Just re-read that last post. What a load of pants, let me try again...
Flickr was founded by an artist and at first, lots of artists where members. While there are clearly loads of ordinary family pics on the service there are also loads of really interesting, edgy creations. These range from surreal mindmaps, to strange images made with toy cameras to the nude self-portraits of Female Tech.
Like most wonderful, slightly marginal things, the content was never going to be to everybody's taste. Those of us who where there in the beginning feel a sense of belonging and Flickr's transition from online photography haven for the creatively inclined to mainstream storage service for the merry masses' Kodak moments is proving to be a painful one.
It's not that there's anything wrong with Yahoo or even with the aims of providing the sort of all-American, clean-living service that they are trying to build. It's just that they're crossing the line where arbitration and moderation are taking place.
It's these moderation 'choices' that are causing the trouble. No one has ever been able to get this right and there's just no way Yahoo's group of ingenue moderators are going to be able to get through this cultural minefield in one piece.
