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

I don't upload too much every day but thanks for letting us know.

I prefer the lower limit.
It gives everyone a much better chance of their pictures being seen as the new additions may not be flooded by 10 uploads per member.
I've always tried to limit myself to 5 or less.
And I always double check and edit them before uploading them.

I like the idea of having moderators to review pictures.
I know of another forum site where pictures absolutely must be approved by all of the moderators before they go onto the site.
I just figured that wouldn't be possible on a site as large as LG.

I also truly like the idea for members to be able to exclude pictures that they don't want to see.

All in all it sounds like good ideas and I hope everything works out for the better.

I know this opinion may be unpopular/controversial, but I think that a “low quality” photo taken from a phone is better than none at all. Just my 2 cents.

I guess it ultimately depends on how "low quality" it is.

Why to limit the uploads to 3? I uploading good quality photos and videos with my Canon SX730HS camera and with this limit, I couldn't be able to upload photos to LG at all. Please return the upload limit to 10 as it was before.

I know this opinion may be unpopular/controversial, but I think that a “low quality” photo taken from a phone is better than none at all. Just my 2 cents.

I remember the admins deleting my relatively high quality picture of two AEG Koffer 150 suddenly turned white, only because it was captured from a vehicle.

I usually limit myself to 5 as that's the number of boxes on the upload page but I personally think 3 is a bit too low. I think 5 would be a good compromise between limiting uploads and having enough slots to upload.

Another technical solution could be to keep the uploads at 10 but only show the best 3-5 pictures (picked by the uploader) on the front page but the solutions you mentioned would be helpful too. Or just have the site only show the first 3-5 uploads I guess.

I'm not sure if I'm a fan of having moderator preapproval, I feel like it just slows everything down and puts people off from sharing pictures, especially those "spur of the moment" pictures that get posted.

I think what would help would be clear guidelines with what quality is to be expected, perhaps a post with a set of pictures showing an example of a "unacceptable" "poor" "acceptable" "good" and so on. Preferably taken by one of the admins for the express purpose of demonstrating examples of each.

Personally if it's a picture taken of something "out in the wild" especially far away, it might be acceptable to accept a lower quality compared to say pictures of your own lamps. Of course pictures that are out of focus shouldn't really be posted, nor should pictures with excessive streaking...say from a windshield. And finally for pictures with minor streaking or the subject not in the centre of the frame. Those might no be a bad quality picture per say, but I suppose some cropping would make a picture look a lot better. (If possible always shoot at the maximum resolution supported by your camera, it makes cropping a lot better).

I think this is a very bad idea. 3 is far too low.

Yes the picture quality from some people is bad, but tell them directly and give them the upload limits. Please don't punish the rest of us with this upload limit

If they choose not to listen, boot them.

Id say 50% of us use this site as we should.

Also don't go too far and start editing peoples photos for them. That can cause absolute carnage. As seen in the past on one UK lighting site that went down the toilet because of it.

The one thing i have thought though, is this site could do with a damn good clean up, admin / moderators need to go through peoples albums and look for really poor pictures. Pick them out, message the poster ajd ask if they can be replaced, re uploaded or deleted. Id be happy to help.

@Danny: I think the moderators not supposed to intervene with the picture quality. Several bad quality pictures is also good than nothing. And a site cleanup isn't a good idea.

They can intervene if they have time and get permission from the poster. Am sorry but i think a site clean up would be a very good idea. Mainly of photos that are bad quality with no rates or comments and are long forgotten about.

On the other hand  though, there is a lot of very very good quality and professional photos here from collections and lighting photographers all over the world, and personally i would like to see these easier to get to and maybe a LG online museum part set up where good quality random chosen photos would show up and refresh every time you F5 the page.

@Danny: I don't want a site cleanup. This would cause deletion of my pictures and I don't want this.

Ok people, I was up until 3am this morning in intense discussions over this issue.

First of all, I don't want to see limits any more than anyone else. However, I don't think anyone can deny that quality has slipped somewhat in recent years.  We have had more than one very high profile member threatening to leave and take all their pictures with them if the quality of uploads doesn't improve drastically very quickly, and this was an interim quick fix.

We're working on it, please give us time.

Ria 

I know this opinion may be unpopular/controversial, but I think that a “low quality” photo taken from a phone is better than none at all. Just my 2 cents.

Forgive me if I disagree. Some of the pictures I have seen have been little more than blobs in the distance through a car window. That is not better than nothing. If I want to see blobs through windows all I have to do is take a night drive. And may I ask how many more pictures of (say) an M250R2 lantern do we need..? I think everyone who is interested in them knows full well what they look like, and when I last checked we already had 857 photos of them on the gallery. Isn't that enough..?

This is me talking as a member right now, by the way, not as an admin.

My opinion is that it is far better to have just one good quality picture uploaded that time has been taken over, rather than ten pictures taken quickly and dumped onto the site. 

When several images of the same type of lantern are uploaded it can be very difficult to know which one to comment on.