Where to start? There are questions raised in this thread about (1) the photo posting guidelines, (2) what is a moderator's job?, (3) how do moderators make decisions in doing their job?, and (4) whether we have enough moderators?
Photo posting guidelines:
These have evolved over time, and I foresee them continuing to evolve. Although this site as a whole is technically "my site", that is not how I view this forum. I view the forum as belonging to all who contribute information and knowledge by posting, with my main jobs being making sure the forum operates correctly from a technical point of view and has rules which are as consistent as possible with the desires of the majority of members, and keeping posting in line with the rules (eg. moderating).
The photo posting guidelines have been revised in the past, and when such a revision is undertaken input from members is solicited. This latest version of the guidelines was adopted as a compromise between those who wanted to allow for more photos (up to unlimited) and those who wanted no change. A major improvement was the addition of a script which allows the automatic generation of thumbnails linked to the full-sized version (thanks again, Tom!).
In my view, the overriding concern about allowing a large number of photos to be posted is that this seems to generally lead to a decrease in the quality of snow/avi information posted. Lowell put it this way with regard to the photo posting limits: "to encourage posts that balance text and photo content. This helps to keep the information content high." I still hold this view, and my view has not changed seeing the occasional photo-packed/text-sparse TR, or looking at threads on other sites which do not try to limit photo posting.
The other main concern about allowing lots of photos has been page loading time. Although more and more people have high-speed connections these days, not everyone does, and I would guess that more and more people are accessing the forum via their cell phones, which use a relatively slow connection, as I understand it. Bandwidth usage is really not a significant concern now, as the web hosting account allows far more than could ever be used.
I would like to point out that, whatever the specific photo posting guidelines, they never actually limit a poster's ability to make an unlimited number of photos available to the viewer. Some people post the limit of displayed photos and thumbnails, then add text links to additional photos, or add a link to their photo sharing page containing all of their photos, or add a link to their own web site page that contains their full trip report with many photos. Lowell, I think, hit upon the idea of making four-in-one composite photos, allowing him essentially to post 12 photos but stay within the limit of three full sized photos posted. There are many ways to adhere to the photo posting guidelines and yet still make available many or all of the photos taken on an outing.
I have to admit that I'm not really that sympathetic to arguments that these options "take more time" for the poster. Most of the options are just variations on inserting a link in one's post, which has to be done to insert a full sized photo anyway. In addition, if someone cannot take the time to sort through their own photos and cull them down to a few that really deserve to be posted (because they add to the TR in a significant way), why should the general viewership be forced to sort through all of those same photos posted in a TR?
I am open to revising the photo posting guidelines upward again. My concerns still remain, however, for both information quality and page loading times. Let's imagine that the photo posting limits were doubled. Will that make any difference to those who ignore the limits now? Will that change the job of the moderators and the decisions they have to make? I don't see that these things would change. The only revision that would change any of this is no photo posting limit at all, and I would guess that the majority of active posters here don't want this.
I will have to get back to the other issues later.
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