There is a very interesting article by Chris Colin over at SFgate called Nasty as they wanna be? Policing Flickr.com it’s about the group that attempts to maintain order and rules among Fickrs thirty million members who have posted 2.8 billion images.
At first glance this parallel society has been made, quite literally, in the image of our own. But in truth it’s more like a Photoshopped image — the nice parts accentuated, the inappropriate bits cropped away. So it goes with any online community, of course. Behavior must be moderated and a communal ethos must be preserved; Wild West cliches aside, total freedom at any entity like this would sink it in a storm of lawsuits, flame wars and gridlocked cacophony. So directors of community exist. And while the job of nurturing and policing any online realm would make for a fascinating study, I was particularly curious about how it worked at Flickr.
The interesting part of the article on regulation of social content is the fact that no matter how far along we have come, no matter how many articles are written and read, the state of regulation of social matter will not be resolved in a final manner.
Guidelines such as Flickr’s community guidlines, as vague and inadequate as they may seem, are probably the best way to go. My favorite rule among the guidelines is: “Don’t be creepy. You know the guy. Don’t be that guy.” It’s not the way in which laws can be written but as the rule itself says we know what they mean. These types of rules and a certain level of benevolent dictatorship by an adequate superuser, owner or group.
Champ, for her part, has no qualms defending “the Flickrness of Flickr.” A while back a group calling itself “Islam is Hell on Earth” was removed. Champ is unapologetic: “We don’t need to be the photo-sharing site for all people. We don’t need to take all comers. It’s important to me that Flickr was built on certain principles.”
Not everyone is going to be happy but it is important to remember what we often forget and that is that Flickr is not there for a community. They are there because their customers pay them. If any small group of customers threaten Flickr’s income then they will be removed. This is not democracy – it is business. Unfortunately some users forget this point.