Nexus

So I haven't started a photogroup yet... does it have some concept of an "admin" and features that go with that? Anything else fancy.

(off to start the 23 variation of Camera Toss)

It's not clear to me that it does have the concept of an admin. There are groups, and groups have members. That seems to be it.

My experiences here are rather limited though - I may be missing something somewhere.

Oh, I see - there's a 'Throw out' option on the members page - I was looking for something like that on the page you get to when you click on a member, but that just seems to be 'photos from...'

I'm just waiting for someone to annoy me so I can try it out :-)

If you go to a member's "about" page, there's a "contact me" link:

http://www.23hq.com/gustavog/a/mail

the lack of an inbox isn't a big deal. bifurcated messaging was always a little dumb.

23hq obfuscates the initial email address, which is all that really matters to me.

what they could use is a checkbox under the message, saying "send me a copy of this email". that's a pretty standard solution.

then you won't "lose" sent messages.

Send it to yourself manually? That's a hassle. :o

I'll check the forum and see if it's been suggested.

*edit* couldn't find it in search, so I posted a new one:
http://www.23hq.com/forums/message-view?message_id=5149491

i meant the latter.

you don't reveal your address to anyone unless you elect to respond.

after that, you're in a standard email conversation, which is way more manageable than a flickr mail conversation, especially on a mobile device.

flickr mail is the bane of my mobile existence.

Alright guys, I'll take the liberty of jumping in here with some half answers...

First, we've updated our whitelist to make sure you can use strikethrough (although it make take a few hours for all the individual servers to know about this changes, so be somewhat patient) and we've added a Send me a copy of this mail checkbox in the contact form.

We've kept the contact option pretty light on purpose: It allows you to send an email (in your own name and including your own email address) to a person you know only by username -- and then it's up to the receiver to choose whether to respond or not. Basically, this is the bridge to allow simple mail communication using the apps we're already using, rather than reinventing mail in a walled garden ;-)

Also, we've changed the throw out to be simply remove instead. No reason to cause unnecessary confusion.

GustavoG is exactly right about the current admin options in a photogroup: When you set up a new group, you "own" it. That is, you control members and you can close down the group again. There are currently no means of sharing admin rights or passing them on through the UI -- however, we have handled this via mail from time to time. What's the prefered way of handling shared admin rights? And who gets to close down a photogroup -- all admins?

yeah, we're all pretty used to flickr, but that doesn't mean flickr does everything the best way.

i think 23hq is a lot closer to doing messaging correctly than flickr is, for example. brenda has a good point about needing to save the initial message though, since that's data loss.

the only thing that's needed is to "send a copy of the message to yourself" automatically, because steffen is exactly right when he says "reinventing mail in a walled garden". i agree with that philosophy 100%.

Well, whether you're jumping in full-time or just hanging around, you're all welcome. As for avoiding passive-aggresive behaviour, though, I'll make no promises... (In fact, I'm planning to end this message with such behaviour, so brace yourselves.)

Currently, photogroup communities ar fairly small at 23 -- we have no groups with thousands of members so admin needs have been limited to a minimum so far.

I like the plan of having a founder and an optional set of moderators for each photogroup; this makes intutitive sense and would scale well. In practice, well be scaling the admin features as the need emerges -- so don't be shy asking for additional tools.

So for a the announced semi-aggresive pet-peeve: The service is called "23" or even "23 Photo Sharing", not 23hq. The domain name is an unfortunate historical accident.

"23" is easier to type. i had to keep reminding myself to add the "hq" part.

"23" it is.

as for photogroups, you've got a group full of "big flickr group" admins here so it is obviously a point of interest. however, beyond basic functions like the ability to nuke the group and share workload a little, there is no need to reinvent the system.

simple is good, and being locked into managing a group on your own indefinitely is the only bad thing about the current arrangement.

"but if the removed person can re-join, trolls will come..."

that's broken, to be sure. but since the community here is so small, i'm not sure it is strictly necessary. troll posts can be deleted, making attempts to troll ultimately fruitless. even on flickr, trolls can create new accounts to continue their actions - so even "banning" is not absolute.

anyway, it is a vulnerability, but "well be scaling the admin features as the need emerges" gives me confidence that if the vulnerability is ever actually exploited it will be addressed.

re: overwhelmed inbox - i found that a problem initially as well, but filtered my way out of it.

it is also pretty much a non-issue in the web-based gmail interface, where the threads are automatically collapsed into discrete conversations.

Woah! This one missed my attention in setting up my groups... but you can point your own domain at a group! The link to edit this is hiding at the very bottom of the group settings page (along with a couple others).

For this group:
http://www.23hq.com/photogroup/nexus/domain

Custom domains has been a request on flickr for eons but never came to fruition. I wonder also, if 23 would consider extending this advanced option to the user pages? Or maybe some sort of user landing page designed around this function?

Custom domains for communities is a HUGE community tool. Plus it would allow you to defer the "permanent name" functionality to your own domain host, negating much of the issues surrounding the lack of a permanent one at 23.

I'm continuing to be impressed by 23's efforts at every turn!

http://www.23hq.com/23/redirect/a/domain

Steffen. Have you implemented "redirect" in other URLs... useful for sharing pages that would be user or case specific depending on who is logged in?

PS, NICE Gonna be using that one right away.