Spiff writes:
However, the concern about the added burden of moderation is a valid one, in my opinion.
On what evidence,
Spiff, do you base that opinion?
Here are the facts that lead me to believe that this assumption is inaccurate:
1.
Mikel has advised that, to his knowledge, there has never been a need to edit a photo uploaded to the FlyerTalk Photo Gallery.
2. The moderators of the only FT image content forum that I know about-- Trip Reports--have advised that they have had no problem with any FlyerTalker uploading an inappropriate image.
To be perfectly accurate, one moderator reported that once, a couple of years ago, he did request that one FlyerTalker separate his Trip Report photos from the other photos in his album which may have contained some questionable images. That FlyerTalker complied without any issue.
3. Every large bulletin board that I have checked at big-boards.com (and I freely admit that I haven't had time to check all 2,000 of them) allows avatars and pictures. That fact would lead me to believe that images are both very much the wave of the future (even the present) and highly popular among internet users. If a board with over a billion posts can manage images, I suspect we can too--we are pretty smart cookies.
Randy has indicated that his personal preference would be to see FlyerTalk with a Wall Street Journal face, much like
www.fodors.com or
conde nast travel,
neither of which appear to even rank on big-boards.com and the good news is that we could easily satisfy his personal desire by setting the default on FlyerTalk to the "image free" mode, and still allow the highly-popular images that the modern users of large internet boards appear to demand.
Birdstrike queries:
In what forums do people post their own images as photo-avatars?
One of which I am aware, is cruisecritic.com which is a cruise related board, considerably larger than FlyerTalk. Like on FlyerTalk, these posters tend to meet one another in real life during their travels, making personal photos very helpful in identifying one another. I have had numerous folks on cruise ships identify me because of my photo on that site, and those "identifications" have led to some very pleasant personal interactions. Interestingly, I would guess that the average age of these very modern posters is 50+.