Day 403 of 365 More.
Flickr giveth and flickr taketh away.
To my surprise, three days ago, My Winnie the Pooh picture which I honestly thought was kind of lame soared all the way up to #8 on explore. Today, I am suddenly flagged as unsafe.
I have no idea why. Yes, I do post occasional nudes of models, but its been about 5 days since I’ve done that, and I’ve taken great care to make sure that any naughty bits are hidden carefully behind a moderate tag anyway. Apparently not care enough. The only thing I can think is maybe any sexy shot of mine, even non boobie showing is apparently now moderate instead of unsafe, which I consider odd, as there are tons more explicit photos than most of mine in explore everyday. It occurred to me that maybe they wanted me marking the nipple shots as restricted instead of moderate, but if they wanted that, you’d think they’d have marked my entire account restricted and not moderate.
So I figure I must have missed something and left it safe when it didn’t need to be. But since my entire account is now moderate, I can’t tell what that might have been.
Blah, the persecution of the artist.
If anyone wants to go through my stream and look at every pic and say whether you think it should be safe moderate or restricted, I’d totally appreciate it. For the moment, I appear to be flying blind.
Mav, this has happened to me three times. Twice I got flagged ‘moderate’ and the last time ‘restricted’. I emailed through the proper channels as I am always VERY careful to flag my own images, and they fixed it pretty quick.
The annoying part is having to go through every photo again and make sure it is marked correctly.
I think it is a glitch or else it is somebody deciding to target you. If any random person decides to hit that ‘flag this photo’ button and they do it enough times, Flickr will bump your account to unsafe without checking first.
Hope it gets sorted quickly!
@sadandbeautiful (Sarah): actually, they wrote me back write after I posted this and said: You have a fair amount of images in your photostream that
are not appropriate for the "safe" area of the Flickr website.
You need to be more restrictive in how you moderate your photostream.
Please read the Flickr Community Guidelines.Which sadly, isn’t very helpful because I still don’t know what the offending photos are. Ever since they added the ability to moderate your own stuff, I’ve been VERY careful to make sure that anything that can’t appear on a supermarket magazine was moderate. The only thing I can think of is that implied nudes that don’t show genitals or (female) nipple are now not ok. Because I was pretty sure I had gotten rid of any that did.
So still unsafe, still unsure why exactly.
That’s terrible. When I first read the description, I was going to suggest asking Sarah about it. But I see she commented first. I have no idea what the problem could be, I would start by checking the model shoots first, just to make sure you didn’t miss one. sheesh, I agree, I’ve seen some pretty racy stuff on Explore, so how do they figure?
@lrayholly: well, that’s the thing. I actually do go through and make sure that any model shots with explicit nudity are marked moderate. I always have. The question is do I need to restrict further? Thus far, I’ve left non-explicit "implied" nudity as safe. I’m willing to flag those as well, if we’re supposed to, but browsing other people’s photos that doesn’t SEEM to be the case. Then what about lingerie shots? Swimwear? Believe it or not, this is a case where I’m willing to follow the rules… I just need to know what they are.
I wrote them back saying "please advise me what the guidelines I am breaking are" and they wrote me telling me I could use organizr to rate the photos (which I knew already, and do) and that if I am unwilling to restrict my own photos its best that they just leave me moderate. Which doesn’t answer my question at all.
So I wrote back again reiterating that I AM willing to moderate my own photos but that I was merely asking for clarification and essentially asked all the same questions again. To which the response was:
Think of the "safe" area of Flickr like a library.
If you’re not sure how to mark an image, choose the more
restricted option.
So right now, I’m pretty much at a loss. I’m writing them back again saying "yes, I am willing to do that, but I need the lock removed in order to attempt to do so."
Really, its annoying, since I’m willing to abide by guidelines, but it’d be nice if those guidelines were actually noted. I mean, I’m pretty clear that my Pooh picture is safe (or I certainly hope so). I’m pretty clear that by Temperance card isn’t, and it was marked accordingly. But what about my Juneteenth chains picture?
At this point, I’ve written four messages (each time saying, I’m willing to follow the rules) and received three responses. I’m still locked. *sigh*
Wow, it’s like you’re talking to an inanimate machine instead of a human… or a politician. You know how they NEVER actually answer the question that they’re asked? This is awful!
@lrayholly: I can’t be too upset. The guy is only doing his job. I just wish the policy was more clear. I don’t know if I was being unclear when I asked for clarification or what. Anyway, I’ve marked any even remotely questionable shot as moderate and written them again (a 5th time) asking for a review. At least I think I have. It’s actually pretty hard to tell, since every shot shows up as moderate whether I’ve marked it or not.
*sigh* It sounds like there’s some not-so-clever moderation stuff going on somewhere. I’ve never seen anything of yours unfiltered that I thought was questionable… But considering I used to have numerous heated arguments with my ex over which of my photos he considered to be inappropriate, I’m probably not a very good or unbiased judge. I don’t see anything wrong with nudity being safe in non-sexual context.
I guess we’ll just have to say hooray for living in a country founded by puritans! I hope someone somewhere sorts out an answer and you’re able to figure out what rules to follow.
@mickeysacks: yeah. I dunno. Like I said, the guy’s just doing his job, I get that. And I acknowledge that my personal ideal of what is and isn’t appropriate is clearly different than society’s at large. But I’m fine with that. I’m fine with keeping my stream worksafe. My annoyance is that no one will tell me specifically where I broke the rules so I could fix it. In my most recent correspondence with them I told them that I went and marked everything moderate that even had implied nudity. Hopefully, that’s enough to get everything set back to normal.
Think of the "safe" area of Flickr as a library? That doesn’t make any sense. I was checking out Playboys in high school (for the articles, REALLY!) on microfilm and had no problems. The main reason some libraries put things with nudity behind a counter is because people will tear pages out if their use isn’t monitored, not because it’s offensive (and I don’t remember if the Playboys were behind a counter or where I could just pick it up, probably the latter because I would have been embarrassed to ask a librarian for it…I wouldn’t now, but I was young). 😉
I think you’re right though, that it’s the implied nudity, even with no nipples or genitals showing.
As an aside, I remember when they first implemented the ratings and everyone’s account was made "safe" by default. I didn’t know about the change until I came across a photo in a photostream that was marked not safe (I can’t remember if it was moderate or restricted). I was all "Ooh, that’s got to be pretty racey, I’ve never seen that kind of warning before". I clicked on it, saw how to change my settings so there would be no filtering and it was….a picture of a strawberry.
@SydB42: it just irritates me because there is a HUGE amount of implied nudity in explore. And I am always very careful to make sure I don’t show anything that couldn’t be broadcast on American television or appear on the cover of Maxim or Cosmo. *sigh*
I do hope this gets straightened out soon. While I know little of Flikr’s rules, I do know about social standards. Art should not be restricted, and nothing here falls beneath the scope of art.
Thumbs down to the automated censor.
Keep doing what you do.
@DeHoll: if it were automated that might almost be understandable. It’s not. Someone made the decision. And they won’t tell me specifically which rules I broke or how to fix it.
Did this situation get resolved yet? I really enjoy you photography and I feel for your situation. All I can say to flickr for this situation is: booo.
@drprm: yeah, it was resolved some time ago. For now at least.