Flickr Tips for Virtual World and Digital Artists
Now that the majority of us have decided that we are going to stay on Flickr (which I admit I am so happy about since I find so many wonderful artists and creators on there) I think it’s a good time to give a few tips to keep our content safe on Flickr.
Marking Digital Images as “Screenshots” in Content Type
Fellow resident Cassie Middles recently reached out to Flickr Support asking them if Second Life and other virtual world images were welcome on Flickr. They responded by saying that as per their TOS Second Life digital creations must be marked as screenshots, as they are not technically photos, and they do monitor if that setting is not applied. Aside from that, they have no ill will towards digital creators as long as they moderate their accounts properly. If you are a Flickr Pro member or not, I think it’s important that all virtual world artists and creators take a moment to make sure this setting is enabled.
Here are a few ways you can make sure your images are all set to screenshot:
- Under the Organize Setting – for previously uploaded images you can change batches of images by dragging them onto the edit area then go to “Permissions” and then “Set Content Type” and from there you can change the content type to screenshots for all previously uploaded images.
- In your Filters under Account Settings – for future images make sure to set your content type to screenshots, or Illustration/Art if that is what you share; just not photos, if it’s any kind of digital art.
- In the Upload Area – for future images to confirm that your images are being uploaded as screenshots, just expand the “Owner Settings” arrow and then hit edit on “content type” under “content filters” and confirm from there.
UPDATE FOR GROUP OWNERS: Now that digital artists are changing their settings to screenshot, can I please make a request to group owners to make sure they allow screenshots in their groups. You can find that setting in this section: > Administration > Moderating Your Group > Scroll down and allow more content types. Thank you!
UPDATE FOR ALL FLICKR MEMBERS: Now that you’ve set your images to screenshots, make sure to check your safe search settings to ensure that you have enabled screenshots and other content types so you can see all of the screenshots in your search results.
Second Life Content Creators on Flickr should probably go PRO
Recently a Second Life content creator had their Flickr account deactivated because they were sharing their vendor images there. The only information they had in the description of the images was the SLurl to the location where they were for sale at inworld, not the Second Life marketplace link. Flickr support responded by saying that their account was auto flagged because they were selling items and Flickr TOS says not to use it for commercial purposes.
In the updated Flickr Community Guidelines under “Things Not To Do” it says: “If you have a free account and don’t have a Flickr Pro account, you may not link directly to a shopping cart, checkout page, or pricing pages on other sites, and you may not list prices on your Flickr photo descriptions. If you are a Flickr Pro member, you can use Flickr to promote your photography business, your products, your photography classes, etc. You can link directly to a shopping cart, checkout page, or pricing pages on other sites, and you can list prices for your images in your Flickr photo descriptions.”
See a screenshot of this part of the page below:
That’s why I feel if Second Life content creators want to share their vendor images on Flickr and want to link to marketplace or share slurls, etc… it would be safer for them to do it if they had a Flickr PRO account.
UPDATE: The content creator this happened to got back to me and gave me permission to share her name and screenshot of the email she got from Flickr Support. Her name is Senzati0n Domenitzo and she is the Owner of Essenz in Second Life. She says that she does not have a Flickr Pro account and this is the email from Flickr Support.
Flickr Etiquette Suggestions
I don’t mean to upset people with the following suggestions, but I do feel if Flickr members behaved in a manner that was courteous to their fellow members, there would be less of a chance of irritating others and getting your accounts reported, even if they are PRO or not. Here are a few things to keep in mind if you want to be an active and engaging part of the Flickr community:
- Set your Content Filters Correctly – If you are uploading images that have adult content and nudity, please set your filters to moderate or restricted. Back in the day I loved doing nude photography and art in Second Life but as I’ve gotten older I’m pretty much over that aspect of SL and I also no longer want to see so much nudity in my flickr feed. I’ve set my SafeSearch on so I no longer have to see that in my feed, but I still see it often since people don’t have their content filters set correctly. Please double check you have done that now so your images don’t get flagged.
- Don’t Spam Flickr Groups – One of my biggest pet peeves is how the use of flickr groups is completely ruined because a lot of members just mass dump their images in all groups, without looking at the subject of the group and what the purpose of it is. If you are a mass flickr group spammer, please go through your groups and remove yourself from those that have themes or have nothing to do with Second Life or whatever topic your images typically pertain to.
- Don’t spam other member’s images with flashy images and links to your groups/accounts – I understand people do this to build community and possibly get the word out on their groups/accounts, but for the majority of flickr members, this is a bit of a nuisance. 99.9% of the time I end up deleting flashy images from my comments. Fave, leave a comment, be supportive, but please don’t spam.
- Don’t change your Upload Date/Time to increase views – It’s not fair or kind to other members. Most people don’t really want to see the same images over and over again in their feeds. If you really feel like you must do this because of timezones etc… try not to do it more than once or twice.
- Don’t get upset at people if they don’t follow/fav back – People use Flickr for a variety of reasons. You don’t have to follow back everyone that follows you or leave comments or faves for everyone that does that to you. It’s wonderful if you do, but it’s not feasible for everyone to do that, for a variety of reasons. Don’t worry about what others are doing. Share your work, follow those you want to follow, fave items you like and leave comments when you feel compelled to. Don’t make it harder on yourself by worrying about what others are doing.
I have also done a quick video tutorial showing you some of these settings on video so it’s easier for you to figure them out if you need. You can watch that on my YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/xTwzbMsYI1U
I think that’s all the Flickr tips I have for now. If you have some more tips for Virtual World and Digital artists like myself, please share them in my comments. Thank you for reading and have a wonderful weekend! <3
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Thankyou so much Berry. (I have made those changes now). Your instructions and the link to the right page made it effortless.
how can you save the content setting under the organize your protos ?
Thank you for sharing this important information re: Flickr’s changes. I did have a concern which I sent on to Flickr to get clarification. Below is my concern and should I get a response to this, I will post it:
I understand the pictures from Virtual Worlds should be marked “Screenshots.” I am, however, curious about search results. When someone uses a search term, will screenshots come up under “photos”? Reason I’m asking is that while I did change all my uploads’ content type to screenshots, “screenshots” is not offered as a search result category, i.e. Your Photos, People and Groups “tabs” come up as the results categories but screenshots do not. Will screenshots come up combined with the photos in search results or will they eventually have a separate category under the results of searches? And in the interim, will searches completely bypass “screenshots” when presenting results or will they show up under photos?
I don’t mind setting my images from SL to snapshots, i actually had it set to that always but then some Sim groups don’t allow snapshots, so i asked them to change the group settings, but some wouldn’t so i marked those images as photos to be able to post to the groups… going to set it all back to snapshots now and just hope that group admins will also read this and decide to change their group settings to accommodate this 🙂
Many thanks for tips <3
and I’m interested in the new rules of Flickr officially enter after the new year? Those. these two months we can safely create chaos)
thank you for taking the time. I fixed my photo type…much appreciated
This was so easy to follow up and change, thank you!
Glad to see that Flickr is finally enforcing their policies on members. Thank you for this informative and thorough article.
Some Flickr groups require awards. Are you including that in the ‘spam’ part? Should we be avoiding the award Flickr groups in favor of something else? Awesome tips… thank you
Thanks so much Strawberry, you always have a way of “calming” the masses!! Laughs…Im doing all the changes you have suggested. I have to agree 100% on the various other points you have made. I currently run and help out 5 Groups, and I get frustrated daily with the photos submitted that have nothing to do with the Group Content. I have even gone to the point of removing repeat offenders from the Group. I am always very careful NOT to submit a photo to a Group that is not within my photos content, but others just could care less…so frustrating. And I agree on the nudity aspect of Flickr now, its seems its more and more each day. Im not a prude, and I do like tasteful images, but lately its on the border of silliness….Anyway my sincere thanks for the work, time and effort you put in to help us a
ll in this daily cornucopia of mad fun!! Have a beautiful Sunday….
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I received a response from Flickr support about the question I posted here earlier about the search feature… If anyone is interested, here it is:
*****************************
Thank you for contacting Flickr Support. My name is Jim and I am happy to assist you with your Flickr account.
While your content will be marked as screenshots, when you perform a search the screenshots will appear in the photo feed.
At this time there has been no update as to whether screenshots will have their own search category as well.
I hope this helps!
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While I’m not completely tech illiterate, I don’t mind instagram, the only problem I have with it is that I have to upload the photos to my phone and then put them on instagram, that is a bit more work then flickr is, and as i keep my phone related to family and rl aspects, I’m not sure if I want to take that step to put my photos on instagram. Yet I’m not sure if a flickr pro account will be available in my budget.. So either way it looks like im screwed unless I want to go the extra step for instagram/
Many Thanks!!! 🙂
I just had another thought… they just brought out galleries, but if people have to delete images to upload new ones, that is totally going to be a disaster for the images that were added to these galleries or? Are we then just gonna see a load of blank squares 🙁
I went through their ToS and didn’t see anything about having to mark virtual photos as screenshots. Maybe I’m missing that somewhere, but I wonder if this isn’t something new coming from SmugMug.
Thank you so much for these tips, Strawberry!
Excellent information! Thank you so much for this Tips Berry!
I really appreciate your Flickr Etiquette Suggestions, they might be in the tos as well!
I hope people will follow them from now on. Thank you!
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Great that you gave these Flickr issues attention.
But… ‘CGI’ = “Computer Generated Images”. Isn’t that what Second Life is/does? – And when SL snapshots are in any way altered (in Photoshop, GIMP, Flickr-Editor or whatever), aren’t they all ‘ART’?
So, shouldn’t SL images belong in Flickr’s Content type: “Other – art, illustration, CGI, etc.”?