To Kalmbach Publishing,
This is a great web forum but it is missing one thing… A members Photo Gallery so we can post photos of layouts, locos, projects, etc.
Its one thing to read about someones latest project, advice, etc. Why not let us the reader be able to share what it is we are working on with other readers?
Seams like a good idea and it would allow those of us without webpages to share our work.
How about it?
I agree totally. Over on the Atlas forum theres a great Sunday photos thread on both the HO and N scale forums, where members post shots of what modelling they’ve done over the week. Terrific fun
Jon
Plus it might be a way to “troll” (fishing term, not internet term) for layouts and articles.
sure would be nice to see other modeler’s work without having to post photos somewhere else and link to them…
Guy
I don’t mean to be at all offensive but this has a downsite too without serious and constant moderation.
several years ago on “Alt.bin.pictures.trains” newsgroup a dear friend told us all a story of having his seven year old grandson for a visit and to show his daughter and grandson the educational opportunities and the somthing for everyone of the medium.
His grandson thrilled to the variety of beautiful pictures of trains and railroad subjects and clicked quickly from M10000, to Zephyr, to Amtrack, to Via to Europe and Paraguay, then my friend turned away for a moment to say something to his daughter. A concerned yip came from his grandson “Grandpa! She’s gonna catch COLD!”
'Nuff Said…
Doug, in Utah
One thought, if you post pictures will they not become Kalmbach property to plublish and exploit as they see fit? Everything we post on this site is already their property as this site is copyright and it’s in the user agreement you agreed to to get a user name. Want to give away your pictures?
I personally think it is a great idea. Yes, it would need monitoring/editing to keep undesired photo content off, but the editors keep a pretty close eye on these forums for unwanted written content. I personally am not concerned about the use of any photo I would put on this site. If I had photo’s I wanted to keep for some other use and not have published, I simply would not put them on the site. It would be nice, however, to be able to see a sampling of what others are doing–those who may never be published in MR or other such publications.
Ron
Flee-man
The answer to that is, if you dont want to risk it, dont submit it.
No one is saying you “have to” participate. Personally I would love to see other peoples work and submit my own, if for nothing else feedback, what works, what didnt work, even if there is criticism I think we are grown up enough to take it constructively. If Klambake decides to “publish” projects in a readers “Photo Gallery” in thier magazines, even better. If your work is good enough to be published maybe other mag’s will want to publish it (loco, building,layout,?) and MR or Garden RR will do a full article on it. Remember, Exposure is Good, Gets people excited about their work.
Could happen but I dont think so.
Even with reasonable monitoring I dont think the users of this forum would want to risk being banned for life by doing something stupid like posting “nudie” photos. Even if someone did, its not like they are going to not leave an electronic ID that can be traced and blocked.
Most ISPs provide webspace for a user to use. If one wants to put thier photos up there, and link to them, that’s one way to share them.
There are probably sites out there that’ll let you upload photos and share them. Geocities will not work.
Try trainweb.org for FREE web hosting for train buffs. I just wanted people to be aware of the facts. FRED
At the Atlas Forum on Sundays, the HO and N scale forums have a photo night of items built, to brag about, to display… what have you. This picture format is very popular.
You can get free image storage at www.trainboard.com
Here are some links to Sunday Nite Foto-Fun from the N scale forum. Don’t try and read them all, over two hundred replies or more. Instead just scan for pictures, I promise you, you’ll be impressed.
http://forum.atlasrr.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=28619
http://forum.atlasrr.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=28230
http://forum.atlasrr.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=27872
This site contains 5 great mags with lots of great pictures every month + the annual contests. Why not start with an archived gallery of published photos? Can you imagine what a CD of MR&T files would be worth? National Geo who?
The Weather Underground has a great site for sharing pictures submitted by the members. May cost $5.00 per year. The pictures are grouped by location & subject. They also have a rate-a photo feature. Perhaps the best photo submitted each month could be used in the magazine?
This is an interesting question, and one we’ve wrestled with for some time. On the plus side, we know that photos are popular (we enjoy looking at them also), they’re a great source of modeling tips, and a gallery could help us as we search for layouts to showcase and potential authors. On the minus side, they would slow the site down, and inappropriate content could be a problem. At this point we think the minuses outweigh the plusses, but we reconsider this question fairly frequently.
As far as the worry that one of you expressed about losing rights to the photos: if we did have a gallery we would make the rights policy very clear up front, as we do regarding all other content submitted to us. At this point we haven’t spent a lot of time considering what the policy for an online gallery would be, since we have decided against having one. It’s also still the case that digital photos taken with consumer-quality cameras are almost never magazine-quality - the resolution isn’t high enough, and the depth of field usually isn’t there. In some cases we can use digitals at a fairly small size, but slides remain the best choice for layout photos.
Finally, while we’ve considered publishing a variety of products (including back issues) electronically, the economics just don’t work for us at this time.
Thanks - and best wishes from all of us.
Terry
many sites such as this have photo galleries, but also have pictures next to your comments in the forum section…I think it would be especially neat here as you could have pictures of your fav Railroad company
Been checking my Large Scale sources on-line and Large Scale Online, My Large Scale.com, Large Scale Central, Bachmann Trains, also Atlas and a lot of other sites all have a readers photo gallery. Can’t be that hard to set up, and I’m pretty sure we dont have any wacko’s in this forum that will post pictures of thier backsides in any gallery
Be a real shame if every other on-line site has a photo gallery, almost all of them do, and Trains.com doesnt.
(I’m trying a little "Catholic Guilt-trip " on Terry, lets see if it works…
Slow the site down??? Give me a break, it’s already one of the slowest sites on the net, no way you can slow it down much more. Risk of inapproropriate content??? Just about every train forum out there has photo Galleries as well as photos in the regular sections and have no problem, why does MR think they would be the only ones to have a problem??? Stupid thinking like this (as well as the rising cost and shrinking content) are why I let my subscription expire. Nice try Terry, if you don’t want to tell us the real reason you want to keep this forum in the 19th century fine, it’s your forum do what you want. Don’t blame me though for only stopping by every once in awhile for a good laugh at MR’s and Trains.com’s expense.
If you’re worried about inappropriate content, appoint moderators who are regulars on the forums and you believe can be trusted. Keep an eye on them, but let them moderate. I am a moderator on two Yahoo! Groups, and know that trusted sources will do a good job.
Terry,
You need to hang out at the Atlas forum for a while. Visit it on Sunday’s nights and check out the Sunday Nite Foto-fun in the N scale area and the HO forum has another title, but easy to spot.
Photos only slow the forum down if a thread gets really long. For example, the first thread in my first reply here has 88 posts in it with quite a few pics, so it is slower loading. But the Atlas N forum is the busiest N forum on the net as far as I am aware and it isn’t sluggish.
Allowing people to posts pics improves a forums participation.
In all the years I’ve been at the Atlas and trainboard forums, I’ve yet to see one offence picture - lots of bad ones (usually poor lighting) - but no offencive ones.
Since a photo uploaded to an online gallery would only be a copy of the origonal photo ownership would remain with the poster (assuming it was their photo in the first place).
Uploading the photo would most likely be the same as granting permission to the site host to use your image as they saw fit.Personally if I didn’t want this to happen I just wouldn’t post the pic.
By the way I agree with Rick on the ATLAS Forum pics.There is some really awesome modeling pics posted there. There are some really awful pics too.(meaning the qaulity of the picture not the modeling.