Permalink

More on Flickr vs. illustration

Stewart Butterfield from Flickr has helped clarify the whole issue of them censoring restricting non-photographic content (ie drawings) from the public site areas of Flickr:

  1. Flickr (and the people who work at Flickr) are not against non-phographic images for any aesthetic, moral or political reasons.
  2. In the long run, we’ll have a way of flagging images as being something other than photos (screenshots, illustrations, art-thingies, etc.) and then everyone will be happy.
  3. Until then, to keep photo searches photo searches, we only have the blunt instrument of nipsa’ing to do the job.
  4. If you are nipsa’d, in means your photos don’t show up in search results – they are still visible to non-users, search engines, other users, your contacts, other members of groups you are in. It is not the end of the world.
  5. We’re just trying to hold Flickr together* — and till we have more subtle tools, it’s the only thing we can do.
  6. This has absolutely nothing to do with Yahoo!
  • http://www.screenhead.com/funny/art/doodleblog-140004.php Screenhead

    Doodleblog

    “You’re never more than two meters from a doodle.” Odd sketches from random flat surfaces show up daily at the doodleblog. Looking at some of these you realize that…

  • http://www.choosechris.com/blog Christopher

    What does he mean by, “We’re just trying to hold Flickr together*”? The phrase, “hold Flickr together” sounds a little ominous. Is Flickr in danger of going out of business? And what does that asterisk mean?

  • http://www.choosechris.com/blog Christopher

    What does he mean by, “We’re just trying to hold Flickr together*”? The phrase, “hold Flickr together” sounds a little ominous. Is Flickr in danger of going out of business? And what does that asterisk mean?

  • http://ego-madking.blogspot.com/ ArmyBoy

    That’s funny that they would censor imagery (besides pr0n obviously). That’s the only reason why I’m on flickr. Does it include fine art photography too? After all, they aren’t happy snaps. Are there any other sites that host art/illustration images (besides Deviant Art)?

  • http://ego-madking.blogspot.com/ ArmyBoy

    That’s funny that they would censor imagery (besides pr0n obviously). That’s the only reason why I’m on flickr. Does it include fine art photography too? After all, they aren’t happy snaps. Are there any other sites that host art/illustration images (besides Deviant Art)?

  • http://www.robotjohnny.com/ Johnny

    They are not censoring imagery in that sense, ArmyBoy — in order to assert that Flickr is about photography they are simply restricting illustrations and other non-photographic images from showing up in tag searches and other public site areas. Illustrations posted to Flickr are still available to view, just not findable through searches.

  • http://www.robotjohnny.com Johnny

    They are not censoring imagery in that sense, ArmyBoy — in order to assert that Flickr is about photography they are simply restricting illustrations and other non-photographic images from showing up in tag searches and other public site areas. Illustrations posted to Flickr are still available to view, just not findable through searches.

  • wry cooter

    Wouldn’t the simplest thing to do merely to insist on the tag Illustration, when it is not a photo? That is, the means of FLAGGING the content as something else that might not be a photographic snapshot, has always been there.

    I guess maybe Flickr really doesn’t do boolean searches where you can search for Tomato, Not Drawing, just to get photos of Tomatoes.

    Were there really that many people looking for photos of Hobos? Or maybe they were looking for a group photo of 700 of them, and kept pulling up these cartoons.

  • wry cooter

    Wouldn’t the simplest thing to do merely to insist on the tag Illustration, when it is not a photo? That is, the means of FLAGGING the content as something else that might not be a photographic snapshot, has always been there.

    I guess maybe Flickr really doesn’t do boolean searches where you can search for Tomato, Not Drawing, just to get photos of Tomatoes.

    Were there really that many people looking for photos of Hobos? Or maybe they were looking for a group photo of 700 of them, and kept pulling up these cartoons.

  • http://www.mybigredcouch.blogspot.com/ BeardedJon

    What about photoshop? Is it still a photograph if it has been photoshopped to death? Some of the posts on flickr that contain previously photographic images stray from photographs into the realm of illistrative digital art. What then (of am I being too simplistic)?

  • http://www.mybigredcouch.blogspot.com BeardedJon

    What about photoshop? Is it still a photograph if it has been photoshopped to death? Some of the posts on flickr that contain previously photographic images stray from photographs into the realm of illistrative digital art. What then (of am I being too simplistic)?

  • http://www.immutablyme.com/?p=937 Chun-li: Better legs than Tina Turner at Immutably Me

    [...] P.S. If I had the funding and the contacts, I’d start a Flickr-like company that would only house illustrations. Imagine what a community that would be?? Sadly, Flickr prefers that you don’t put illustrations up and they won’t allow them to be tagged or searchable. [...]

  • http://www.tonx.org/ t o n x

    I asked a number of (i think reasonable) questions in that help thread that nobody on the flickr staff has responded to. I’m not directly affected by this, but I’m pretty disappointed.

    A good chunk of what I enjoy on flickr has been the work of illustrators. I think its odd that Cory Doctorow (who is on their board of advisors) has been pimping numerous non-photo flickr memes on boingboing and yet the staff seem unwilling to acknowledge that this aspect of the service is of value to many users.

    I know flickr is a small group of people with a lot on their plate, but this seems unnecessarily lame.

  • http://www.tonx.org t o n x

    I asked a number of (i think reasonable) questions in that help thread that nobody on the flickr staff has responded to. I’m not directly affected by this, but I’m pretty disappointed.

    A good chunk of what I enjoy on flickr has been the work of illustrators. I think its odd that Cory Doctorow (who is on their board of advisors) has been pimping numerous non-photo flickr memes on boingboing and yet the staff seem unwilling to acknowledge that this aspect of the service is of value to many users.

    I know flickr is a small group of people with a lot on their plate, but this seems unnecessarily lame.

  • http://www.samkoma.net/videoblog Salvor

    I suppose I am also a victim of flickr NIPSA and to have my pictures show up in public searches mean a lot to me. Actually that was my reason for using flickr. It is not that I sell my pictures or want many people to look at them – it is just that I am a educator thinking that social tagging (folksonomies) are something my students should understand and flickr is the best example to illustrate social tagging. But then your tags have to be social.

    I had quiet a lot of visuals, I started this since I noticed other educators were using flickr for their slides models etc. and my main reason for using flickr was to explore this tool in educational settings.

    I am very frustated with being set as NIPSA, I try to obey all copyright laws and I am not comfortable in an environment that I feel is killing creativity.

  • http://www.samkoma.net/videoblog Salvor

    I suppose I am also a victim of flickr NIPSA and to have my pictures show up in public searches mean a lot to me. Actually that was my reason for using flickr. It is not that I sell my pictures or want many people to look at them – it is just that I am a educator thinking that social tagging (folksonomies) are something my students should understand and flickr is the best example to illustrate social tagging. But then your tags have to be social.

    I had quiet a lot of visuals, I started this since I noticed other educators were using flickr for their slides models etc. and my main reason for using flickr was to explore this tool in educational settings.

    I am very frustated with being set as NIPSA, I try to obey all copyright laws and I am not comfortable in an environment that I feel is killing creativity.

  • http://sketchblog.kboan.com/ Kary

    Well, I’ve been Nipda’ed too. And the kicker for me is two things:

    (1) If you do a public search for something you know will bring up non-photographic images (like collage or illustrations) you get hundreds of thousands of images…just non of them mine. ;-)
    (2) Because I have been NIPSA’ed, if I go into a group I belong to and don’t sign in…my photographs don’t appear. So they aren’t viewable even in photo pools unless you actually log in.

    I find this whole thing ridiculous. Obviously their own standards aren’t being held up to from one reviewer to the next or from one day to the next. Hence the reason why some people’s photo streams are deemed acceptable and others not.

  • http://sketchblog.kboan.com Kary

    Well, I’ve been Nipda’ed too. And the kicker for me is two things:

    (1) If you do a public search for something you know will bring up non-photographic images (like collage or illustrations) you get hundreds of thousands of images…just non of them mine. ;-)
    (2) Because I have been NIPSA’ed, if I go into a group I belong to and don’t sign in…my photographs don’t appear. So they aren’t viewable even in photo pools unless you actually log in.

    I find this whole thing ridiculous. Obviously their own standards aren’t being held up to from one reviewer to the next or from one day to the next. Hence the reason why some people’s photo streams are deemed acceptable and others not.

  • http://journal.kboan.com/2006/05/31/i-hate-flickr/ Yada Yada Yada » Blog Archive » I Hate Flickr
  • fabulousrice

    Hahahah, this is such a nice message and I share the views of the person who wrote it and the concerns of keeping together a website that wishes to gather photographers and nothing but photographers. “It is not the end of the world”. Notice how nice the person is in talking, sort of, to the “rest of the world” aka flickr users who might need to read this, kinda like patronizing and cheering up billions of people all at once in just one sentence… Brilliant..

  • fabulousrice

    Hahahah, this is such a nice message and I share the views of the person who wrote it and the concerns of keeping together a website that wishes to gather photographers and nothing but photographers. “It is not the end of the world”. Notice how nice the person is in talking, sort of, to the “rest of the world” aka flickr users who might need to read this, kinda like patronizing and cheering up billions of people all at once in just one sentence… Brilliant..

  • http://blog.sessions.edu/?p=195 Notes on Design » Blog Archive » FLICKR AND ILLUSTRATORS

    [...] used to focus exclusively on photos, and even had a policy early on making non-photographic content [...]

  • http://krista.infomediaguide.com/photosvsillustration.html photos vs illustration

    [...] am by Johnny and is filed under Illustration. … &8230 http://drawn.ca/2005/11/29/more-on-flic …http://drawn.ca/2005/11/29/more-on-flickr-vs-illustration/trackback/Wikipedia vs. Encyclopaedia: a question of trust? – TechRadar.comWikipedia did better than either of [...]