Reminder - photo guidelines

Adding photos (under "media") is one of the most important features of this site. On behalf of the moderators, I would like to offer a few reminders.

1) Please do NOT upload several photos of essentially the same thing. This seems to be the biggest problem and a few users do this consistently. Two or three different angles of an exhibit are plenty and one or two photos of the same animal (from any given zoo trip) are plenty.

2) Make sure the photo is yours, or that you have explicit permission from the photographer to use it. If the latter is the case, please say so in the upload. The exception would be old photos that are now considered Public Domain. (In the United States, photos become Public Domain 50 years after the death of the photographer).

3) Please make sure your photos are oriented correctly, meaning that they are not sideways or upsidedown when viewed on the screen. Cell phone photos seem to be the major culprits here.

4) Please title your photos when you are in the media uploader. A generic file number generated by the camera is extremely unhelpful.

5) Photo captions appear very, very small on the new layout of ZooChat. It was not this way on the old site, but on the new site they are so small most people will not even notice them. I limit my caption to date taken (usually) and if I want to add more information I do it as a followup comment after the photo is posted.

 

I am giving this thread a bump in the hopes more people can see it. The site administrator (Simon who posted above) has a desire that photos on the site add value and will be worth viewing in the long term. In other words, before uploading you need to ask yourself "If someone looks at this photo five years from now, will it be pointless?"

Up to this point the moderators have been very light handed in deleting photos (meaning we hardly ever delete them). It is likely that we will start being a little more aggressive in this. Please know this policy is not directed towards any one individual and I will freely admit that I have posted my own share of pointless photos when I was a newer member.

 

I've only just seen this after the 'disappearance' of several of my photos left me a bit confused last night; I now see they are in a To Be Identified folder.

With regards to requesting we only upload our "best examples" I generally only upload quick edits of what I regard to be adequate photos, at best.

 

@littleRedPanda I clicked on your media page and scrolled through the first six pages of photos (120 images total). Your photos are all excellent and you have nothing to worry about regarding the statement of "only the best photos." What Sim means (I think) is if you take five photos of the same animal at the same time, then just pick the best to upload. You are doing this, none of your images are duplicates, so you are fine. You had one photo (sloth with baby) that was blurry from low light, but you explained this in the description and the fact that there was a baby riding on it makes it acceptable under Sim's qualification of something that is "unusual or exceedingly interesting, despite being less than ideal quality..."

 

I guess there is a time limit on editing Photo titles? How long is it?

 

There is a time limit on editing posts (text replies) after which you can ask a moderator to change it. However, as for photo titles I do not think you can edit them at any time. You would have to ask a moderator to do it, even if it is one minute after you upload. The easiest way to do this is click "report" which appears in small gray type directly underneath the photo. This will prompt a popup window asking for a reason, where you would type in your desired change.

 

At the moment, I can still edit titles for photos I've uploaded today - this one for example, where someone suggested it was the wrong bear, but after changing it, I decided it was right originally. Then there is a Deer photo in the Whipsnade gallery I misidentified, but lost the ability to change it after someone corrected me a few days later.
The 'edit' button disappears after some time. Seeing that I cannot edit photos uploaded on Monday, but can from last night, i'll guess that it's a 24 hour period?

 

Hmmm - I guess your assumption is correct. I know on the old version of ZooChat (before last year's software change) it was impossible for users to edit titles. Apparently on the new version you can for a very limited time. My apologies for misinforming you.

 

No worries. Looks like it is a 24 period.

 

In the United Kingdom it is 70 years after the death of the photographer.

 

Have all photos with people in them been deleted? I was going through the White Oak gallery (a private Florida 'zoo') and I used to have quite a few images on ZooChat with my wife and I petting or feeding a number of animals: Harapan the Sumatran rhino, white rhino, giraffe, cheetah, etc. Were those photos shifted elsewhere or deleted completely?

 

I also had a similar question. These photos have been shifted to the new(ish) Community - ZooChat Members part of the gallery. All photos containing forum members have been moved here.

 

To repeat what Sim typed in the third paragraph, there is now a new media category called ZooChat Members. Please place photos of members in this category, instead of in the respective zoo category. Also, since this category is not organized by zoo, please list the name of the facility where it was taken.

Member Gallery (for help forum) by Arizona Docent posted 8 May 2018 at 6:46 AM

 

One of mine for transfer to the new gallery.

ZooChatters on the Bats Bridge by gentle lemur posted 31 Jul 2016 at 8:46 PM

 

As for this... What's the stance to uploading photos of an exhibit that already is represented in the gallery? In other words: If someone has uploaded a photo of, say, Seoul Zoo's elephant exhibit, is it okay for another user to upload a photo of the exact same exhibit and taken from the same angle three months later? I don't do it myself (I always search to see if the exhibit photo I want to share is already represented), but I regularly see some users doing this, and I honestly feel like it's a waste of gallery space, but I don't know if it's considered okay to "repeat" others' photos as long as your own photos are not the same?

The exception of course being if something new happened to the exhibit during these three months (in which most people would mention it in the description).

EDIT: Never mind. I should have read the thread more thoroughly: