Photo Limit: LeeLau and Amar's

I'm sorry but that sounds to me like elitism," my posts are more worthy than others due to the significance of my descent or the high journalistic content  I have acheived and my stretching of the guidelines should be ignored  and others less worthy should adopt a more strict interpretation of the rules. Noblisse oblige!

I have bent the rules sometimes. I think I've done it in followup posts only, not in trip reports. In those cases, I wagered that I was not violating the spirit of TAY too much. But if a moderator decided to chop my post, that would have been fine with me. Is that elitism?

Well so be it and I think it has been a worthy discussion as now I at least know these are just guidelines, open to interpretation by the poster with the ultimate arbiter of the post being the moderator.  Hard job for a moderator!

Sure. That's what moderators do. The TAY moderators do it very well. For that, I'm thankful.

No one wants a stream of TGR type posts, but the current "GUIDELINES" are too restrictive given the advances in technology and the development of the visual age we are in. What about videos, how many of them are allowed ??

How do you prevent a stream of TGR type posts without guidelines similar to what we have? Seriously. How would you do it?

A couple months ago I saw a really interesting blog posting about the importance of moderation in on-line communities:

www.kottke.org/08/12/does-the-broken-windows-theory-hold-online

Here's an excerpt. The entire post is well worth reading:

Does the broken windows theory hold online?

Much of the tone of discourse online is governed by the level of moderation and to what extent people are encouraged to "own" their words. When forums, message boards, and blog comment threads with more than a handful of participants are unmoderated, bad behavior follows. The appearance of one troll encourages others. Undeleted hateful or ad hominem comments are an indication that that sort of thing is allowable behavior and encourages more of the same. Those commenters who are normally respectable participants are emboldened by the uptick in bad behavior and misbehave themselves. More likely, they're discouraged from helping with the community moderation process of keeping their peers in line with social pressure. Or they stop visiting the site altogether.

Lowell, I'm not suggesting that there be no moderation and agree with you and the article that no moderation leads to anarchy BUT if moderators impose rules that are too restrictive, the group collective will push back and push the envelope, bend the rules and eventually get frustrated. If the rules are not equally enforced in addition to that then further frustration will set in especially with those that are having their posts deleted when they see others getting away with it.

I surmise you must have felt that your post  and it's readers would have benifitted from more pictures or else why did you feel the need to bend the rules?

As with most things in life, a happy medium usually exists and in my opinion the  existing photo limited needs to be enlarged just a little bit to hit that " sweet spot" that all skier's and riders  can relate to.  Not too many , not too few.  Once that consensus spot is reached then the rules should be adhered to by everybody and enforced by the moderators so they are not put in the position of having to make judgment calls  regarding a post's "balance " of text and pictures or significance or showing favoritism to friends.  I don't think a moderators job is to act as an editor and neither does the excerpt of the article you quote seem to suggest that. The moderators job is to control the tone and behavior of the membership not make calls on artistic or journalistic merit as you seem to suggest. Additionally, styles and preferences are always evolving and my sense is that the TAY membership is getting a lot of younger people which is good and their generation is more attuned to the visual. The 3 pic limit is not " wrong" , the desire for balanced text and pictures is not " wrong", they just need to evolve a bit to keep up with the times.

Let me ask you a direct question.
In fairness to the poster of today's Wallowa TR and in fairness to LeeLau and given the discussion in this thread and your and Amar's admission to posting more pictures than allowed and the deletion of Leelau's photos that started it all, what should RonJ or Charles do in relation to the over the limit pictures posted there?

I hasten to add that I think the picture content in the Wallowa TR is about right for full size photos and at the sweet spot for my taste.

Well then, it's settled ~ it's "the best defense is a strong offense"...

Let me ask you a direct question.
In fairness to the poster of today's Wallowa TR and in fairness to LeeLau and given the discussion in this thread and your and Amar's admission to posting more pictures than allowed and the deletion of Leelau's photos that started it all, what should RonJ or Charles do in relation to the over the limit pictures posted there?

Does anyone else find this slightly annoying? Scotsman, the fact that you question the moderators decision-making demonstrates to me that you don't respect what they have created here. Instead of calling them out on every post "in public" maybe you could send them a PM. These guys have worked hard for the past seven years (has it been longer?) to create a great site. Respect what they have done, and what they will do...especially after they have offered you the power to moderate.

As much as I enjoy seeing Lee's pictures...there are rules...and moderators get to choose when to enforce them. Take the job, or stop complaining.

Well I accept the critiscm but as usual disagree. Like our new President, I think transparency is a good thing and hiding behind the veil of anonymity by conducting a discussion by PM's somewhat cowardly frankly.
I accept the outcome and the flaming I will get and won't stop complaining about things that in my opinion are not right nor will I stop congratulating things I think are right.
The moderators RonJ and Charles are hopefully in no doubt as to my high regard for them personally and I have expressed my love for TAY many times, warts and all.

And as with all content, if you find it annoying then don't read it or ask a moderator to delete it.

I surmise you must have felt that your post  and it's readers would have benifitted from more pictures or else why did you feel the need to bend the rules?

If I remember correctly, I have broken the rules by posting a large photo in a reply, while the rules say only thumbnails should be posted. I did it because I thought a large photo was more effective there. I think allowing a single large photo in a reply would be a reasonable change in the rules, but if the moderators disagree, and if they changed one of my posts when I did this, I wouldn't complain.

Let me ask you a direct question.
In fairness to the poster of today's Wallowa TR and in fairness to LeeLau and given the discussion in this thread and your and Amar's admission to posting more pictures than allowed and the deletion of Leelau's photos that started it all, what should RonJ or Charles do in relation to the over the limit pictures posted there?

I hasten to add that I think the picture content in the Wallowa TR is about right for full size photos and at the sweet spot for my taste.

I think RonJ handled this well with his gentle reminder of the photo guidelines in that thread. The poster is relatively new to TAY, and Ron used a light touch.

Would I change the rules to permit 12 large photos in a trip report? No, I would not. The practice of splitting reports into separate days, or posting some photos as thumbnails, is well established and would work fine in this case.