Refactoring the open-source photography community

Posted Apr 22, 2016 6:25 UTC (Fri) by ksandstr (guest, #60862)
Parent article: Refactoring the open-source photography community

>Another audience member asked what the comment-moderation experience has been like. Thus far, David said, the community has had very little trouble with disruptive posters or trolls. Discourse includes a robust set of built-in reputation and moderation features, and so far, no one who works on the forum has had any need to intervene personally. "But who knows," he said, "if some of the GIMP forums were to migrate over, we might have a different story, given how wild and polarizing they can be. But so far, it's been great."

This doesn't appear to cover the other kind of comment-moderation problem: that where overmoderation and attachment to poster identity leads to an environment of stifling conventionalism.

Photography communities in particular (e.g. flickr, instagram, 500px) are vulnerable to turning into circlejerks where noöne is willing to say what they mean for fear of appearing the negative nancy (no pun intended) and where high post-count contributors' poorly-supported opinions become elevated above said views' merits. In such communities the typical discussion is at the level of tepid platitude: "good exposure!", "nice depth of field!", or "cool HDR!". On the other end of the scale there's the imageboard style of community where anonymity is the norm, feedback is uncompromisingly harsh, and uselessly opaque criticism appears such on its face; unsuited to the overly sensitive but hideously valuable to the advancing novice.

Ordinary web forums, with tools oriented towards a punitive "he said the n-word! delete his account and everything he's posted! persona non grata, in damnatio memoriae!" school of moderation, strongly tend to the former. This can easily get to a point where it's impossible to tell, absent a point of reference, that it's come that far. Given that this new central web-forum looks set up to eventually swallow every other forum around Free photography tools, I certainly hope that the moderatorial policy is adjusted with explicit consideration of this aspect.