February 27, 2006

When an Anglican Priest Says Flickr's Community Guidelines Suck...

okay, so he didn't exactly say the rude and non-lewd flickr community guidelines SUCK, but in so many words, yeah, he did. Soon Flickr will have entire religious orders urging relaxation of its New Triple-G Stringent Guidelines. The Vatican itself will be draping its ancient artwork lest they be terminated or struck by a door hitting them on the way out! Ludicrous!

AKMA deciphers it a bit more rationally (and tactfully?) here:

"Pointing to Flickr reminds me of the changes in their terms of service. Much as I like the people behind Flickr, I don’t in the least like the direction their application has taken in the past few months. While they justifiably need to protect their service against abuse (it’s not a bandwidth sink for banners or other page design elements, and they have to abide by others’ copyright laws), the ludic t-shirt phase of Flickr has passed, and the serious button-down shirt phase has arrived — pretty soon, Flickr will be wearing a power tie and fancy suit, and its early enthusiasts will have migrated elsewhere. I don’t assent to the premise that “sharing digitized photos” and “sharing other digitized images” constitutes a fundamental distinction in the value of the service (and if it were that important, it would not be overwhelmingly difficult to implement a “photo” on/off switch to guide searches). I don’t agree that Flickr needs to forbid “photos that include frontal nudity, genitalia or anything else that your bathing suit should cover” (that’s what their sensible “this might be offensive” button was meant to deal with). I don’t think that the recipe for enduring business success involves abandoning the spirit that made you popular."


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