Flickr is an interesting site; I like it a lot in spite of the various quirks it has or performance problems I have had with it. There are many great community aspects of the site and obviously the amount of photography on display is tremendous and there are many very talented photographers on Flickr who share their work and often their insight and knowledge. Although Flickr is obviously a site built on photography, it has expanded in to video and not everything posted is photography: there are plenty of examples of other kinds of visual art on Flickr. Flickr does perform one other function though which has little to do with art, it is also a social experiment. The community aspect of Flickr makes that evident, people can form and join groups as they please and they can undo those actions just as easily.
I have never been particularly active in the Flickr community at large, it seems like it would require more time than I really have to get involved to the level that many other people I see are. I have to remind myself to do things like tag my photos or post my photos to group pools since those things don’t occur to me normally. I know that having this site might to contradict this but I don’t instinctively think to run around broadcasting my photography to the Flickr community. I don’t tend to comment on photos a lot and I favorite even less often. Part of this is because it just doesn’t occur to me usually (so I do try to go on Flickr from time to time to comment on some of my friends’ photos) but it’s also because I don’t find that the majority of comments on Flickr are particularly meaningful. I don’t think saying “great shot” to someone is particularly useful most of the time and I’d rather try to provide thoughtful feedback and critique which for the most part would look rather out of place in a Flickr comment stream!
In spite of the obvious incongruity between my approach to Flickr and the majority of the activity that occurs on the site, I do enjoy looking at other photography on Flickr. As much as I enjoy looking for inspiration (I wish I favorited more photos that I liked so I could go back and find the ones that gave me ideas) I also enjoy looking at fantastic photography that I might not be that likely to be interested in shooting myself. Most of what I find interesting to photograph isn’t the most popular subject matter, but I still enjoy seeing a fantastic portrait or thought provoking bit of photojournalism.
Exploring Monotony
Flickr features something called Explore, which Flickr claims will “show you some of the most awesome content on Flickr.” In theory Explore would allow me to really see the best of what Flickr has to offer and it would include all genres, locations and technical approaches. Whatever makes it to Explore is supposed to rank highly on “interestingness,” according to Flickr. My idea of interesting might differ from the majority of Flickr users, or maybe it doesn’t, but either way it should be an interesting way to let users explore some very well taken or at least interesting photographs.
Unfortunately Explore allows you to discover the downsides of Flickr’s social experiment. Instead of being filled with fantastic, unique and interesting photographs it is filled with photos that were promoted to Explore by groups of people gaming the system. There are sites which list various ways to exploit the Explore system, such as this one, and there are groups on Flickr which seem to be focused on promoting their members to Explore rather than celebrating quality photography. The end result is Explore becomes a popularity contest, disproportionately featuring certain cliques of Flickr users. A look at Explore shows that in addition to some fabulous photography there is a frustratingly large amount of average or even terrible photography. The good photographs seem to be there by accident sometimes but the many examples of exploitation by those groups dominate Explore.
I can’t even remember when I stopped looking at Explore on a somewhat regular basis. It no longer serves the purpose it seems Flickr wants it to and plenty of people are complaining. Recently, after commenting in a discussion on another Flickr group, I was invited to a group that seeks to expose the mess that Explore has become. There are plenty of places complaining about and explaining specific problems with the system in detail, something I’m not interested in doing, but here is one such example which appears to make claims most of those against Explore agree with.
Instead of representing the best of Flickr, Explore does a better job of demonstrating how community driven sites often become popularity contests. I was actually inspired to create this article because of two recent events: I’ve learned more about the problems with Explore after I was invited to the Explore Opponents group and a recent photo of mine made it in to Explore. I didn’t even know my photo (the one at the top of this article) had made Explore until someone told me so, in fact I’m not even sure how I would check to see if a photo of mine is in Explore. I’m glad I’m not the only one to take issue with Explore and maybe there are enough active users complaining about it that someday Explore really will show you the best and most interesting of Flickr. Maybe then I would actually feel more proud that my photo is in Explore rather than perplexed by how I managed to slip through the popularity contest filtering system.
I think that I’ve honestly explored Explore 3 times since I joined Flickr, which was years ago. I can only take so many cats and dogs and flowers and sunsets and hot women. Check that, I’ll take all the hot women.
It sounds to me like you might be suggesting a slight tweak to the purpose of Explore, nevermind how it functions currently.