Photo Limit: LeeLau and Amar's

But if the point is to "..hope that all are treated equally", I find no fault here for I feel the best definition of equallity involves the equal opportunity to tell a great story.  And again, some are better at it than others  ~ and some adventures are more spectacular than others.  The concept of moderation does not need to pigeonhole every eventuality and should retain some flexibility.  Everybody recognizes a killer TR when they see it, and we all would hope and expect that it gets a bit of elbow room if needed for the sheer joy it brings us. 

Sorry for quoting your post twice, but it was a good one and encapsulates the essence of my problem  which was about fairness and equality and not raising photo limits and I really am trying to understand your view but just can't get there at all.

Your position is that a person who believes that they have a greater ability to tell a great story or has, in their view a more spectacular adventure  to tell should be allowed to purposely exceed the photo guidelines and post and then have a moderator make a judgment call as to whether they have crossed the " great story" or "spectacular adventure" threshold. If so, the post stands, if not, it gets cut.

Surely even with rigid guidelines, the best storytellers with the most spectacular adventures and/or best text and photos will STILL always be able to create the best, "killer" TR.

Wish I was skiing as well, think I'll go sharpen my edges now.

Getting back to this now. Thanks for all of the additional opinions; for any topic there is always a range and knowing that range helps me make decisions that are (hopefully) in the best interest of the forum as a whole.

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?

I covered (1) above. For (2), the moderator's job: I see this as a balancing act between maintaining a reasonable adherence to the various guidelines of the forum and allowing posters as much freedom as possible. The more that forum posters as a whole generally follow the guidelines, the more freedom there is for slight stretching of the guidelines on occasion (and the less need for moderator action). The good (great!) news is that this is a very, very good forum for a moderator. Significant issues come up only rarely, and when they do come up they are typically self-correcting due to the presence of "informal" moderators who post with just the right touch. This means that a moderator's intervention is almost never needed, and that the "correction" is typically better received than if delivered top-down by a moderator.

Part (3): how do moderators make decisions in doing their job? Although Ron and I have never formally discussed this question, I think we both have the same overall approach: get involved only if it appears that the problem is not going to be resolved without our intervention; make initial contact with the problematic poster(s) behind the scenes, not in public, and try to get things worked out in that way; take public action only if the previous step fails.

When I am deciding whether or not, and when, to get involved, I consider several factors: is the issue a technical one (eg. photo limit issues) or a more severe issue involving some kind of incivility, which might require more immediate action; is there self-moderation going on and does it seem to be working; does the poster(s) have a previous history on this forum of being involved with similar issues.

If the poster(s) has been previously involved in instances that required moderator intervention, I consider that they have already been given the benefit of the doubt and the benefit of behind the scenes attempts to get things worked out. Thus, I tend not to award them these benefits again, but instead simply take actions to fix the problem (which might include deleting photos, deleting text, deleting whole posts, and, in the extreme, putting in place a ban on their access to the forum). Banning is an extreme action, and to date there has been one implied threat of a ban (which led to a successful resolution without resorting to a ban), and one temporary ban on a member's ability to post (mainly to get that member's attention).

Here's what happened with LeeLau's thread: several people alerted me to problems in the thread (using the "Report to moderator" link), which I had not previously read. I took a look and saw (1) a lot of full sized photos displayed, and (2) the dialogue taking a serious turn for the worse. The latter called for immediate action, so I deleted the relevant posts, having decided that with those gone the rest of the thread was still useful. For the photos, I counted them up: separate posts of 6, then 12, then 8, then 7, full sized photos displayed; no thumbs used; no text links used. Because I had previously been through the behind the scenes, benefit of a doubt, approach with this poster, I decided to delete all but the first three photos in the original trip report.

On to Amar's thread (Juneuary 17-18, 2009, Mt Rainier, Fuhrer Finger): two full sized displayed photos in the original trip report, not a problem. About a dozen replies and eight days later, Amar posted 25 thumbs inserted into an extensive trip report. I had not been back to this thread so I was not aware of the 25 thumbs, and I had received no reports of a problem. If I had known about these 25 thumbs, what would I have done? Not sure about that. As Amar has pointed out, it takes many thumbs to equal the KB of one full sized photos (page loading time issue). In addition, this was a very substantial two day trip and time seems to have been spent choosing photos which add significantly to the textual trip report. I would have recalled that Amar generally adheres to the spirit of the guidelines for photo posting, and has previously used the various options available (thumbs, text links to external photos or TRs, and maybe even Lowell-type 4-in-1 composites). I might have contacted Amar behind the scenes and let him know that 25 displayed thumbs was a bit excessive, but I can't be sure of that.

Part (4) will have to wait.

Your position is that a person who believes that they have a greater ability to tell a great story or has, in their view a more spectacular adventure to tell should be allowed to purposely exceed the photo guidelines and post and then have a moderator make a judgment call as to whether they have crossed the " great story" or "spectacular adventure" threshold. If so, the post stands, if not, it gets cut.

Surely even with rigid guidelines, the best storytellers with the most spectacular adventures and/or best text and photos will STILL always be able to create the best, "killer" TR.

Mr Scotsman, your point is well taken, and thank you for bringing it to light. It would be a pickle. On the other hand, I'm not sure I would care. If Amar and Dave, or anyone else, regularly pulled off outstanding events, I would beg for every pic and word ~ and preferably, way over the limit.

But as you suggest, the more salient point is about moderation. Or, more specifically, the character of TAY. I have not been here long, and I am not naive, but I bristle at the thought of creating an excess of unneccessary rigid guidlines. As you are, I'm 50 something, with no shortage of opinions, and I choose to have some intersection with a life where not everything is cut off, nailed down, and painted green. For me, this is one of those places. I appreciate that I am surrounded by those who would improve the experience, and perhaps the day will come where I can bring some value. Till then, I am content, within the guidlines I've seen to date, to have the moderators make a judgement call on my behalf.

Thanks for the input. David

yo,

First of all. Thanks to Charles. He's doing this thankless job and doesn't need to be given this huge headache.

Second. I knew the rules. BakerBunny even told me. I started out doing the 3 pics a TR with beta on routes and conditions. I got increasingly lazy and just cut and pasted TGR - style trip reports with lots of pictures mixed in with beta. No excuses. Just sheer laziness.

I should point out that my pictures were hosted off-line and not on TAY. Still not an excuse but someone pointed that out earlier upthread and I thought I should clarify.

I also baited a stalker, which is where the thread got a bit derailed. No excuses. Sitting in a hotel room with Internet access and bad Oprah reruns on TV gets one bored pretty easily.

Again, sorry for the mess.

The best news of all is that Lee has posted the whole week on his site, except it appears that he has not got around to posting the trip from the 11th of Feb. But be warned, if you don't like lots of really cool pictures, don't go there!

LeeLau, thanks for posting with your views on this matter. I realize that it does take some extra work if one wants to post the same TR on different boards, as the TAY guidelines are generally more restrictive than those of TGR, for example. I don't see any way around this, however, if this board as a whole thinks that it is important to maintain some kind of text/photo balance. I hope that you will continue to post your trips here as they are very informative and it is clear that a lot of people enjoy reading them. It is always OK to post a link to the full TR version hosted on your site.

For point (4), above: do we have enough moderators? I realize that this was not a main question raised in the thread, but it is probably worthwhile discussing anyway. An obvious advantage of having more moderators is that it would make it more likely that someone with moderator powers would see a developing problem and be able to take action. On this board, however, the need to take action is rare. In addition, there are a number of people who act as unofficial moderators, in that they have never been designated as any kind of moderator and they don't have formal moderator powers (edit/delete posts), but they do post in constructive ways when they see that a moderating influence is needed. These people seem to understand what keeps this board a good place to share information and to have the ability to say things in a way that diffuses a problem rather than makes it worse. I think these people know who they are, and a big thank you to all of them!

There are also people who contact me when they think there is a problem in a thread. This is useful because there is no way that I can read everything that is posted (nor can Ron, I'm guessing).

If we had more official moderators, would that change anything with respect to the issues discussed in this thread? I'm not sure that it would. Photo postings in excess of the guidelines would still have to be evaluated and a decision made about whether or not to take any action. A new moderator might not know the relevant history of a poster and therefore whether that poster should get the benefit of the doubt treatment or just have the photos deleted immediately. The same goes for incivility in postings. In fact, if a new moderator was someone who had previously been an effective informal moderator, their ability to effectively moderate might actually be diminished as they would now be identified as part of the "authority" which should be questioned.