Flickr is one of the best photo sharing communities around. It provides an opportunity for serious and amateur photographers to host their work as well as providing numerous groups where people can discuss their work and issues related to the topic(s) specific to that group. In fact, 90% of the photos on this site are being directly linked from my flickr account.
Flickr is now allowing there to be video uploads to the site. I personally don’t like this idea because of the following:
1) There are already a gazillion other video sharing sites, YouTube being the most popular.
2) Check out how negative the video sites are, especially YouTube. Go to the front page and click on one of the random videos and read the comments. I guarantee you can’t get past 2 before you run into one with the negativity I’m talking about. These video sites seem to be filled with anonymous, angry 15 year olds sitting at their computers, bitching about how crap videos are, and how stupid the other commenters are. Flickr is a generally very positive and supportive community and there is no need for the negativity.
I, along with many others, have paid my US$25/year to be a part of this community and I really hope Yahoo (the owners of Flickr) listen to us.
There is a very robust, albeit slowly degrading discussion about this here.
I’m happy to see the videos on there for a while to see if flickr can maintain the generally good natured community and that the content uploaded and viewed is generally of a high standard. When it starts becoming videos of some kid recording him and his friends getting drunk on his cameraphone, it’s time for it to go.
Totally agree dude. Vimeo has a much better community for sharing video, it can display HD and let’s you upload videos at whatever length you like.
Let’s keep flickr exactly what it was intended to be – a photo sharing site.
I know what you mean about the YouTube comments. Maybe if 15 year olds had better tastes in music they’d be less angry…
But I think the difference is that YouTube doesn’t have the sense of community (and the regulation – both moderated and a degree of self-regulation that I think exists when posting) that flickr forums have; it’s just random comments, as opposed to any meaningful discussion between people.
Also I’d never really considered that my $25 gets me all the discussions etc; it was just somewhere cheap to upload unlimited numbers of photos and link them places.
that’s a very good point ed about the moderation. perhaps time will tell what the nature of the ‘community’ will become.
At first I agreed totally to ban videos, but after looking at some of the sample videos and reading a fair bit of the discussion, i’m thinking we should give it a go. the flickr community is very strong…maybe we’ll end up moderating it ourselves naturally?
What is it with the elitist, “Flickr is OUR community” schmoltz? It’s a moderated community already, albeit a busy one. As a user, you’re no doubt well aware that you can censor what you wish to view and what you don’t. If drunken 15 year olds on a camera phone don’t do it for you – and frankly I don’t blame you – then don’t look at it.
elitist? i’m not sure i get what you mean niall, all web 2.0 sites are communities effectively owned by its users, that’s the inherent nature of it.. it’s hardly elitist of me to claim that providing an unnecessary and somewhat redundant service to flickr is a waste of time.
why are flickr spending time developing video for it when there are other things they can be improving within the photography side of the site (ie. slowness, contacts disappearing, upload limits going to zero at the wrong time, etc)?
i know i have the power to control what i see on there, and i already wield this power suitably. when the experience is compromised (slow speeds, etc) because of the additional features i choose not to use, i’m starting to feel a bit ripped off.
i’m happy to concede that the videos i’ve seen so far are quite good, it’s just that i hope flickr continues to spend time fixing up the things that i hope my $25 contributes towards instead of providing only partial support for everything.