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Galleries

Discussion in 'Empty Closets Help and Feedback' started by Aaron, May 24, 2005.

  1. Aaron

    Aaron Guest

    So, just out of curiosity, are we going to be able to have galleries? I mean, I understand that we don't want any explicit material posted, but there are still pics we can post. Like personal pics of we want, cartoons, nice pictures, fully clothed men...etc....

    I dunno...it was just a thought...
     
  2. Jordano

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    I would definitely agree to that cause its also nice having a visual of the person you're giving advice to or relating to...just a thought!
     
  3. Micah

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    I personally really like this idea. The only problem with it would be to do with something Paul said a while ago

    I'm not saying that galleries automatically mean people will post their photos, but it certainly encourages it.
     
  4. Aaron

    Aaron Guest

    I see what your sayiong, but if we have a notice before people upload pictures, saying that we don't encourage personal photos and that they are in no way necessary, then I don't see a huge problem...

    but o well...
     
  5. Paul_UK

    Paul_UK Guest

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    The whole purpose of this site is to be a place to chat about coming out issues and all sorts of other related stuff. I don't think galleries would be a good idea for several reasons.

    1. If we start adding other stuff it could detract from the main purpose of the site. People would be visiting for the pictures, not for the discussions.

    2. A gallery could be too intimidating for those who are just beginning to question their sexuality. We really do not want to do anything to put off those who need the help, support and friendship this site can offer.

    3. Some people may be visiting this site from shared PCs in labraries, school or Internet cafes etc. They certainly won't want anything appearing on the screen that could be embarassing if seen from a distance in public.

    4. On a related theme, it would help if this site could avoid being blocked by Internet content filtering software, which may well be used on some public networks and indeed on some shared family PCs. I don't know how well we are doing on that count, but having a gallery may well cause us problems.

    5. Moderation. Someone would have to decide and define what is appropriate and what isn't. That can be difficult to define and even more difficult to decide whether the line has been crossed.

    6. As Dave highlighted, there's the safety and privacy issue. We try to discourage members from posting pictures of themselves (although if people want to put their photo in their avatar or link to one we won't stop you). I think this works well, not just from a safety and anonymity point of view, but also because there is no risk of pre-judging someone by their photo. We judge and get to know each other by what we write and think, not by what we look like.

    Of course if someone has their own website (maybe some free webspace at Yahoo-Geocities or whatever) and add a link in a message here, that's fine. The only condition is that the site doesn't contain or link directly to "adult" content.
     
  6. tinkergeek

    tinkergeek Guest

    Also, I'm not share about the web hosting for this site, but galleries seem to eat large hunks of bandwidth. Some other gay-teen related sites have gone under because the high cost of hosting images. (Such galleries seem to get quite popular after a while..) Just another thought.
     
  7. Paul_UK

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    Oh, and just for good measure, there's copyright issues. One large gay site had to pull the galleries from its discussion forums a while ago for just this reason. :frown:
     
  8. joeyconnick

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    I think it's probably just enough to say if you want to display pictures, there are other places to do it and you're welcome to link to those if you want (provided there's no direct links to adult content). The rest of the reasons below are, well, not really required. The presence of a gallery is not going to intimidate anyone unless people start insisting everyone use it. If galleries were allowed, surely non-publicly-viewable content would not be allowed, making (3) moot. Similarly, that would render (4) moot (and frankly if filtering software is going to block this forum, it'll block it based on the words "homosexuality" and "gay").

    As for (5), well... yes, sometimes that kind of judgment call can be tricky but I would say for 95% of the cases, it's really clear cut (having done a lot of moderation work myself for online spaces).

    Safety, privacy, and prejudging: I guess de-emphasising images helps that but ultimately if someone wants to invade our privacy (given that a lot of people on here reveal their ages and locations) or prejudge us (give that a lot of people reveal a lot about their lives), that's gonna happen and there's nothing much that can be done to stop it. It's good to reduce that but it's not really that strong an argument against galleries.

    I don't mean to imply that I think this place should have galleries: I just wanted to point out that the stewardship of this space/community is up to the moderators and I think it's more than sufficient for them to say: this is about discussion and support, not about images.

    I know a lot of people from the US (not saying anyone here but some that I've run into) seem to have this warped sense of freedom of speech where if anyone tells them that what they've said/posted is inappropriate, they freak out and start ranting about censorship. People don't seem to get that a) US "freedom of speech" is freedom from GOVERNMENT censorship (i.e. there is no burden on something that is set up/run by private individuals to allow a free-for-all in terms of content) and b) if they don't like the "rules"/"focus" of a particular group/forum/space/community, they are welcome to go join another or create their own (the whole notion of "freedom of speech" is that if the government quashes you, you have no other outlet in which to voice your opinion, and that's so false on the web that it's crazy). (And of course (c), another common American oversight, is that the web is NOT American, so it's not true that US-style "freedom of speech" is the norm or a requirement. Canada, for instance, has very different notions of what constitutes acceptable speech; that is, we have strong hate speech laws.)

    In a moderated space, what the moderators say goes. Now, that doesn't guarantee the moderators are necessarily always fair but that's how the cookie crumbles and one simply hopes that any disputes can be peacefully resolved with a minimum of fuss.

    And with moderation comes ground rules, and no galleries seems like a good one to me, from the practical bandwidth side of things and from the "focus of the community/site" side of things.

    (And yes, I do sit around all day dissecting these things in my head. So there! :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: )