Flickr Ideas / Discuss

Brock    says:

This has oft been suggested, and the solution mooted was to have a personal (free?) account and one for the more arty stuff.

If you linked to the second account from the profile page of the first, then it'd still be found by your viewers if they wanted.
Posted 58 months ago. (permalink)

Ger & Mat [deleted] says:

This is how:

You make the said photos 'private' (only you can see them). Posting those photos in groups means that all members of that group can see them but no one who visits your stream.
Hope that helps?
Mat
Posted 58 months ago. (permalink)

Ger & Mat [deleted] says:

This is how II:

You can create a set with some 'private' photos in them. Then you create a guest pass - means people can see that set of photos only.
There is a group specialising in this:

www.flickr.com/groups/guestpass/

For adult content that is...
In the group you get help in how to set it up and if your stuck you might just ask in that group for help, but read topics first.

Hope that helps even more?
Mat
Originally posted 58 months ago. (permalink)
Ger & Mat edited this topic 58 months ago.

crazyinthenight says:

I'd really love to see a »hide from photostream« feature, too.

For example, I recently posted dozens of random shots of two mice I caught in my house. Although I want to show them to those interested (posted thumnail links in one particular thread on flickr), they almost render my photo stream unbrowseable. I also can't set them to private because it would be bad practice to flood a group's pool with all these images.

Another use case would be to post something like diagrams or screenshots. I don't like them to clog my photostream. I even find myself thinking about posting these images to imageshack instead and then show them in flickr posts. Quite a strange idea.
Posted 58 months ago. (permalink)

Ti.mo    says:

I also think a function like this is necessary.

There is a lot of functionality that Flickr could introduce that would increase our ability to curate our photo streams.

I use Flickr as a 'life-log', but there are shots in there that I think deserve greater attention. I use a Selected tag to keep track of them. It would be great if these could remain on the front-page, while the day to day snapshots still appear in the stream, when browsing the archives, the individual pages, etc.

I don't think that having two accounts, or the use of public/private/friends is a workable solution for greater curatorial control.
Posted 58 months ago. (permalink)

stewartpratt    says:

I want this too. There are lots of groups which I'd contribute to (such as Comic Sans and others) were it not for the fact that my photostream would get clogged with pictures of (*spit*) Comic Sans.

An obvious solution would be for a user's "home page" not to display the photostream as currently but a special "home page" set. The upload interface would include a checkbox for each image marked "add to my home page set" which would probably default to checked.

Then, everything is in the photostream, which saves having to create a higher-level bucket for organising pictures (without which non-photostreamed images would have no home), but users have control over their "photostream" (home) page.

I don't think any of the workarounds are good enough to be viable, to be honest.
Posted 58 months ago. (permalink)

.Purf says:

I was about to open a topic for this, but *bump* will do.

I also want something like that we have the possibility to mark an album/a set as "exclude from photostream". Yes, it would be that simple :) Previous posters have already given examples when this would come handy. Another one: Most viewers want to see photos and I mostly want to show photos, that's why I use flickr. Alas, the current impression someone gets when visiting my stream is not photographic at all since there are 5 pages of video/vjstills that I find too "special interest" to have them in my stream.
Posted 57 months ago. (permalink)

veramilo says:

I would also LOVE to be able to hide photos from the photostream but not from sets. But I would want to hide individual photos in the set from the photostream rather than an entire set.

This way I could "announce" new sets or updates right in my photostream instead of I'd do this by keeping just ONE photo that is in the set (probably the latest) unhidden from the photostream. I would include a link to that set in it's caption for anyone browsing my photostream who may want to see more. And the set itself might still be noticed sometime by anyone who didn't see the caption.

I don't want separate accounts because I want the set to be available to anyone viewing my photo stream -- if they are interested.

The group idea is a little better but it has another set of issues involving security and convenience to casual browsers.
Posted 50 months ago. (permalink)

bradwn says:

Let's keep this alive! We need this feature!

I just posted a bunch of quick shots of the house I am buying, and they are admittedly crappy photos. I would rather not have most casual browsers seeing them, I have been sending the direct link to the set to interested parties anyway.
Posted 50 months ago. (permalink)

iansand    says:

bradwn You may want to keep it alive, but, as it contrary to a fundamental principle of how the flickr founders see flickr as working, you will be flogging a dead horse.
Posted 50 months ago. (permalink)

Calle Gothnier says:

The option to hide a set from the main photostream wouldn't hurt. But if that's so fundamentally impossible, I'll cite the FAQ:

"If you want to change the order, you can edit the posting dates for photos."

Great. But why can't I do that on a batch of photos?

The main problem, which seem to be pretty common, is that sometimes you upload a set containing pics that you don't want to see in your main photostream. Changing the date one-by-one for a full set is pretty awkward.

So. Would it be possible to enable batch editing of the Posting Date in Organizr?
Posted 48 months ago. (permalink)

ColleenM    says:

Calle Gothnier "Changing the date one-by-one for a full set is pretty awkward."

It's meant to be. Flickr's core design principle is around a photo-blog. Sets are their answer for "I want people to see things the way I want them".

They are not likely to make it easier to undermine the design principle that makes Flickr unique.
Posted 48 months ago. (permalink)

lostwithin says:

This would be very useful when using Groups that offer critique. You could then make the suggested edits and share them with the group without posting many copies of the same image with small edits to your stream.
Posted 48 months ago. (permalink)

ColleenM    says:

lostwithin "You could then make the suggested edits and share them with the group without posting many copies of the same image with small edits to your stream."


You can do that now. Simply make the images private, and post them to the group.

So far, I haven't seen anything being requested that cannot be done right now, by using the private-friends, private-family, and private-me only settings.
Originally posted 48 months ago. (permalink)
ColleenM edited this topic 48 months ago.

hrw worcester says:

There are a few reasons I sort of wish for this function on a limited basis, though I really like the general blog-like style of photostreams.

1. For my OWN viewing pleasure: I use Flickr as a backup (an *additional* back up beyond backing up locally, don't y'all freak on me ;-)), and am uploading a month's worth of photos at a time, every photo taken that month... which is usually *many* pages worth. I mark them all as private since this is just for my own purposes, but it's a pain in the neck for me to browse my own stream. (And yes, I know there's another thread around here asking to be able to browse your own stream as if you weren't logged in, which would be helpful as long as everything else that shows up when I'm logged in still did, just not the private photos.)

2. Occasionally I upload a lot of photos of one event that most people won't be interested in seeing in full detail, but some people might. An example is a local amusement park I recently posted several photos of - my own contacts didn't view most of those photos as far as I can tell, but they get most of their hits from people searching Flickr for photos of that park. So, simply marking them as friends and family or putting them in a set and using a guest pass isn't practical - they wouldn't then be visible to the majority of people who actually have viewed them [I suppose I *could* put one or two images up as public and make the rest private, and offer to send a guest pass to someone who was really interested, but that's extra work for me and the viewer that I'm not really in the mood for]).

3. Sharing photos from an event with non-Flickr members, who won't bother to join a Flickr, much less a group. Even among my tech savvy friends, some aren't keen on Flickr (the horrors!), or just don't want to spend the time to figure it all out, and just want a quick link to see publicly available photos... depending on the event, that may mean tons of photos clogging the first 20 pages of my photostream...

(And haven't we all been on the other side of that, trying to view someone's photos when they had about 200 from one school play or something? And you keep jumping back 3 pages at a time, wondering just why the kindergarteners were performing War and Peace anyhow?!)


I guess what I'd most like is a way to have the "face photo" of a set show up in the photostream, linked to the set, but not *have* to put all the other photos "in the stream" to have them be public.

Or maybe an optional main "landing" page before the full photostream that you could designate one photo per day to show on (One photo from June 17th, One from June 16th, each with a note underneath like a set has showing "X photos uploaded on this day"), with the second page being the beginning of the actual photostream where ALL the photos reside.

Because I definitely see the benefit of having all of someone's photos easy to view quickly and the most recent quick to spot, without having to dig through sets, but I also see the benefit of having a more robust example of someone's work on their front page than just the most recent 5-10 photos often gives.
Posted 48 months ago. (permalink)

jooliargh    says:

I also think it would be very useful to be able to hide certain images from the photostream. For instance, if I want to post the occasional screenshot to use in a blog post somewhere else. It isn't a photo so I don't want it showing in my photostream, and surely if Flickr are going to be purist about the photo-blog ethos then it would make sense to exclude screenshots from the photostream? (I guess at some point they made a commercial decision to deviate from the purist approach when they allowed screenshots at all, so why not for this?)

Similarly, if I want to use an image (photo or otherwise) somewhere else, e.g. for an item I'm offering on Freecycle, I don't want it on my photostream. Yes, I could comment it with "this is my wardrobe for offer on Freecycle" for context, but why would anyone want to see a picture of my wardrobe except linked from a site about getting rid of my wardrobe?

If the photo-blog ideal is so important to the Flickr founders, how about if they put a limit on how many items we could hide from the photostream? 1% of my total images would be plenty for me, and would allow a little leeway for the occasional left-field image I want to make public, without losing the sense of being a photographic account of my life.
Originally posted 47 months ago. (permalink)
jooliargh edited this topic 47 months ago.

ColleenM    says:

If it's just an occasional image that you want to hide, I've found that editing the date posted back to the day I joined Flickr works just fine.

The tail end of my photostream is pretty crappy, but it's an easy workaround for the occasional image. And not many people go all the way to the end.
Originally posted 47 months ago. (permalink)
ColleenM edited this topic 47 months ago.

Keith Achorn says:

This thread is exactly what I've been looking for, but sadly it looks like this feature is not active (yet?). I too have the occasional picture I upload to link from outside flickr that I don't want to show up in my photostream. But this is not my primary reason for wanting an 'Exclude from Photostream' function.

Right now I'm setting up a system of splitting my travel sets into "Top Photos" and "All Photos". This way, I can send a link out with my favorite trip shots, but if someone wants to see more, they can see the remainder. For reasons I don't want to go into here, I don't want to set the un-featured shots as private and use a guestpass. But I only want the "Top Shots" to show up in my photostream. An exclusion for the second set is EXACTLY what I need, and I hope such a feature will turn up soon. Thanks too everyone for keeping this thread alive.
Posted 47 months ago. (permalink)

Rippie: Contra Censura!    says:

well, the other fix is a group that acts as your set, and you invite people to that. your stream never figures into it at all.

remember, the stream is where your pics "live." everything else, sets included, are links to those images... you got it, in your stream. you can move them, as Colleen mentions, but the stream is the fundamental backbone of functionality on flickr. without that, flickr is not flickr.
Posted 47 months ago. (permalink)

Joe_B    says:

I'm looking for something similar to this "hide", but not exactly...

The basic use case here:

1) upload "series" of photos - These might be same subject/differenet angles..
2) Show the best version as the photo in the photostream
3) allow access to the other angles via a set to anyone

I don't want to bore the general public with variations..

In past i simply make them private (from everyone but me).

But it seems reasonable that the public should be able to access the others by drilling down into that "series" top-level photo?

Could this be accomplished by having that photo part of set and the Set has an option for "all photos public?" that overrides hiding the photo in photostream?

Did i explain that idea well enough?
Posted 47 months ago. (permalink)

Mekha says:

I am agreeing with all points here. My specific request is to be able to 'hide' my photostream/sets from the groups I belong to. I want to show only select photos from my sets to the group members. The rest of my photos I would rather not share with a group. e.g. I may want them to see certain travel photos that I think are interesting, but not be able to enter my sets or photostreams to see those wierd close-ups I took of myself or my other family/friends only photos.

The 'hide photostream from group members' would be an awesome feature. Yes, I could set up another free account, but then I'd have to upload and track my selected pictures twice and I'd rather manage it all from one account.
Posted 47 months ago. (permalink)

ColleenM    says:

Mekha

You can do that. Use the privacy levels and make your family/friends photos private-family or private-friends. That keeps anyone else from seeing them.

When you post a photo to a group, the group members will not be able to see your other photos.

Right now, anyone on the internet can see your family/friends photos. It wouldn't make any sense to let the whole world see them, but hide them from certain people because they were members of a group on Flickr. It would only work when they were logged in to their Flickr account anyway. If they weren't logged in, they could just cruise your photostream like the rest of us can.
Originally posted 47 months ago. (permalink)
ColleenM edited this topic 47 months ago.

Mekha says:

Thanks for your post. I am aware of the privacy levels. I have most photos marked as private (family/friends only) and those are the ones from my photostream I do not want to share with group members. If I post a photo for a group I'd mark it as public. The response from Flickr Customer Care states that group members can also see my private 'family/friends only' photos because I've shared a few 'public' photos from the set, meaning group members can choose to see the whole set the photo came from. Maybe I am confused?

Hello,
>
> Thank you for contacting Flickr Customer Care.
>
> In the group pool will appear the photo you have posted,
> but the group
> will have access to all your photostream. If you share a
> photo that you
> marked as private with a group you are a member of, it's
as
> if other
> group members have full access to that photo. They can
add
> comments,
> notes, and tags. The photo isn't displayed for people who
> aren't members
> of the group.
>
> Thank you again for contacting us. If you have any other
> questions,
> please feel free to reply to this email.
> Regards,
>
>
> Marta
> Flickr Customer Care
Posted 47 months ago. (permalink)

Wooble says:

Yes. If your photos are Public, anyone can see them, regardless of how they got to them. To me, it doesn't make sense to change this. That's what "public" means. If you don't want everyone to be able to see them, don't make them public.
Posted 47 months ago. (permalink)

zyrcster    says:

The response from Flickr Customer Care states that group members can also see my private 'family/friends only' photos because I've shared a few 'public' photos from the set, meaning group members can choose to see the whole set the photo came from.

Err, no, that's not what they are saying or how it works.

if you have a set, and photos A,B,C, D are Private, and you share D with the group (whether D is public or not, doesn't matter), the group members will only be able to see D. If they visit your photo page, they will see that it is in a set called "Whatever" but they will not have access to the other private photos in that set, unless you add them to the group. They will be able to see any other public photos in your set or stream, of course.
Posted 47 months ago. (permalink)

ColleenM    says:

Mekha "If you share a photo that you marked as private with a group you are a member of, it's as if other group members have full access to that photo."

Their response says nothing about sets or your other private photos. Their response only talks about the photo you have posted in the group.

Your public photos are visible to anyone on the internet. They don't even have to sign in to Flickr.
Originally posted 47 months ago. (permalink)
ColleenM edited this topic 47 months ago.

Mekha says:

Okay, I get it now. Believe me, I do understand the public vs. private issue (I may be dense but I'm not THAT dense), but that is not what I was asking about. I had misunderstood that group members would be able to see all private photos in my set when I posted only the ONE photo to share from that set. Now I know that is not the case. All is well in Flickr-land.
Posted 47 months ago. (permalink)

kapowaz    says:

I'd like to add my tuppence to this discussion. Various suggestions have been made (make these photos private and invite people to view them, create a separate account) but neither of these are good solutions in my case. Basically I like to upload screenshots from videogames and Flickr is the ideal place to store these; however I don't want these showing up in my photostream as for the most part my friends aren't interested in seeing these and it reduces the 'interestingness' of my photosets as a result.

Making them private and then sending out guest passes isn't suitable, as I don't know all the individuals who want to see the photos, and guest passes are more suitable for sets than individual photos.

Creating another account is a ridiculous excuse in my opinion as you lose the benefits of being a Pro account holder (so, I'd suddenly be subject to upload restrictions unless I pay for a second Pro account), as well as losing the advantages of any upload tools (I use Quicksilver on my Mac to upload a lot of images; I'd have to start switching user for uploading this way).

In any event I would argue that my situation represents a different scenario to one of those mentioned above. I'm not trying to hide photos from the photostream due to issues of privacy, but more or relevancy. Flickr already has a policy of not including results from accounts with mostly screenshots in public searches, which suggests they agree with the concept of relevancy. They just need to add the ability to allow us to voluntarily exclude these photos.
Posted 46 months ago. (permalink)

♥ shhexy corin ♥ says:

Making them private and then sending out guest passes isn't suitable, as I don't know all the individuals who want to see the photos, and guest passes are more suitable for sets than individual photos.

So, just put them all in a set and post a link to the guest pass for that set. Assuming you don't care who sees the screenshot s, then a guest pass is fine.

Some Flickr users distribute guest passes in order for non-Flickr members to see moderate content.
Originally posted 46 months ago. (permalink)
♥ shhexy corin ♥ edited this topic 46 months ago.

Wooble says:

Flickr already has a policy of not including results from accounts with mostly screenshots in public searches,

That policy vanished when content filters were introduced. Flag your screenshots as screenshots and the rest of your stream will show up just fine in searches that don't include screenshots (and everyone will show up in searches for all content). NIPSA for posting screenshots or art is a thing of the distant past.
Posted 46 months ago. (permalink)

ColleenM    says:

kapowaz "hey just need to add the ability to allow us to voluntarily exclude these photos. "

Set your search filters to exclude screenshots. Very simple. Go here and make sure you have unchecked the "Include screenshots in search results" box.
Posted 46 months ago. (permalink)

Anita Scharf [deleted] says:

At the beginning of this discussion, Erica Marshall said, "I'd love the ability to hide photos from my photostream, but have them publicly available in a set."

THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO DO

I have a lot of photos that I don't really want in my main photo stream but that I would like to share with public viewers who are interested in a particlar set of pictures. In the past, I've taken several shots of soccer games, theatrical performances, and other such events and would like to be able to share the photos with the participants and their parents, but at the same time, I don't want all those shots cluttering up my main page.

Please add this feature!!
Originally posted 43 months ago. (permalink)
Anita Scharf edited this topic 43 months ago.

Arty Smokes (deaf mute) says:

ascharf wrote: "At the beginning of this discussion, Erica Marshall said... blah blah blah".

And shortly afterwards, various workarounds were suggested. Did you not read them?
Posted 43 months ago. (permalink)

Anita Scharf [deleted] says:

Yes, I read them, but none of them actually help public viewers who are not flickr members.
Posted 43 months ago. (permalink)

Rippie: Contra Censura!    says:

then they should avail themselves of a free account, which costs nothing, and has no investment. have i indicated the minimal expense involved (none)?

flickr works best for people on flickr. the stream is the integral heart of the site, the backbone that makes the features work. moving things around or removing them makes the site not work correctly, as flickr has evolved.

there are ways to keep your pics available only to those you wish to share them without them being visible, except to them, in your stream.
Posted 43 months ago. (permalink)

Anita Scharf [deleted] says:

It's clear to me that what I and others have been asking for will not likely be implemented on Flickr any time soon....or if ever, but I'm just curious. Is the reluctance to allow users the ablity post photos that are public in sets, but merely hidden from the main stream, based on a flickr philosophy or programming issue?
Originally posted 43 months ago. (permalink)
Anita Scharf edited this topic 43 months ago.

20metal8 [deleted] says:

Sorry to dredge this back up, but I also think it is likely a programming issue.

Reason being: Many of you state it is because of the "philosphy" of Flickr. Really? Because - since we can already hide things from the photostream a number of ways (private being the easiest), I don't really see how having the function to eliminate items easily from the photostream is really going to make things worse for Flickr.

In fact - making photostreams more uniform and beautiful to look at, while increasing the user-friendliness (making free accounts and keeping track of them, or marking sets private and having to hand out invite urls - are NOT user friendly) would make Flickr much nicer to use, and uniform photostreams much easier to create and handle - sucking in new viewers.

The easier Flickr is for people to use and make the way they want, the more people will use Flickr. It's as simple as that.
Posted 42 months ago. (permalink)

Will Boyce    says:

This would be an incredibly useful feature. I often want to upload a lot of photos into a set, and have only a select few appear in my photostream.

I find the "use two accounts" workaround to be pretty horrible, to be honest.

sandaili: definitely not a programming issue. This would be an insanely easy feature to implement (leaving me to believe it never will be implemented, sadly).
Posted 41 months ago. (permalink)

FlyButtafly    says:

This would be an insanely easy feature to implement ...

Says everyone with an idea who's not privvy to the internal workings of flickr.

Fact is, *everywhere* the photo "is" (groups, sets, in a thread somewhere), they all lead back to the singular photo page within the stream. I can't see any way that a photo can be hid from the stream and still exist everywhere else.
Originally posted 41 months ago. (permalink)
FlyButtafly (a group admin) edited this topic 41 months ago.

Tom Holub    says:

Fly: This is exactly what happens if you have a contact who is not Friends/Family and you mark a photo Friends/Family; they see the public photos in your stream but not the ones you've marked Friends/Family. It would be trivial (to the extent that anything is trivial to code) to add another status, "Me", that would show the photo only to the owner unless it's added to a set or group.

The work-arounds suggested (some of which I use) are really terrible and awkward.
Posted 41 months ago. (permalink)

ColleenM    says:

Here's what staff have said about getting another level of contacts/privacy

". Adding more types of contact is a common request, and is surprisingly hard for us to do. "
flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/87088/#reply570131
Posted 41 months ago. (permalink)

Kristof Van Landschoot    says:

Just adding my vote: I'd like to have this feature too! For the same reasons as Will Boyce above mentioned
Posted 41 months ago. (permalink)

christophercraig    says:

For what it's worth, any of the upload tools should be able to set date_posted to some time in the past if they wanted to. I wrote my own python tool to upload stuff I previously had on other web systems and it's a trivial API call to fake the posted date.

(I would like to have this feature, but I've faked it reasonably well)
Posted 41 months ago. (permalink)

GlynH says:

Let me add my vote for what IMHO is an indispensible feature.

Along with the photos I want to be displayed on my Flickr page I have also created a folder called Hosted which is what I want to use to upload pictures or screenshots that I wish to link to from email, websites, forums etc. but that I do not want to be visible on my profile.

This works great up to a point as I mark everything I upload into the Hosted folder as private so those who log onto my Flickr page do not see tham at all.

However when I log on I of course can see them plastered all over my Photostream which totally ruins the look & feel.

I would love an option to make these 'invisible' on my Photostream but obviously accessible when I go into the Hosted folder please?

An option to mark the complete folder invisible to photostream or hide from Photostream maybe?

There seem to be many requests for this feature so how about it Flickr?

Thanks & regards,
-=Glyn=-
Posted 40 months ago. (permalink)

larryzou@    says:

I also think it would be very useful to be able to hide certain images from the photostream. For instance, if I want to post the occasional screenshot to use in a blog post somewhere else. It isn't a photo so I don't want it showing in my photostream, and surely if Flickr are going to be purist about the photo-blog ethos then it would make sense to exclude screenshots from the photostream? (I guess at some point they made a commercial decision to deviate from the purist approach when they allowed screenshots at all, so why not for this?)

Similarly, if I want to use an image (photo or otherwise) somewhere else, e.g. for an item I'm offering on Freecycle, I don't want it on my photostream. Yes, I could comment it with "this is my wardrobe for offer on Freecycle" for context, but why would anyone want to see a picture of my wardrobe except linked from a site about getting rid of my wardrobe?

If the photo-blog ideal is so important to the Flickr founders, how about if they put a limit on how many items we could hide from the photostream? 1% of my total images would be plenty for me, and would allow a little leeway for the occasional left-field image I want to make public, without losing the sense of being a photographic account of my life.
Posted 39 months ago. (permalink)

ColleenM    says:

larryzou@

If you have so few images that need to be hidden, why not simply change their upload date to put them at the back of your stream?
Posted 39 months ago. (permalink)

Tom Holub    says:

ColleenM: Because that's a lame hack for what should be basic functionality.
Posted 39 months ago. (permalink)

Michael Smith    says:

Hiding stuff from the photostream is not difficult. Mark it 'Private' and it will be hidden from everyone except you.
Posted 39 months ago. (permalink)

Tom Holub    says:

Michael Smith: Your responses would be more helpful if you read the discussion first. Start with the first post, where the author is looking for a way to hide photos from the photostream but have them available in sets, which setting the photo to private does not allow. And before you mention guest passes, read the rest of the thread, where there are a number of messages which explain why guest passes are not a reasonable work-around in many cases.
Posted 39 months ago. (permalink)

seannarae    says:

its an entirely subjective statement, that the ability to manipulate the order of the Photostream should be basic functionality.

That you have any ability to achieve what you want is whats important here.

And not just hacks either. H4ppier Photos is an outstanding tool, blessed by the Flickr Gods themselves, that does just what you want. For your entire Photostream!
Posted 39 months ago. (permalink)

ColleenM    says:

Tom Holub

If it were a basic functionality, I suspect Flickr staff would have noticed by now that it was missing.
Posted 39 months ago. (permalink)

Tom Holub    says:

ColleenM: Well, you may be willing to assume that Flickr is in its a priori perfect and final form, and therefore anything that's not implemented must not be important, but I'm not. If you believe Flickr is perfect, I'm not sure why you're hanging around in the Flickr Ideas group, which is for ideas on how to improve it.
Posted 39 months ago. (permalink)

ColleenM    says:

The suggestion dates back more than 4 years
www.flickr.com/groups/flickrideas/discuss/72157600044150580/

While you believe it "should be basic functionality", the fact that Flickr staff have not implemented it in that time period would suggest that they don't share your opinion.

The basic design function that gives Flickr a unique competitive advantage is the photoblog. From a business perspective it makes no sense to remove that basic feature, even for a small subset of Flickr users. They already have competitors who offer such a function, and yet that alternative design does not seem to attract as many customers as Flickr's choice.

Why should Flickr emulate a less successful model?
Posted 39 months ago. (permalink)

Tom Holub    says:

No one's talking about removing the photoblog; we're talking about giving people more options about how to use it. Blog tools don't require you to share every random bit of text you generate in the same way; they allow you to choose what goes on the blog and what you IM or email or post on your web page. A blog is less useful if every twitter is on it, and twitter is less useful if entire blog posts go to it 140 characters at a time.

Some people use flickr for two different things; general photoblogging/community, and sharing specific pictures with specific groups of people. Both of these are legitimate uses of flickr, but the second use clutters up the first use, so those of us who use Flickr both ways would like to be able to share snapshot-type images with friends, without making the photostream look like a whole bunch of snapshot-type images.

I might direct you to the "About Flickr" page, which reads (excerpted):


Flickr...has two main goals:

1. We want to help people make their content available to the people who matter to them...To do this, we want to get photos and video into and out of the system in as many ways as we can...Flickr is the WD-40 that makes it easy to get photos or video from one person to another in whatever way they want.

2. We want to enable new ways of organizing photos and video...

Flickr continues to evolve in myriad ways, all of which are designed to make it easier and better.


All of that sounds perfectly aligned with this suggestion of having a way to hide some images from the photostream without making them private, and none of it sounds aligned with forcing people to change the upload date on their images, or use two different accounts, or any of the other work-arounds suggested here.
Posted 39 months ago. (permalink)

chickentender™ (Eyewanders Photography)    says:

Hear hear! This thread is long and well worded. I simply want to three-hundred-and-thirty-second this idea. I don't believe anyone here wishes to denigrate Flickr in any way, shape or form via this suggestion/idea. I believe it is an *excellent* one and would more than welcome it.
Posted 39 months ago. (permalink)

Kiyohiko Daniel Takeuchi says:

I also support this idea!
When I make guest passes for my private photos, whoever uses my guest pass link, will be able to see those private photos right in my photostream, making my public photos, very hard to be reached...
If I was able to chose which photos appear, and which don't in the photostream, that'd be great =)
Posted 38 months ago. (permalink)

Rippie: Contra Censura!    says:

that's what sets are for. send links directly to the set you want people to see.
Posted 38 months ago. (permalink)

Arty Smokes (deaf mute) says:

I'd like the ability to hide other people's photos from my eyes. Flickr should implement this idea without further ado.
Posted 38 months ago. (permalink)

Tom Holub    says:

Rippie: Sending people a guest pass is what I do now. But not everyone is on the right mailing list at the right time, and no one wants to store every email I send them which has a guest pass just in case two years from now they might want to go back and find a picture I took of them. They can always find my sets, but they can't always find my guest passes.
Posted 38 months ago. (permalink)

MAZERA    says:

This topic has been oustanding for over 2 years. Simply, I want to remove photos from my photostream for 2 reasons:

1) so that other people don't see them, and
2) so that I don't have to see them every time I log onto flickr.

I want to be able to still have the photos uploaded to my account, however.

The only solutions that I have seen for this are the following:

1) after photos have been uploaded, on each photo's individual page you can change the upload date.
2) you can use the old uploader - www.flickr.com/photos/organize/?old=1 - to batch amend the upload date.

What 1 & 2 above will do is keep the photos in your photostream, but will move them all the way to the end. You can then remove them from others seeing them by making the photos private.

Neither of the options above is particularly convenient. I want a batch option in the new uploader that lets me put newer uploads to the back of my photostream.

This exact issue was literally raised 3 years ago (you can search other threads), and I'm not really sure why Flickr hasn't appropriately addressed this yet...
Posted 37 months ago. (permalink)

Patrick Costello    says:

This is not a forum for raising "issues". Members make suggestions for things they think will improve the site. Ultimately Flickr decides if those suggestions have merit, are affordable, fit the site design ethos etc.
So after three years you might conclude that either Flickr doesn't like this idea or perhaps it is on the list with a very low priority.
Posted 37 months ago. (permalink)

Reservetwo38 says:

I really like the idea of hiding photos from my photostream but still containing them in a set!

Would enjoy seeing this happen so I can be a part of groups like "365 days" and not see my photostream filled with self portraits.
Posted 37 months ago. (permalink)

Raymond Parsons    says:

I'd like to see this feature implemented as well. I realize that Flickr is not designed to be a virtual hard drive and it's more about the here and now, but please consider changing this line of thinking. I love the idea of being able to upload a photo into a set that I discovered some amount of time later (relative to when I uploaded photos taken around the same time) without having it show up in my stream.
Posted 37 months ago. (permalink)

mutantpop    says:

I'd love this too.

It's obvious Flickr is used differently by different people - and even differently at different times by the same person. Some people use it as a social site, some people use it as a photodump/screenshot/art site, some people use it as a place to promote their fine art photography or careers...not all of these categories are exclusive, and will place different demands on the architecture of the site.

So to say 'it's not the ethos' is bullshit. Ditto 'hard to program' - if your paying users want to use your site in a way you didn't expect but after 4 years (!) are still asking for it, and it doesn't break the site for another group (ie. it's optional) I say go for it...I suspect from my little database and web dev knowledge it wouldn't be that hard.

Come on Flickr! Do it!
Posted 35 months ago. (permalink)

Rippie: Contra Censura!    says:

aside from undermining the core functionality of flickr, which has been discussed many times by many people in many threads, those who use their accounts to market or promote their careers will find themselves shown the door. commercial use of flickr in any way is not permitted. warn those contacts of yours who do this. they will be deleted.

images reside in the photostream. the contents of sets are links. without images, the links go nowhere.
Posted 35 months ago. (permalink)

Lú_    says:

Rippie: Contra Censura! wrote

those who use their accounts to market or promote their careers will find themselves shown the door.

clickykbd    says:

Trying desperately to get this one back on topic... ;-)

There is yet another workaround no one has mentioned.
You can modify the "posted date" of content you don't want to be stream-interrupting. Granted it's still in the stream somewhere... but you can push it down to the last page if you like.
Posted 35 months ago. (permalink)

Stéfan    says:

I would love to see this implemented.

Until they do it, there's a workaround I'm using : I upload the pics I dont want to show up in my recent public additions with a private status, then I manually change the upload date to a past date. This way, the picture gets lost in the old pictures.
Posted 34 months ago. (permalink)

anw.fr    says:

This would be very useful to exclude some pics from mainstream (maybe in privacy options).
For example I just uploaded a pic in order to include it in a comment, as a reply for an old picture.
I didn't want it to appear in my stream, but I have no way to prevent it. If I set the new pic as private, then it won't be displayed in the comment.
Posted 34 months ago. (permalink)

ColleenM    says:

anw.fr

You might find that changing the upload date to the first day you joined Flickr will move it to the back of your photostream and make it sufficiently "hidden".
Posted 34 months ago. (permalink)

glyphin ( Bunderful )    says:

"I'd love the ability to hide photos from my photostream" sounds good to me, too.

I am aware of the various ways people do this now, and , I'll probably get a free account at some point. But what I would really like... and I know this is nutty ... is, a secondary version of my paid, Pro account, included as a feature of Pro accounts. I could have my same log in, stats ,info ect, and a place for all those 'special interest' photos. Kind of like how a house has a living room, and then closets, or kitchen drawers, ect.

For all that utilitarian stuff you need but don't really want to display.
Posted 34 months ago. (permalink)

Barmo    says:

This is hilarious, I started the very same discussion just yesterday with the same idea, and the very same people basically two, seem just al-lfired bent to disabuse the idea. Why is that? Why not just let people ask question and get a response from the flickr team? Obviously more then one person wants to expand the capabilities of flickr.
Posted 34 months ago. (permalink)

Patrick Costello    says:

>>Why not just let people ask question and get a response from the flickr team?

The way this forum works is that a member raises an idea and other members express their opinion - either pro or anti. If Flickr likes the idea it doesn't really matter how many dissenting voices are raised (c/f the introduction of video to the site).
But don't hold your breath waiting for a staff response in this forum. They are few and far between.
As was noted earlier in the thread, the idea was first mooted over three years ago. Personally I'd take that as a sign that any change to the core photostream function is way down the priority list. But then I know as much as you regarding what's in the pipeline. Flickr rarely pre-announce changes. We could come in tomorrow and find the photostream is history :-)
Posted 34 months ago. (permalink)

Rippie: Contra Censura!    says:

highly unlikely. that would be akin to exxon not selling petroleum based products, and flickr would use its highly successful competitive edge.
Posted 34 months ago. (permalink)

Tom Holub    says:

Allowing photos to be private only from the photostream would hardly constitute making the photostream history. In fact, it would have no more effect on the photostream than the existing functionality to make a photo private, which Flickr managed to implement despite Rippie's constant harping.
Posted 34 months ago. (permalink)

Barmo    says:

"akin to exxon not selling petroleum based products"

Again a now typical distortion of the concept, If you must indulge in this kind of polemic, it's more akin to those who swore that computers would cost everyone their jobs or that the sky is falling.
Posted 34 months ago. (permalink)

Rippie: Contra Censura!    says:

what you clearly don't understand is that making a pic private means it does NOT trigger all the social aspects of flickr except for those who have permission to view it. the pic exists in the stream. you may set a privacy level. what you set on it affects how it appears in the stream and sets. there are not separate files for pics in sets, since sets contain no pics: they contain links.

my analogies are reasonable, and you are missing the point intentionally.

you don't come to flickr and then demand that it be dA. you go to dA and use dA for what it is, and flickr for what it is. this is not a tough concept.

don't like vanilla ice cream? don't buy it and then complain it doesn't taste like chocolate. go buy chocolate.

this is a very complex thing to do in this kind of app (flickr) and involves a fundamental change in design from the backend. it would involve having replicated files to serve separate display functions in the stream, sets, etc. it also would mean that your comments would be split out between them.

one "tiny little" feature request that's described as "so easy to do," rare is either.

the only suggestion that is reasonable is ShellyS's one, to move more emphasis to the sets on the landing page, but the stream really cannot go anywhere logistically without flickr having to relaunch as something else.

every little change has enormous consequences on a site like this, aside from the "de-flickring" of flickr it would create visually and functionally.
Posted 34 months ago. (permalink)

Tom Holub    says:

This proposal does not require any replicated files, and it doesn't fundamentally change the nature of Flickr. All it requires is a different permission setting--"Private in photostream only." You can add a private photo to a group, and everyone can see it, comment on it, or fave it there; the proposal is that you should be able to add a private photo to a set and have everyone be able to see it there.
Posted 34 months ago. (permalink)

Barmo    says:

Well Ripple, you are the pot calling the kettle black. You seem to be the one intentionally refuse to understand what some of us are saying.

One more time, please read carefully so you will understand. My proposal has changed since I first suggested it on another thread. Tom this may be pertinent to your suggestion as well. Because basically, people like Ripple and a couple of others seem to say that actually making pictures private but still visible in sets (something I'd love) is not possible because of the way the photostream functions. That may or may not be true, but if it is, then it would make it very difficult to implement that idea.
Another individual suggested what could be done is to simply give the account holder the option of making the first page of the stream a sets only view. This view already actually exists, it's just not available as a first page option. That's the change I've been advocating, though your version would be aces if it could be done.

So back to Ripple:

1. When on an account holder's photostream first page, you presently can click on "sets" and the "photo blog" look of the photostream is changed to sets only.

2. Presently you can change the look of your first photostream page in several ways. 1st page photos bigger with fewer the first page etc.

3. All that is required then, is to add the choice to make the 1st page of your photo stream sets only. The capability already exists, you can click on sets and all your sets are there. There is nothing new to be created. There is nothiing being taken away. The photostream is visible starting page 2 of your photostream, or by clicking photostream.

It's just an added function, it's not taking away the photostream.

So stop insisting otherwise. And perhaps, it's not fair to assume that your opinion reflects the official opinion of flickr or that you speak for the best interest of flickr because as far as I'm concerned, your just another flickr user like myself and any other who has thoughts on a topic.
Originally posted 34 months ago. (permalink)
Barmo edited this topic 34 months ago.

Rippie: Contra Censura!    says:

watch flickr for a few years and you'll get it. the stream is what is always there up front. you have to move to other things from there, because flickr is based on newness. since you can't grasp that, it's pointless to continue. if you want the site to be another site, join the other site.

removing the stream is not an improvement to a site that is all about the photostream. it's intentionally there when you land on an account.

if you don't like that, send people, as you've been suggested, the link to your sets page. that way you are happy and the site does not have to be completely redesigned.

"private except in sets?" the pic files exist in one place. you apply an attribution to the file and it is on the file.

seriously, i don't eat meat. i'm not going to go into a Morton's and start gasping that they serve meat and i don't want meat, and make it so there's no meat.

if it's a meat restaurant, guess what? that is what they do.

the function you are asking for has enormous cascading effects on the site, and eliminates flickr uniqueness and competitiveness. other sites are trying to emulate the flickr stream.

i wonder why that would be?
Posted 34 months ago. (permalink)

Tom Holub    says:

"the pic files exist in one place. you apply an attribution to the file and it is on the file."

Right, and then you add it to a group, and people looking at the group pool can see it. There's no technical reason why people looking at a set couldn't see it. It wouldn't break the Flickr paradigm, it wouldn't constitute getting rid of the photostream, it wouldn't require a ton of programming. It's a feature that a large number of people would like to see, for a number of well-articulated reasons.


This is my last post on this subject to Rippie, who for some reason thinks he's the official Department of No for Flickr, despite having no real knowledge about the back end of Flickr, or of any discussions Flickr might have had about features. I will just reiterate the point I made earlier in this thread, which is that "About Flickr" says:



...we want to get photos and video into and out of the system in as many ways as we can...Flickr is the WD-40 that makes it easy to get photos or video from one person to another in whatever way they want.

Flickr continues to evolve in myriad ways, all of which are designed to make it easier and better.

Originally posted 34 months ago. (permalink)
Tom Holub edited this topic 34 months ago.

Barmo    says:

Have watched, and been a pro member for a few years now.

Problem is, you are not the one who decides what the menu ought to be. Who assigned you that task, so why keep up the pretense the stream need be the first thing anyone sees. You have no evidence of any kind other then projected fear that flickr uniqueness and "competitvenss" wold be compromised in any way at all. Why are you so concerned about those issues anyways? Flickr is a thriving site, so is photo.net and others. If it is to remain so, than it behooves it to expand capability. The way some of us are suggesting is a way forward that does nothing at all to the so called "core functionality" of the photostream.

It seems though, by this discussion, however, I can see that competitiveness is very important to you.

As you seem to obtusely keep on failing to get is the photostream isn't going anywhere. It can be the first page as it is now, or the second page at the Photographers' choice. It still there, the recent activity is still the same, in every way including visually, only when one clicks to see your individual photostream, you the photog., assuming you actually do photography and don't just blog, can choose how to present the first examples of your, work, ie, the edited, sets you have taken the trouble to create, that is seen. So what's the problem with that?

Anyways, keep it up, I can bandy this back and forth as long as you want. As to your last little bit. what is that about?

If you are trying to say something, just do it, instead of some cowardly little snarky remark.
Posted 34 months ago. (permalink)

Tomi pildid    says:

I would like "hide from photostream" feature too. I have public pix, family and friends pix (under guest pass) and then there are pictures from party's weddings etc. I would not like all wedding guests see my family photos and I would not like casual wedding photos to be in my photostream. Making an other account or using other provider is not good also, since I'd like some of the people browsing though party pix discover my pictures on public photostream.
Comon flickr, this aint so hard to make.
Or other solution: Make it possible to add a different password to each set.
Posted 33 months ago. (permalink)

Patrick Costello    says:

>>Make it possible to add a different password to each set.

The Guest Pass already provides that facility.
Simply make all the images private, then issue a guest pass for each set.
Posted 33 months ago. (permalink)

Rippie: Contra Censura!    says:

presto!

flickr is not going to eviscerate the most central feature of the site. it's what makes flickr different from other sites. otherwise, flickr is no different, and that's not why we are here, is it?
Posted 33 months ago. (permalink)

Lú_    says:

I do think that it should be clear by now that the people asking for this feature are not asking for the end of the photostream functionality, they're asking that the be able to be a bit more selective about what is seen by others on the photostream page itself.
Posted 33 months ago. (permalink)

Ido Kron    says:

I will love that too. A great Idea! Lu is right.
Posted 33 months ago. (permalink)

I'm Fictional. says:

I want these deature too... I don't want to make a photo private or f/f I just want to hide it from the stream so that I can post it externally and share it externally but it doesn't become the first picture that everyone sees.
Posted 32 months ago. (permalink)

I'm Fictional. says:

--Or at least a sticky photo without changing the upload dates and stuff. I'd like to be able to post a photo without bumping a photo off the top but not change the upload dates.
Posted 32 months ago. (permalink)

mal00005    says:

This feature has been suggested as a solution to the subaccounts/multiple profiles features suggested here:
www.flickr.com/groups/flickrideas/discuss/72157617860453677/
www.flickr.com/groups/flickrideas/discuss/72157617646535289/

It is not a solution for me. My photostream contains content that I want to be public, but I don't necessarily want to direct my family and coworkers to.

There are times I'd like to post a set for my family or coworkers to see. If I do this, then they are just one curious click from the rest of my photostream. It's not that my photostream is that shocking -- it's just not necessarily something I would want the most conservative among them to see.

I could of course just create a separate flickr account, but the limits on a free account are, well, limiting. I could pay to make this second account pro, but then I'm paying a 100% increase for a single feature.

So you see, it isn't so much that my photostream leads to certain photos or sets -- it's that those photos or sets lead back to my photostream. I think the simplest way to solve this is the multiple profiles feature.
Posted 31 months ago. (permalink)

Arty Smokes (deaf mute) says:

mal00005 "It's not that my photostream is that shocking -- it's just not necessarily something I would want the most conservative among them to see."

If you don't want people looking at your photos, don't put them online, or at least not in public areas. I get click-thrus from facebook etc all the time, even though I'm not a member. Does it actually matter that people who know me can see what I take pictures of? Not at all. If they don't like it, that's their problem, not mine.
Posted 31 months ago. (permalink)

personne.de.chandigarh    says:

"have a personal (free?) account and one for the more arty stuff."

That, and all the other suggestions made subsequently, make a lot of sense.
But, I wonder if it'd not be cost effective from the band width point of view as well as being in the interest of the convenience of users to simply provide the facilitation of making pictures "not visible" in the photostream without having to change their privacy settings or dates of upload.

{Edit} Maybe there's some sort of a parallel thread here .
Originally posted 31 months ago. (permalink)
personne.de.chandigarh edited this topic 31 months ago.

Rippie: Contra Censura!    says:

won't happen, and flickr aren't worried about the bw... staff OFTEN suggest multiple accounts, and many of them USE alternate accounts so they can enjoy the site without "staff" written on their backs. it's not a big deal.
Posted 31 months ago. (permalink)

dem bonez says:

So, "Rippie", let me ask you: who are you? Are you

a. A Yahoo! employee
b. Not an enployee but someone with "inside" info
c. Someone who *thinks* they have inside info (but may actually not)
d. None of the above

I ask because while your posts have the appearance of being authoritative about Flickr policy, you refer to them as "they", which implies either (b) or (c) above. It might help for us to know with whom we're discussing this. (In other words, a more polite way of asking "Who died and made you emperor?".)

And on this topic, it seems a bit absurd for you to relentlessly play the "The Photostream must be New! Fresh! or Flickr will die!" card anytime anyone suggests a small change to the way the Holy Photostream works here.

So far as "newness" goes, what about all the Flickr members who haven't updated their pictures since 2007? Does that somehow drag down the whole project and make it uncompetitive and fiscally unfeasible? I don't think so.

Just for the record, I too would like a "hide from photostream" function. I really don't foresee this leading to any kinds of drastic changes like the dire consequences you're proposing. At most, a few people might use it to exclude *certain* content from their streams. I would guess that the vast majority of people wouldn't even use it or care about it.
Originally posted 31 months ago. (permalink)
dem bonez edited this topic 31 months ago.

Rippie: Contra Censura!    says:

there are many sites/services that present stale, stable front pages.

you are always free to join them.

newness is what flickr is about. if someone has not been on for 2 years, then their acct reflects their activity over a period of time. what a concept!

so... making flickr, the successful model, more like the other photoshares, the less successful models, is good by you?

since people can make content private, the discussion is moot.

since people can move images in their stream to bury them, the discussion is moot.

so, since those are only two of the ways to resolve the issue, what's the prob? hmm?

as far as who i am... suss it out. the stream is the core of flickr. it is what it is.
Posted 31 months ago. (permalink)

dem bonez says:

Well, with all due respect, I'll conclude that you are d) (someone who *claims* to have "inside information" but apparently doesn't have a clue).

Notice that you neither answered my rather direct question nor addressed any of the issues I raised in anything other than your typical evasive manner.

So at least now we know where you're coming from and can simply dismiss you.
Posted 31 months ago. (permalink)

personne.de.chandigarh    says:

"won't happen, and flickr aren't worried about the bw"

A lot of stuff everyone said couldn't happen was eventually put in place. There is another aspect to consider viz, the proliferation of alternate IDs on flickr. In many places a loose description of such accounts as "troll accounts" clearly indicates this trend may not be healthy for the community as a whole.
And, what is wrong with examining the suggestions of a number of flickr members anyway?
Originally posted 31 months ago. (permalink)
personne.de.chandigarh edited this topic 31 months ago.

Rippie: Contra Censura!    says:

the suggestion is to unflickr flickr.

ford is not likely to start building chevy cars either.

staff use alternate id's and have espoused it for years for members, so this is obviously not a concern to them.

@dem bonez, if you want a photoshare with a static presentation, there are many from which to choose. presumably people pick flickr because it's flickr, not because it's something else. this is not a tough concept to grasp.
Originally posted 31 months ago. (permalink)
Rippie: Contra Censura! edited this topic 31 months ago.

personne.de.chandigarh    says:

" have espoused it for years for members"

Links to any random recent examples?
And there's no such thing as unflickr. Are the recently introduced Galleries unflickr because flickr did not have these previously? By that un "concept" everything about flickr would be presumed to have been cast in stone.
Clearly, that is not the way flickr has evolved over the years.
Posted 31 months ago. (permalink)

me_on_flickr says:

YAY!!! Some like -mindeds :) This has been on my mind for ages!!!

This is what I would like:
When uploading an image there should be a tick-box option to have the image display in the main stream or not. If selecting not to have it display (hide option) in the main stream, you would still have an option for it to display in a specific set. This will not affect any privacy options!

I think this will work well because it may help to keep your main stream in order and some images can be hidden but not private and can still be viewed in the sets. I know there are privacy options, but if you select the privacy options, any images streaming to an external gallery app will also be hidden - so using privacy options are not fit for this purpose.

Anybody who feels this feature is pointless just doesn't need to tick or untick the checkbox - whichever way it is configured! And we're all winners!

And please NO DUPLICATE ACCOUNTS!!! Life is too complaicted already!

THE END...now do it flickr :) pleeeaaaaaseeee!
Originally posted 30 months ago. (permalink)
me_on_flickr edited this topic 30 months ago.