philgo wrote:PADers swap votes and comments and thus propel their galleries into the top positions. This clearly goes to their heads, leading them to think that they are the top 20 photographers, or so, on Pbase. Of course, this is not true at all, but rather a function of the lack of (particularly concentrated) voting by others.
Oh please. You should know that there is none of that nonsense going on with my galleries. I have only been a "paid supporter" of pBase for about one year. I have had one image go to the top spot (and we all know which one that is) and that was only within the last 7 days. After that, the most votes my images have ever gotten was 11 for my "Sharon's Cherry" (yes, another humorous play on words) image. After that, it's a measley 5 or so for another, 3 for a fourth and various one-offs.
For you to accuse me of vote trading is fantasmical at best. I don't associate with any of the photographers on PBase other than commenting on Bill & Wanda's photos when I feel one of them is exceptional. I think, in all the time I've been visiting PBase, I have only voted on photos about 5 or 6 times, if that, and I wouldn't vote on a photo just because someone asked me to. In fact, that would probably put me off of voting for them at all.
If you think that my recent comment about other people not doing a PAD project, is condecension maybe it is you who have an inferiority complex, not I with a superiority complex. As, when someone else (Gil Perron) said we should shoot more and talk about it less, my comment was only to illustrate that I do shot a lot and was made in jest. Did you miss the wink (it looks like this:
) at the end of my comment? If you're insecure about the frequency in which you use your camera that's not my problem, but if something you mistakenly read between the lines helps you get out and shoot more, then I'm glad my comment helped you out.
Additionally, I still, to this day, seek help with lighting, posing and other aspects of photography. Do I know my camera well, yep. Do I need help with studio and lighting techniques, ABSOLUTELY. Superior? Heh, I'm no master by any means. I'm just an amateur doing what I love to do.
For all intents and purposes, the popular galleries mean very little to me as I base my images' popularity based on the number of hits my galleries receive, not how many votes they get. The only reason I care about the recent incident is for the simple reason that the decision to pull all my photos from popular galleries seems biased and I loathe bias on any level; whether it be artistic, photographic, race or otherwise. I stress "seemed" biased as it could very well be that either Slug isn't paying attention (I mean, I hope the he has a life outside PBase) or he doesn't act on similar images until notified of such, and when he feels like it. There is, of course, the issue that most of us feel that ALL of a given photographer's images shouldn't be removed just because ONE offends someone, but it's probably the limitation of coding that didn't foresee this issue.
Hopefully, Slug can find a way to accomodate all of us by either banning single images or by implementing a rating system or a flag denoting an image as mature content so that we can moderate ourselves without getting our images banned from various top or randomly generated galleries. I would prefer not to have any restrictions at all but I have come to terms with the fact that no matter how much we wish for artistic and sexual freedom, there are still those living in the 18th century (or the bible belt
), and I guess we'll just have to live with that and push the boundaries ever so gently until they are dissolved. That probably won't happen until after you and I are long gone but as the French say: c'est la vie.
Am I bitter? Not at all. I still sleep very comfortably at night with nary a worry in the world. I'm alive, life is good.
Sun Dec 11, 2005 8:24 am 
