Do Members Believe that the PJ Section be restricted similar to the Human Form area?

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

This has been talked about between some of the PJ people who post here both in face to face conversations and through messages and e-mails.

Too many times have occured where people come into the section and don't either understand what some of the posts are about or the subjects being shot and several members have had private messages sent to them about the subjects that they are shooting.

So folks should this be an opt in section? Since the site is up to about 7,000 members now I just see more problems with it the way that it is.

Clarification- OPT in is that they need to ask to get access, no one would be restricted pretty much since we want people to try PJ style work but just that little line drawn on the ground will limit a lot of the problems that are occuring.

[brad]

Stirring up trouble again, Paul? :)

I don't understand what's so hard about "No politics" ... so no, leave it like it is.

[Jake]

Restricted to who?
Only people who can prove they work for a legitimate outlet?

Leave it as is.

[Roy]

Seems odd to me. Are threads getting removed or locked due to these "people that dont understand"? Seems to me that putting a border on the PJ section is just the opposite of what PJ stands for. I say leave it as it is.

[Abel]

the very first thread in this section explains everything...

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Eventually we will get members to adhere to our rules regarding this subject and/or we will have simply banned all those that have chose not to follow the rule. Either way the rule will be followed, it is now left up to the individual member to decide which route they take.
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there will be some suspensions handed out today

[JPalmer]

There is a reason that I don't post much on the people thread...or nature. That's not my area of specialty. I surely don't go into those threads and talk about how I think that hunting is unethical and immoral or something.

I try to shy away from those topics that are devisive. That's the journalist in me trying to be completely unbiased. A few of the photojournalists on these boards have a complete grasp of being unbiased.

Most of the topics that have been started and then locked were not started specifically for the reason to stir the pot. There are some of us that still have information that we'd like to share reguarding the topics that were closed....those of us that can/have abided by the rules and kept personal beliefs out of it.

I believe Abel when he says that some suspensions will be handed down today. I believe in the system of rules he has set in place. I believe that eventually we'll all get it.

But I don't like that anybody with a camera can come into the photojournalist boards and get a topic closed because they can't seperate themselves from their beliefs about a topic that we were all discussing as unbiased journalists.

I don't know the answers.....but I know that Abel runs a good forum and will find a way.

[rphoto]

Well said Jason

[jeffkohn]

I really don't see how this would work or what you're trying to accomplish. The Human Form area is basically an "opt-in" so that people who don't want to see that type of content don't have to worry about it unexpectedly showing up on their screen. Based on some recent threads I'm guessing your concern with the PJ area is more due to off-topic posts that in some cases also violate forum rules. Making the forum area "opt-in" wouldn't prevent people from making such comments unless you believe that the offending posters would be too lazy to opt-in - maybe true for some but still not a solution to the problem IMHO.

On the other hand if what you're wanting is to have some sort of approval process to create an exclusive "PJ club" where only members who have proven themselves worthy are allowed to post, then I would suggest that maybe TPF isn't the best place for that and maybe you should consider starting something independent of TPF (or looking to see if it already exists elsewhere).

[Daniel Bates]

I agree with Jeff...


(side note: the opt-in for Human Form is also in place for legal reasons, I think.)

[jeffkohn]

But I don't like that anybody with a camera can come into the photojournalist boards and get a topic closed because they can't seperate themselves from their beliefs about a topic that we were all discussing as unbiased journalists.

Well, I don't think the photojournalist forum should be just available to photojournalists any more than you should be prevented viewing the nature forum just because you're not a nature photographer. I personally am interested in many areas of photography including some that I don't normally participate in or have much expertise in, so why shouldn't I have access to those forums. If you're really looking for a forum just for PJ's, I'm sure there are some out there but I'd like to think TPF is a bit more inclusive than that.

I want to be clear I'm not trying to condone the posts that are violating forum rules, I'm just saying that restricted access isn't the way solve the problem. The Human Form area wasn't restricted to prevent "nice rack" comments, it was restricted because some people don't want to see that content (and Daniel may have a point about legal concerns). The reason "nice rack" comments don't show up is because for the most part members know better and it's also clearly prohibited by the forum rules.

I think the only thing Abel and crew can really do is strictly enforce the rules that are already in place to make sure such posts become a rarity. You do have a point about it not being fair to the original posters to have a thread shut down through no fault of their own, though. Maybe a better approach would be to delete the offending posts while keeping the thread open (although that raises its own set of issues, as far as exactly which posts should and should not be deleted).

[Detonate]

There is a very frustrating practice at my work.

When someone screws up, a new process is put in place to ensure the same mistake doesn't happen again. It doesn't ever really resolve anything, yet it punishes the people that aren't making the mistakes.

I guess my point is, why punish the innocent when you can very simply punish the guilty?

[dfwlens]

Punish the guilty and leave it be.

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

Well I am getting people to think here on the topic.
The reason that I put this poll up was to do that and the reason that I proposed the Opt in thing is that it would keep the people who really are not interested in PJ work and what it can involve from just wandering in and creating problems and that the people in the area would understand that yes there will be photos in here that do contain things that may stir up controversy. (If you notice fewer and fewer posts of actual pictures of the more contentious variety are being posted because the people who have posted them in the past were getting all sorts of ugly PMs through the system so they decided it ain't worth the grief).

The idea of the opt in was not to create some sort of "private club" with hidden handshakes and secret passwords but to maybe help the moderators from having to basically screan every post in this section of the forumn.

So leave it open as it is but don't expect people to read all the "rules" because people tend to be lazy and if a person does "a find new posts" they see a topic and reply to it maybe without ever paying attention to the header over the area and not also noticing that it is in the PJ section where notices of events will be posted and photos of political actions or other other controversial events will be posted for review of the work.

[Jake]

I think what would keep threads from getting locked is if someone breaks a rule, just hit the "Report Bad Post" button and let the mods do their job.
What happens now is someone will break a rule(whether they know it or not) and that will cause a reaction and then things get ugly.
If no one response and just hits the "Report" button, it will just go away. There is no way that you can keep all those comments out but you can keep them from getting out of hand. The mods here do a great job if we would let them.

[brad]

Of course, it might help too if people didn't just post links to websites or news stories inviting people to read them and express their outrage all the time. Granted that happens in Open Talk most of the time, but the offender list seems to be the same people.