I use Flickr to host my photos as it is a convenient repository and has some nice, but generally subtle community aspects to the website.
However, there is a dark side to the website – and that is the groups.
Groups are a convenient way to collect photos of a similar topic from a range of people into one area – and I submit some of my photos to some groups that interest me.
However, groups have administrators to look after them, and some administrators can be rather aggressive in trying to make their groups increasingly popular. Not sure if they get any reward from administrating a popular group, but certainly some people seem very motivated to promote their cause.
On Flickr, an administrator can find a photo and post a pre-written message on the photo inviting you to submit your photo to their group. I get the occasional invite most weeks and and I tend to accept about half of the invitations.
However, the afore mentioned aggressive admins can go through a person’s photo gallery like a proverbial dose of salts, scattering invites all over the place with gay abandon.
After going out for a walk today, I came home to invites to submit a host of photos to seven different groups – all from one person. Argh!
So, thank you for making me go though my gallery deleting your invites from all the photos you just spammed.
If I remember rightly, when you block a person you can choose to delete all the messages they’ve left on your photos. I would imagine this to include invites so even if you only block them briefly it should be possible to delete their drivel that way rather than going to each picture. I hate that almost as much as the people who feel it necessary to give “awards” that include all dancing, singing and flashing images that hurt my eyes and end up with an instant block if I see them.
It is a bit of a curse, but they’re fairly easy to delete, and you can block future comments from the perpretators. Flickr does seem to be increasingly infested with pointless “I’ll say your picture’s really good if you’ll say mine’s really good” circle-jerk groups. And some of the pics with “YOU ARE AN ARTIST! FIVE STARS” comments on them beggar belief – there are some easily impressed Flickr users out there.
I was recently invited to join a group which seemed to exist solely to ‘prove’ that film cameras are better than digital. Given my photos are taken on digital, I couldn’t really see what was in it for me….