The Red Eye

Greetings to our new bouncers

nobody@flickr.com (Myopic Midnight Special / Joseph Dunphy) — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 20:47:58 -0800

Myopic Midnight Special / Joseph Dunphy posted a new topic:

I've promoted a few of you to moderator ("bouncer") status. Vivienne Gucwa, Bill in DC and Kim Yokota.

My usual comments at this moment apply. Please be gentle in your moderation, please put fair play before political concerns at all times, and please know that I have your back. While, in principle, I could bring myself to overrule a moderator if that moderator did something truly outrageous, in my entire life, I've never done so, yet, and I wouldn't do so, lightly.

I guess that covers that. If any of you don't have time to moderate, please don't hesitate to tell me. No, I won't feel slighted or anything silly like that if you do.

New Twilight Companion Group

nobody@flickr.com (Myopic Midnight Special / Joseph Dunphy) — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 12:59:18 -0700

Myopic Midnight Special / Joseph Dunphy posted a new topic:

Some of you are still posting images taken during the twilight hours to the pool for this group. I removed some of the more recent submissions of that sort, just how, and then invited them to this new companion group, called "The Twilight Hours".

I'm not opposed to twilight photography, this just isn't the place for it. That's what the new companion group is for.

Reply to Managerial Insanity at Flickr

nobody@flickr.com (Myopic Midnight Special / Joseph Dunphy) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 04:36:20 -0700

Myopic Midnight Special / Joseph Dunphy posted a reply:

I'm still here and the feeds did get fixed, so something went right, even if I did have to fight for it.

Reply to Managerial Insanity at Flickr

nobody@flickr.com (Scott A. McNealy @noboundaryphotography) — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 13:08:57 -0700

Scott A. McNealy @noboundaryphotography posted a reply:

Sorry to hear of your troubles and thanks for inviting some of my Towersey night camping images to add to the group. After reading your posts of the problems you have encountered I may wait a little spell before adding them to the group (sorry!).

My very best wishes for you, your photography and your interaction with Flickr...may the good Flickr be yours!
Best wishes,
Scott

Managerial Insanity at Flickr

nobody@flickr.com (Myopic Midnight Special / Joseph Dunphy) — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 19:00:35 -0700

Myopic Midnight Special / Joseph Dunphy posted a new topic:

I just posted this message in Sleepless in Chicago, a group associated with this one.

As I mentioned in the previous discussion, I've set up a group for Twilight shots of the sort that a few of you had been submitting to the pool for this group. At this point, I almost wish I hadn't.

The problem is explained in this post in the new group, which makes reference to this page, which gives you some screenshots documenting an incident. The feed for the new group stopped updating, and hasn't been updating for the last few days. I wrote to Flickr about the problem, and encountered an employee who found that it was easier to lie than to do his job. He pretended to not see what was there in plain sight. I responded by sending him screenshots of that which he denied was happening, and criticizing the dishonesty of his response.

Yes, it's a little early in the history of a group for drama to be making its appearance, but we are dealing with Flickr and, more importantly, with Yahoo. In the past, when users have had their accounts deleted without just cause, they've had difficulty establishing their identities later. In order to avoid having that problem, myself, I'd like to give you the url for my blog

josephdunphy.wordpress.com

If I have to create a new account because this highly dishonest employee deletes my account in a fit of pique, after creating a new account, I'll use that url to establish that I'm me, and not just some troll pretending to be me. I'll link from my blog to my new Flickr account, if I should need to create one, and am allowed to create one.

Awesome, isn't it? Somebody else refuses to do his job, and I'm the one who has to worry about being sanctioned. Incredible. Just incredible. By the way, the feed for this group now seems to have stopped updating, very recently. We'll see how long that lasts, but I do find it highly interesting that it happened after I sent in that letter of protest. Let's hope that Flickr gets its rogue employee under control. This is absurd.

Indeed. Looking at the pool for this group, and the feed for that pool, I see the same thing happening - the feed failing to feed, very suddenly, at about the time I sent in that letter of protest. I regret the inconvenience. Because of this unprofessional response to a real problem report, your work is not seeing the outside exposure that it should be, that it would be if certain people felt like acting like adults, when they were on the job. But I'm not sorry that I sent in the letter of protest, because there was nothing else to be done.

If Flickr is going to let its employees truly run that wild, then this place - Flickr - is going to fall apart no matter what any of us do, and this group was going to go down, sooner or later. If Flickr doesn't intend to let its employees run completely out of control, on the other hand, and the only problem is an employee that Human Resources should have screened better than they did, then Flickr needs our complaints to know when action is to be taken, even if somebody feels like being a little unruly when such reports come in.

Until Flickr shows some real sign of wanting to do the real thing, though, I'm going to hold off on investing much more time into inviting photos in the group. Not that I haven't been delighted by what I've been seeing - you might notice that my favorites page has been getting larger. But, I don't know what will happen to any invites I send out, should that employee abuse his power and delete my account.

Pending resolution, I can only ask for your patience. I am serious about wanting to make this into a real group, but until I know what's happening, pursuing that desire will seem like a bad investment of my time.

Reply to Feedback requested on the invitations

nobody@flickr.com (D:> D.H.LEE) — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 15:11:06 -0800

D:> D.H.LEE posted a reply:

Hi, I received your invite awhile back and I joined the group just to give some feedback. My personal reason is that at the moment in my life I don't really have the time to do personal things like take photos of nightlife anymore at the moment. This group does seem like a fun idea, but all I would do is offer that one photo you are interested in, sadly.

Still, if things change for me, maybe I can add more of other things along the way. In the meantime, I hope your group starts to flourish more!

Reply to Thank You for the invite.

nobody@flickr.com (Barbara Campelli) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 14:02:11 -0800

Barbara Campelli posted a reply:

Thank you for the invitation. Sorry it took me a while to reply but I haven't been on Flickr a lot recently. Cheers!
Barbara

Reply to Feedback requested on the invitations

nobody@flickr.com (Myopic Midnight Special / Joseph Dunphy) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 10:09:06 -0800

Myopic Midnight Special / Joseph Dunphy posted a reply:

Mystery resolved, maybe. Somebody read the group description, and to him, it sounded like it was saying that one had to be a writer to join the group which, by the way, is for writing and photography. I guess if one were to look at the old description in a vacuum, it could have sounded that way, but I was a little startled to read that. If I, as the administrator for a the group, have invited somebody in, doesn't that override whatever is in that group description which is, after all, nothing more than something I scribbled down? Why would I invite somebody in if I didn't want him in here, or invite him to submit his photos to the pool, if I didn't think they belonged?

But then I remembered how many cases I'd seen of Barney Fife syndrome online, and wasn't so startled. No, guys, not my style. Common sense overrides all the rules around here, and I'm not very fond of tossing people out of my groups for weird reasons. I might be a little strict about how black the sky is in a few of your photos, but that's about it.

In total, my groups have a few thousand people in them, and I've been running them for a few years. In all of that time, out of those thousands, I've banned a grand total of three people, all for the same reason - posting spam - and lifted the ban in one of those cases, when the offending party made it clear that he'd seen the error of his ways. Which, by the way, he really had. So, no, this is not going to be one of those groups where you have to watch your step and wonder what the crazy admin is going to get upset about.

I've corrected the group description in a way that I hope will eliminate the earlier misunderstanding.

Reply to Feedback requested on the invitations

nobody@flickr.com (Myopic Midnight Special / Joseph Dunphy) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 04:57:22 -0800

Myopic Midnight Special / Joseph Dunphy posted a reply:

BTW, the photo was not chosen at random. I really liked New Orleans, and that image brought back happy memories.

Feedback requested on the invitations

nobody@flickr.com (Myopic Midnight Special / Joseph Dunphy) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 04:55:26 -0800

Myopic Midnight Special / Joseph Dunphy posted a new topic:

There's something I'm a little worried about, this morning. I've noticed that lately, people haven't been joining the group. Out of the last eight people to accept invitations to add their photos to the pool, only one has joined the group. I'm wondering why that is, and wonder if I've done something to cause offense. Almost all of you are here in response to messages like the one I left in this photo.

A few days ago, one of my members, on another group, suggested that I start using the "invite photo to group" function instead of posting those notes. The idea seemed to be that this would make life a little easier for the photographer, who wouldn't have to go through the joining procedure. I also started sending out group invitations along with the photo invitations, because I'm not going to go up to somebody and say "leave your art here, but you can take off". That would just be rude. But I wonder if I ended up being rude, anyway.

Is the "hello" one gets on the way in worth a little inconvenience in the beginning, maybe? A little more human even if it's a little less efficient? Any thoughts?