In a community like ours it’s only a matter of time until topics pop up which need to be considered carefully and force the administration to think about some guidelines for further procedures.

You all know our guidelines regarding nudity, copyright protection and offensive behaviour against other users.

Due to recent events we had to think about religion as well.

And as in many other cases the disaster is to “judge” a photo which might be considered as art on one hand, but offensive material regarding the religious believes of other members on the other.

Since we value the well being of the community always more than a single photographer’s, we decided to have a close look at photos with religious content or those which might offend users or more their beliefs.

Of course it is not that we search the uploaded photos especially for such works, it’s more that the channel managers come to them by coincidence during their daily work or in most cases that users contact us via support and ask to have a closer look at a certain photo.

I’d like to take the opportunity again to explain the then following procedure, since I know not everybody knows exactly where that photos go to and what happens to them:

After one of the team members gets knowledge of such a case, he will have a look at it and as soon as he has the slightest doubt or wants to discuss the issue with his fellow team members, deactivate the photo. The wording is important here: deactivate means not delete!

The uploading photographer will be informed via mail that his photo is now in an admin voting, the reason why and that he will get further information about the outgoing of that voting.

Team members start to discuss the topic now “behind the scenes” … in many cases it is quite simple, as for example for a “nude upload into a wrong area” … in other cases it takes longer and there are arguments to be exchanged. The discussion about the religious content of photos was such …

At the end the team comes to a conclusion and the voting is being proceeded. It always needs 2 votes out of three to come to a decision. The team member’s proposal is NOT a vote in this voting, so at least two more team members have to decide.

Using this procedure helps to make decisions more objective. This voting procedure has proven it’s quality a lot of times, even if we usually get at least a “negative feedback” from the photographer.

If the voting ends “contra” (two of three admins don’t think the photo needs to be taken off the public channels), the photo will be displayed at it’s original upload place again.

If the voting ends “pro” the photo will be forwarded into the photographer’s transit folder for further use for example a publication in the nude channel or in a restricted fotohome folder. Of course the photo will be deleted for good in cases of copyright violations!

We hope that explains the procedure and the work/ideas behind it to you. Of course there always will be different opinions, depending on the own point of view, but you can be sure that the team does everything to be as impartial as possible in such cases.

Another hope is that you all support us in that way of seeing things – and especially if it comes to such a case where our interference is needed to stay calm and discuss things with us where needed. You know as well as we do how many different photographers from different countries, cultures and religions join here to share their passion.

We want this community to be a place of harmony between all confessions and we will rather deactivate a photo for the good of this community than to have it visible online.

Thanks to all of you for your kind understanding and support!

I has been announced some weeks ago: fotocommunity’s new menu! Yesterday it was launched finally. Of course it might look strange in the beginning, but don’t be afraid: The new menu, now located on the right side of your screen, will make the handling of fotocommunity’s features much easier.

Here is how it looks, here is how it works:

At first glance there might be some menu seem to be missing, but don’t panic! Everything is as it was before … but better! If you click one of the menu items a sub-selection will open (see picture - 1). And by the way: If you use some of the menu items quite often, for example the item “My Photos” and it’s sub-selections “Upload photo” or “Photos from buddies” and so on, just click the icon besides the text (see picture - 2). If you do so the menu will stay open and will be available as soon as you open the site for the next time. Even after a logout your personal settings will be saved and be available for you as you left them before. You save a lot of clicks and won’t have to search your most used features every time you re-log.

If you watch a photo in the full size view, the menu will be minimized automatically. This keeps the focus on the photo. But it needs only one click on the referring link to reopen it again (Menu, top right on your screen, just besides the search bar).

Are there more changes? Yes … If you navigate through the photos the page numbers will stay available (and visible) at the top of the screen (see picture - 4)… just try it!
And: You’ll find the search bar always at the same (new) place: Top right of your screen, right besides the menu (see picture - 5).

Finally: There is a new channel … “People” …We had a lot of requests for this channel and with the new design we finally could implement it. Besides of that one there is a new “channel name: Special” which is nothing else than the well known former Topics channel (see picture - 3).

We will optimize the handling of the menus in the future to prevent it from reloading with the rest of the site. Another step in making fotocommunity even more “easy to handle” for you!