I absolutely do wish the best for her.

And while I'm not trying to encourage you but I don't blame you for considering leaving.
LG isn't even close to what it was when I joined a year and a half ago.
I know fluorescent lover 40 is very frustrated and I enjoy his pictures as well.

Same here, you and him are my best friends here! It's sad to see us all considering leaving after not being here for so long but it was enough to see the drastic change here.

I feel like at this point that this is becoming a rather sensitive issue and is likely more of an administrator problem than with the general membership.
While we would all like a faster turnaround as Ria said it's going to take some time and realistically speaking she's right.
Also remember that Patrick did say that the 3 upload limit is only temporary so no decision is carved in stone yet.
The best that the membership can do is let the admins work it out while we strive to maintain good pictures.

Having said that I certainly hope that it doesn't come to for lack of a better word a witch-hunt against members who use phones to take pictures.
As I fear that could cause a lot of problems.
It will certainly end my membership.
But I'm not going to have an anxiety attack over it since nothing has been decided on yet.

Yeah, I'm hoping there will be a fairly reasonable conclusion to this, and I'm hoping the 3 a day limit gets changed to something more reasonable. I strive to upload fiarly decent pictures and I have tried to give out advice on how to take better pictures or how to get a decent camera for a low cost but it seems like all that effort is going to waste so I'm not sure what to think of this. 

The problem is, since smartphones have become commonplace, people do not appreciate the finer nuances of photography. My father was a very keen amateur when I was growing up, he had his own darkroom (all black & white in those days, of course) and I spent many happy hours in there as a kid, doing prints with the enlarger and watching them slowly develop in the trays. I developed a 'feel' for how a shot should be composed.

Now it's all point and click digital, very few people take any pride in their camera work, they think that anything will do. And it is that which is the primary reason for the situation we now find ourselves in.

I don't want to lose any members, but if people are leaving, I'd prefer it to be those who don't care and just upload anything and everything rather than those who put some work into what they upload.

The upload limit will be revised or removed once we work out viable alternatives.

Yeah, I'm hoping there will be a fairly reasonable conclusion to this, and I'm hoping the 3 a day limit gets changed to something more reasonable. I strive to upload fiarly decent pictures and I have tried to give out advice on how to take better pictures or how to get a decent camera for a low cost but it seems like all that effort is going to waste so I'm not sure what to think of this.

We'll just have to wait and see. I'm sure that some form of fair compromise will come out of it.
Until then we just have to keep doing the best we can.
I certainly appreciate all of your advice.

Gee...


Suggesting improvements is one thing, but shaming people for their photography skills... Come on. And what's "bad quality" anyway? Not razor-sharp focus?  Not using studio lights?


Unless it's my brainstorming that's been interpreted as shaming (in which case all my apologies, it was absolutely not my goal), I just don't get what's going on. And on second thought I'm not sure I want to... 

@ Vince: We have both used GIMP in the past, and couldn't get our heads round using it.

These days we use LibreOffice Draw and get what we thunk are good results. 

From my point of view there's nothing wrong with using a camera built into your phone, as Joseph pointed out some of them give the entry level point and shoot cameras a run for their money.

Also pictures taken from a car, while frowned upon, if you can't tell from the picture quality who's to know.? 

Yeah GIMP does have a rather steep learning curve. I think it's the layer system that may be a bit difficult to fully understand. I struggled for a while before getting really comfortable with the program!

And phone cameras, they eliminate the need to keep a camera with us at all times! We can now capture unexpected finds anytime! So there sure isn't anything wrong with phone cameras, and personally I don't really care about people's pictures' quality all that much. There are tons of reason for not taking top quality pictures and I totally understand that.

Fun fact: I used to take pictures from my parents' car almost BEFORE smartphones were a thing, with my first camera!

Yeah, I'm hoping there will be a fairly reasonable conclusion to this, and I'm hoping the 3 a day limit gets changed to something more reasonable. I strive to upload fiarly decent pictures and I have tried to give out advice on how to take better pictures or how to get a decent camera for a low cost but it seems like all that effort is going to waste so I'm not sure what to think of this. 

Same for me. I never meant to sound judgmental or anything. My goal is simply to help others improve their pictures. Now I can't help but wonder if it's interpreted as shaming or being judgemental... 

Maybe it'd be wiser of me to just close my big mouth and wait for people to ASK for help, then suggest improvements....

Yeah, I think both sides have their merit to be honest and yeah I'm finding myself a bit hesitant to give more photography advice going forward on here just from the chance it might be misinterpreted as shaming someone else's pictures. I guess if I get asked I will. That being said I'm not a professional photographer so my opinion might be somewhat skewed towards one side. 

And to be honest I feel punished for no reason from the sudden 3 a day limit so it's really putting me off from uploading a lot of my pictures.

I agree GIMP does have a rather steep learning curve but the stuff I use GIMP for is fairly easy to learn. This would be simple stuff like cropping, exposure correction, and sharpening which does not require dealing with more complex things like layers. Photoshop is easier to use and more powerful but it costs quite a bit so I suggested GIMP as a free alternative.

I have to agree with Vince on phone cameras too, if I have my DSLR on me, I'll gladly use that but I don't carry it on me all the time as unlike my phone, my DSLR doesn't really fit into my pockets. To be honest picture quality is one of things on here that bother me the least. There's a lot more on here that bother me more than picture quality.   

I can't help but feel partially responsible for this, and I'm really sorry if I am, as I had been doing a lot of out and about style photos during the weeks leading up to this, and while I do try my very best to make each photo look as good as I can (I tend to take a bunch of photos of the same light with different setting until I get the best one I can before posting it here), I'm starting to think that my standards for what's a good quality photo might not line up with everyone else standards, so I think I'll hold off from posting for the foreseeable future, especially out and about photos.

@High Intensity, Don’t feel bad, this has nothing to do with your photos. It’s the recent trend of “high class” members who think they are admins criticizing as much as they can. You take very good photos and we look forward to seeing more of them.

@High Intensity: Cree is right about everything.
This has absolutely nothing to do with you and is no way your fault.
I've enjoyed your pictures for the entire year and a half since I've been a member here.
As a matter of fact when I was brand new here your gallery is where I spent a lot of time as you have a great variety of pictures.
Afterall how do you think I found that soft pink R20 that I hadn't seen in 30 years and now proudly own thanks to your kindness
Don't let what's happening now keep you from posting new pictures.
That would be another blow to a site that's already taken a beating.

I've seen the upload limit was rise to 5 pictures, but I think 10 pictures are still the best.

I personally see nothing wrong with the reduced upload limit. Back when I used to upload pic's, I didn't do any more than 1 or 2 in a day...even if I had a bunch to upload, I'd purposely make a point to spread it out over multiple days, figuring they'd be more likely to be seen. (even disregarding the being seen part, it simply seemed better to "make it last" when I had a group of pic's (I tend to collect multiple things & take pic's of them all in the same sitting, then edit the pics/get them ready for upload - all at once. ))

Also I see nothing wrong with taking pic's of streetlights from the car(as a passenger, not the driver). I've done it with multiple & will continue to do so (you can get a halfway-decent pic from a moving car - with a camera, not a phone). ... .but they will be going on GOL only (whether taken from the car or not).

I've re-opened part of my gallery - the Christmas Lights sections since its now Holiday Season (but no more uploads period until(if) I get the site working again on the old PC again)
I eventually plan to re-open the Fluorescent section (again dependent on computer)
The streetlight section (which is pretty small anyway, & all are on GOL probably won't be)

Now if they start going through your pic's and editing and/or deleting stuff, then I'm done here!

@ xmaslightguy - Going through people's pictures and deleting them isn't going to happen. If a photo is really deemed very poor quality, whether by the team or by a report from someone, we will always try to discuss things with the member concerned. Only if said member refuses to engage with us and we all decide it really is awful, will we consider deleting it.

Photos here are always the intellectual property of the person who posted it. That has always been the case and will never change.

Recently the moderation team has observed a decline in overall photo quality.  Quite frankly this decline has been evident for several years now.  We are having discussion regarding steps we can take to make it better.  While we recognize the importance of quality, we also understand the unexpected removal of photos by the moderators is a source of frustration.

One small step we are taking at this phase is to cut the upload limit temporarily down to three five files per day.  We generally observe that members who consistently upload a high volume of pictures aren't posting the best content.  These are often unedited photos taken directly from a smartphone, with little time spent editing.  A lower limit will encourage you to review your photos and select your very best.  In addition, the lower limit will give our team more time to review the uploaded photos as they are posted.

Ultimately, we are hoping to find better solutions.  They could include coaching individual members, as well as technical solutions such as moderator pre-review & approval or the ability for members to exclude pictures they don't wish to see.

Please bear with us as we work to implement improvements.

Thank you,
Patrick

THANKS!

I have noticed that with the lower upload limit there has already been an increase in quality.