New TOS Violation Feature

[adam]

In order to remove serious terms of service violations as quickly as possible i.e. pornography, computer generated images etc, any member may report a violation by selecting TOS Violation from the 'Photo Options' dropdown listbox on the left hand side of any photo.

[Bayleaf]

Good function. What will happen to the photo once marked in this way? Automatic deletion needs to be avoided or this could be used maliciously.

[adam]

"What will happen to the photo once marked in this way? utomatic deletion needs to be avoided or this could be used maliciously."

I get emailed the photo in question AND the member who reported it. So it is manually done for now. Since I know which members reports violations, I would not recommend reporting violations for perfectly fine photos.

I may implement the following system: After a number of members report a violation, the photo becomes INACTIVE. Don't worry, it could never be deleted from the site, until AFTER I review it.

[Bayleaf]

I see. Thanks for the explanation. I had visions of someone coming in and taking every photo from TrekEarth off line. :-(

[adam]

"I had visions of someone coming in and taking every photo from TrekEarth off line."

I do hourly backups of everything so if anything unforseen happens I can always reload everything fairly quickly.

[Coyote]

I just mistakenly hit the submit button on one of my own photos- What do you do when this happens?

[adam]

"What do you do when this happens?"

I research the photo in question and determine whether it warrants contacting the photographer to let them know the photo violates the TOS.

In the future I will be automating this so after a certain number of members submit a violation on the same photo, it becomes inactive and will not be displayed until I research it further.

[lennarts]

There have been lot of talks in the forums about why people do not write critiques or why they write superficial critiques. It takes time and thought to write a really good critique.
I think the reason behind poor situation with critiques is quite simply that there are too many photographs in TE. Unfortunately also too many bad photos. And all those bad pictures are just taking up so much space and robbing good photos the chance to get full attention.

If the photo is not explicitly agains any TE rules, but is against the underlying theme of TrekEarth (that is "learning more about the world through photography"), as it teaches nothing about world nor photography there is not really enough justification to push the violation button. But maybe there should be a feature that users could report photos as "junk". And if a certain number of users have marked some photo as junk, it could be deleted or placed in a special "junk folder".

[warhorse]

I don't agree with the statement about crappy pictures, I only have two pictures on TE, and by your standards they are "crappy" or "junk", but since I am new to photography, and very actively learning I feel my pictures do belong on TE. I am on TE, TL and TN everyday, looking at other peoples pictures and reading critiques trying to learn about cameras, lens and what makes a "good" shot. I don't do any critiques yet, because I don't feel qualified to give them, but I sure can't learn what I'm doing wrong, if people can't even see what I've done. I do limit what I put up, but it still sounds like that would be pushing people away from learning about photograhy, TE and our world. Not all of us can get "good" or "perfect" results the first time we pick up a camera. Even mistakes can make a great photo.

[green]

If the photo is not explicitly agains any TE rules, but is against the underlying theme of TrekEarth (that is "learning more about the world through photography"), as it teaches nothing about world nor photography there is not really enough justification to push the violation button.

That's where you're wrong it is enough to hit the violation button. If picture doesn't fulfill TE's underlying theme then picture goes against the TOS crappy or not.