John,
You are alert to the issues! Thanks for thinking about this challenge. We'd love some help in formulating a fair policy for when we store images. I myself have not done that. One could post by linking to one's own website or uploading.
We have only removed one person, as far as I remember. So being locked out is never going to happen. Consider the following:
- You would never ever be locked out even if you left!
- OPF has no part of your copyright. OPF is only allowed to show images you post not assign such privilege to anyone else, sell the picture and the like. Same with the text. We assume, even without the © that everything you write and show is yours and OPF has no rights beyond given to the community by you sharing just that.
- We've had several special OPF members succumb to tragedy such as loss of jobs, divorce, illness or cancer and we'd like not to lose their wonderful contributions, especially where the pictures are a testament to their work.
- All content of OPF is copied 10 times a day by the crawlers from search engines and stored for ever. So the images are, anyway, always in multiple places. Furthermore, in some services, you can request a specific date of OPF and see everything as it was then!
- The only thing of concern is what to do about is the work of repairing "rich threads". Where a picture generates a lot of discussion, as requested, then without the images, all the group effort is lost. It doesn't seem fair! We could of course simply get the mage form one of the search engines for cached pages of OPF, but that's tedious and undesirable path. We've never done it and wouldn't want to invest that energy! (Still, if someone insulted a politician or posted pornography, it's stored forever, somewhere, for sure! That's the nature of the internet!
- Themes have no such severe problem losing one poster's picture as there are so many and there's little discussion. Still, personally, I'd miss Rachel's Rose or Janet's lillies. and more. Still, the themes threads are robust in themselves to work and stand the loss of individual images and still be wonderful.
Thus, the
biggest problem for us is not wholesale devastation of threads if some individual
leaves and pulls their images. Rather it's the
unintentioned broken links when someone's own catalog fails for any reason or is ill or deceased. Rebuilding threads is tough. We are given the new URLs and we repair them, one by one, a tedious job. However, for some folks it's very worthwhile and we gladly do it.
So think about this and send me a PM. The need for a solution will come up but not immediately. I'm at a very busy point in my work with The Colburn School at the end of the year and want. We'd prefer to work out this important issue behind the scenes to develop a policy. So ideas are sought and a PM is preferred. These perspectives will be invaluable in getting something formulated. Besides, the moderators will also be asked for their own opinions and guidance. I merely wanted to let folk know that broken links can be a loss for us.
I turns out that a lot of what we value is not necessary nor valid to fight for, but there are a few treasures in our lives and these we'd like not to lose! That's where we stand.
Asher