo.net is not one of them and has never pretended to be one. Believe me, I have been around photo.net for almost all of it's existence. Everyone is happy when "editing" takes care of someone/something that they don't like and everyone flips out when it deals with something they are in favor of. The fact of the matter is that you cannot please every single person, and photo.net does not try to. We try to be the best education and community site for the majority of our users.

 

And to be clear, Eric A is correct, there is no "censorship" on photo.net. We are not a government. We are a private company and we get to decide how to run our own site. If we think something needs to be removed, we remove it. If we think something can stay despite complaints, we leave it. In the free market economy that we operate, people will either choose to stick with a business or stay away from that business based on how they operate. That having been said, this site is run by humans and nobody is perfect. Unless you are all robots, most of the rest of you have no doubt noticed that mistakes can and will be made by humans (possibly even you yourself). A thread that should be deleted is left up, and image that should have stayed is removed, someone wasn't notified when they should have been, etc. "Poo Happens" as they say.

 

But the batting average of the site's administrators and moderators and users is staggeringly high over the past decade. That is why the site has stayed as relevant and useful as it has. How many other sites can you say that about after 10 years?

[trunfio]

Let me say that as far as user interface goes, this site is truly superb. There is no other

site where I can monitor forum postings in such an easy way (by only selecting the forums

I want and seeing a unified view and having such easy e-mail tracking and a clean inline

thread of each post). Also, while it bothers me that tech details aren't required for image

posting, photo.net has been responsive and is working on porting EXIF data when

uploading images. Maybe I'm not in the loop on content editing and removal anymore. I

remember years ago the flames that would happen over the POW. I mean it would really

get out of hand and made the place not fun to be hanging around. If content ends up

driving potential subscribers away, then the site admins should definitely run their site so

they maximize profits. I'm all for that.

[James G. Dainis]

Sarcasm is in the tone of voice. It does not work well in print. You may realize that you posted a sarcastic remark but the reader won't. Avoid it.

[bobatkins]

There is no censorship in the sense that we don't exclude specific opinions because we don't agree with them. There is editing, which is different. Editing is done for quality purposes, to exclude topics which aren't relevant to photo.net, to remove offensive remarks, obscene language etc. If you want to say that digital sucks and that everyone should go back to shootong Kodachrome 64, you're welcome to do that - as long as you don't add your comment to each and every single thread you read and turn your opinion into a crusade. Then we will edit.

 

We also edit out advertising, spam and occasionally incorrect or potentially dangerous statements (such as the best way to discharge a Li-ion battery is to short out the terminals...we got rid of that one).

 

You could say that images are censored because we don't allow anything that we think crosses the line into pornography. Personally I'd like to censor all images of cats, but that's just me and we don't do that.

 

If you want a website that will let you post absolutely anything as often as you want with no editing or censorship whatsoever, then anyone can have their own website for under $50 per year on which they can do pretty much anything they want.

[photobiscuits]

And so, today in my mailbox I find my first letter from photonet informing me they had deleted one of my other posts. Go figure.<br>

At least they had the courtesy of informing me they had deleted the post, and why.<br>

I like photonet.

[joshroot]

Do keep in mind that if a whole thread is deleted, only the original poster will likely be notified. It just simply would take too much time to email the 50 other people posting on a long pointless "gay wedding photography" argument.