As a moderator I receive a significant amount of private emails, many making suggestions about ways to improve the board. Many are questioning the value of the “Photo link” postings. In the past, board founder Bob Yegar posted many, due to criticism from some members he has withdrawn from active participation. Many times we find one poster posting many individual photos, each its own discussion. Some members (many members?) feel that the photo posts push other interesting posts off the front page, thereby killing those discussions.

As a moderator I do investigate. Using Bob’s posts as an example, I found that a significant number (about 25%) resulted in further discussions…

Recently one of our members made a comment about these postings that seemed to make sense… Many point to Ebay sites… these sites are at best transitory, and as a result these links die quickly.

At this time I would like to propose three ideas…

1) Limit links to ebay sites… particularly those auctions for photos for which the comments are for object which is the subject of the photo, not the item being auctioned which is the subject of the discussion (so, letting us know about a railroad car or car part being auctioned is probably ok… a discussion about a EBT loco photo may not be, but discussions about the failure for a photo of the EBT maybe… this is one big gray area)
2) Limit the number of photo posts by any single member to a few at a time… So as to not push the other discussions off the front page of the board
3) Consider why you are posting a link to a photo… make some comments; give us something to talk about.

Finally, what do others think about these postings… (either publicly or via p.m.) This in not a promise to do anything, but we may need to.

Thanks, Randy

My suggestion:

We have an "Interchange" and a "Classifieds" forum. Add a "Vintage Photos" forum as well.

I don not want the general nature of this forum diluted to ridiculous extremes such as steam, diesel, traction, interurban, oil-burning, coal-burning, radio-equipped, friction-bearing, etc. But the vintage photos, if I may use a print example, belong in Classic Trains while the contemporary reporting/discussions belong in Trains or Railfan & Railroad........

I second ADM's comments/suggestions. Links to something that no longer exists, for my tastes, isn't relevant to preservation. Interesting, but not relevant (and I realize I may be in the minority on that, so I rarely comment on that). At the same time, Sandy's suggestion sounds like a happy medium-and I am well aware that lots of folks here enjoy the photos.

Thanks again to the moderators and the contributors. I've enjoyed this site for quite a while and I always learn something good here.

I consider those Ebay photo links as advertising the auctions. If the links were to sites where the image was fully captioned, like the Mid-Continent Whistle on the Wind calendars, it would be totally legit.

A few picture posts a day or week are good, however a multitude in the same day pushes other discussions off the main page.

I concur on creating another forum for this purpose, if possible. And while you're at it, a "trash-talk" or "off-topic" forum which will give moderators the luxury of punting threads from this forum over to those forums when they go south :)

I would hardly criticize someone who was submitting significant amounts new content, but I concur wholeheartedly with concerns over the "flooding effect". The content is not what I personally am here for, so for me, it really clutters up the group and forces me to page down to find content I want. That's not to say it's not of value to others.

One thing I liked about Locomotive & Railway Preservation is that it didn't go in for that bygone-days schmaltz. Did I mention I don't personally find that content valuable? :)

I find it a little odd that Dave's postings tend to be eBay auctions. If he were posting his own auctions, that would be seriously fracked-up. Advertising is advertising, whether or not RyPN gets a cut. However I checked that and it seems plain Dave's interest is merely intellectual, he finds the photos browsing eBay, and he links to them because that's what copyright law requires. Fair enough. But here lies a problematic precedent: Imagine an ebay seller advertising his photos, he might look here and think RyPN is an appropriate place to do that.

Those are my thoughts on this.

I like the photo postings. Like other posts, if I am not interested I simply do not open it. If the photo will not load on my slow dial up I just cancel and move on. I see some very interesting photos I would not otherwise because I have neither the time nor ability to search them out for myself.

John Bohon

I probably click on the photo links as much as anything else here, and considering how riled up some of the threads are I find many of the photo link threads to be a welcome relief. On the other hand I understand the point about pushing things off the front page.

I do admit I am not 100% comfortable with links to eBay photos. I believe that linking directly to an eBay photo is likely a violation of eBay's terms of use. It could also, yes, be construed as advertisement.

Best solution? I agree with ADM, also. That way there is an entire section where I and others can go to browse the photos, and when I don't want to see them I have that choice as well.

I would love to see limits on promoting one's own youtube videos, particularly those where the poster may not have the rights to upload the video in the first place.

Dave Crosby

I tend to agree with Mr. Crosby here. The amount of YouTube "pimping" (to use another member's verbage) has gotten a little ridiculous around here lately.

My opinion only, your mileage may vary.

I personally like the photo links, especially when they are vintage photos of equipment or facilities that survive today. With the new board software, if you log in it shows you what posts you haven't read, so I think that the argument of them "bumping" more important topics is invalid. If you don't want to read it, just skip it, like I do of the posts of the "Youtube Pimps".

I've never felt that the ebay photo links were ads. As others have mentioned, it's not like he's promoting his own auctions. Instead I always considered them to be a form of saying "Hey, look what I found! Here's a photo that you don't see very often..."

Granted, they go away quickly, but in many cases they're rare and unusual photos not typically found elsewhere.

That said, I do agree that another forum for those posts would be good. That would seem to be the best solution.

Most of the time, it is not obvious to me from the subject line which posts are photos and which are news or discussion. I have started just ignoring all posts from certain authors, but then I always wonder if that author actually posted something I want to read. I then have to read the post anyway, which then wastes my time, returning to the original problem. Put another way, I read a lot less hard news, because of the energy lost parsing the photo posts. I might, for example, not bother to read the latest news on EL Diner Group's activities because I was too tired by the time I got to that entry. I find that I no longer make an effort to read all of the "new" activity marked in my account.

Imagine what this board would be like if we all started posting links to photos we liked? It would be unusable, and probably crash the system. Imagine maybe 100 members all posting about 5 photos a day. For those of you posting photos, would you really want to view all of my daily photo interests? I love cable cars, and would be more than pleased to start filling this forum with my cable car interests. I also have a sizable personal slide collection, including photos of all the cable street trackage pre-1982. I have some nice close-ups of the crossovers on Russian Hill and the old gripman warning plates.

Photo posting has only been mildly enjoyable because only one or two persons have been posting the bulk of the photos. Whatever success this practice has had, has been dependent on the restraint of the other members.

I enjoy the photos and would like them to stay in the Interchange. I always click on "view new posts" so as not to miss anything.

I like them too, and would miss them if they were somewhere else on the site. I think the answer is a "sticky" Photo Links thread that stays at the top of the list.

And just like every other thread, we'll know by the color when there are new links to view...

Only down side I can think of is that every so often one of the mods is going to have to go in and delete dead links. But if we all report the dead links when we see them, it should make it easier.

Stephen

Unless a photo link applies directly to preserved equipment , I'd rather not have the Discussion Board cluttered up with this stuff. This is, after Railway Preservation News, not Railway History News.

Creating a new "Vintage Photos Links" area is OK with me, but I don't know if RYPN's volunteer webmaster has time to implement this.

- Doug Debs