Haven't been around lately, but this thread is near and dead to me.
Ferguson, thank you for your thoughtful and insightful response. It really helps me bring feedback like this back to the team when there’s some details and thought behind the response. As with any business decision, doing something “just because” doesn’t usually happen and comments like this go a long way into helping us make Product decisions that will please all of you.
This thread is different from some prior, in that it emphasizes the customer's experience, and that is great. Prior threads (at least some) for reference spoke of, distilled, "we cannot allow child porn [etc] in comments without trace-ability". Essentially "The Lawyers made us do it". So long as it stays in that vein, I stopped arguing, because, like most of us customers, we are in no position to evaluate your risk in that venue.
So does that mean the lawyers are out of the picture, that this is not about pedophilia, but about customer experience?
People have thrown out the lawyer topic in the past so I want to make sure I was clear, open and honest. The removal of Captcha/Anonymous Comments was a Customer Satisfaction issue and not from lawyers.
- Anonymous comments: Off, on, default off
Really -- isn't it that simple? The people you get filled with spam will only get it if they ASK for it by turning anonymous comments on. Unhappy -- turn it back off. And maybe:
If we were to re-implement Anonymous Comments that would be a good way to do it.
I offer the other observation - many customers of professional photographers who are looking for PRINTS may specifically be those not so involved in social media. My own feeling is the dramatic falloff in interest in professional quality photography has been Facebook-quality, on-phone photos that became "good enough". Less connected parents, friends, etc. may well be the very customers professional must seek more strongly for high quality business, as opposed to thumbnail, blurred cell phone selfies.
While this may be possible for a small number of people, data from multiple sources indicates the opposite: with billions of people using social media accounts, social media is one of the largest sources of traffic for photography sales. Many of our Top Sellers constantly tell us how important Social Media is to their sales. From my own personal experience, Social Media has been a great way for people to find my photos that otherwise would not have. There’s a reason why Facebook and Google and other ad services are proving to be so profitable: Social Media drives traffic and sales.
I get it but to each such statement you must ask "what is the alternative". If the alternative is no comment at all, I'll take the anonymous comment.
I have to question the purpose behind people wanting to leave an anonymous comment. Most people visiting a site want you to know who they are. Dave wants you to know that he viewed your photo and liked it. Mary likes your photo so much she wants to buy it but has a question. She wants you to respond to her. Bob saw your photo and offers some critique. You reprocess the photo and want him to look at it again. You’ve posted a thought provoking photo and a number of viewers have a discussion on it — they want to be able to refer to each others posts to keep the discussion going. You send photos from a family outing to your parents, siblings and cousins; they leave comments and you want to know which family member left the comment. These are some of the major use cases of comments and all of them benefit from having non-anonymous comments. The person commenting wants you to know who they are and you, the photographer, want to know who is leaving the comment.
The issue, from what I think I’m reading, isn’t anonymous comments. The issue is that it’s hard to leave a comment. The issue really is: What else can we, SmugMug, do to make commenting easier so that you don’t lose a comment?
As above -- it should really be up to your customer to decide if an email is REQUIRED, not a site-wide restriction.
Interaction with your photos, which is what you are wanting here, is a much better experience when we have some way of identifying who that is, so you can respond and continue the interaction. How do we do that if we don’t have a name and/or email address or account?
you pretty pointedly take the one thing we keep asking for off the table. Why can't this conversation be about how to implement what we want (Anonymous comments) in a way that does not create major headaches. I believe there is an honest desire to give us something, but I still read that the word has come down from on high "never do anonymous comments, never, ever, under any circumstances" and the rest is all just discussion of what flavor non-anonymous comments we can have. So... really? Are they completely off the table? Or will you let your customers try to help you come up with an approach that gets rid of the headaches?
As of right now our direction is that we’re not going to go down the road of anonymous comments. Nothing is ever written in stone so maybe one day things will change but there needs to be justification and understanding about what problem anonymous comments is really trying to solve. So far I’ve heard “I just want it” and a little bit of “we think it will make people start commenting on my photos again.” We haven’t seen that this is actually the case in reality, unfortunately.
Does that mean we’re not listening or aren’t open to listening? No! Of course we are here and we want to deliver a product that meets your needs. We want people commenting on your photos. We want your photos to spark interaction and discussion. We want people in the SmugMug ecosystem and a social aspect is a great way to do that. What we’re not going to do, though, is to spend cycles on implementing something that doesn’t solve the ultimate problem. We want to make the best product we can and we don’t think that Anonymous Comments is the right step at this time.
Now that Private Sharing is released I can finally talk a little bit more openly about where commenting is going to go in the future. Users with SmugMug accounts can already leave comments on your photos without having to sign into a social network. Private Sharing created a new free Guest Account, and these Guest Accounts can also leave comments when they’re logged in. Anyone with a paid or free SmugMug account can leave a comment. The only way, at this time, to get a Guest Account, is to be invited via Private Sharing. That needs to, and will, change so that anyone can create a SmugMug account and use it to leave comments. We want people to use their SmugMug account because it will let us do so many more powerful features. We’re not there yet but when I talk about making it easier and better I’m talking about using Guest Accounts to notify users of responses, to store a users Purchase History … to use their SmugMug account to drive interaction and potentially sales back to you and your photos. There’s a lot we can do with having this information and we want to make it so you can take advantage of knowing who your visits are to provide an even better experience.
Part of my job here is to listen to grin and take it back to the team. I’m here with an open mind and I can even entertain the idea of Anonymous Comments but we need to be convinced that there’s a problem that it will solve. Let’s keep the discussion going and see if we can find a solution that would make as many people happy as possible.
Again, not one word on passworded galleries. I create that password and anyone using it should be able to
add comments without an additional log in. Maybe adding name and email to add a comment in this case
would be okay. Email address only seen logged in. I do not want Smugmug or anyone else data mining this info.
Imagine you visit a friend. You knock on their door and they welcome you inside.
Later, you go to use the bathroom only to discover there's a lock on the bathroom door.
That's what it's like when I invite guests to my password protected site.
They enter using a password, yet when they go to comment they're asked to provide yet further credentials.
People have thrown out the lawyer topic in the past so I want to make sure I was clear, open and honest. The removal of Captcha/Anonymous Comments was a Customer Satisfaction issue and not from lawyers.
Thank you. Interesting difference in position from before, but it leaves the door open.
While this may be possible for a small number of people, data from multiple sources indicates the opposite: with billions of people using social media accounts, social media is one of the largest sources of traffic for photography sales. Many of our Top Sellers constantly tell us how important Social Media is to their sales.
There is no question that social media is large, but one of the dangers that all businesses (well, all non-social-media businesses) have is to presume that the whole world is part of it. They are equally wrong in assuming that part has no money, no interest, or no impact on their business.
Sure... follow the old "go where the money is". I am NOT suggesting you turn away from social media and its impact. But I am suggesting that presuming it as a prerequisite is a mistake.
I also offer the observation that anonymity is a fundamental part of the internet experience for some who are connected, who might not want that connection between their postings here and elsewhere. I may WANT their comments (I may not, and may delete them). But shouldn't that be my choice?
I have to question the purpose behind people wanting to leave an anonymous comment. Most people visiting a site want you to know who they are.
Your desire to understand that is well placed.
Your insistence on understanding it before reacting is not.
The fact is people DO leave anonymous comments. Their motivation is interesting, but is not necessary to knowing that as a fact.
If you are saying that somehow substantially ALL of those who have ever done so were forced by some feature of Smugmug and if only you could fix that they would all sign in.... I think you are not really saying that.
The reality is that there was a huge falloff of comments when this was imposed. Was it the contemporaneous "new smugmug" that was more at fault, as you seem to think? Maybe. Was it 1% and 99%, or 50/50, or... how can we ever know?
But here's the summary of what I hear from your comments:
- We do not have a legal issue, this is a customer satisfaction issue
- Customers were dissatisfied with anonymous comments, so we turned them off
- Yes, we could turn them on as an option, with the default being off, and that would FIX our customer satisfaction issue
- But we won't because we do not think anyone should leave anonymous comments at all, they have no reason.
Is that a fair synopsis?
If so, why even talk about customer satisfaction, as it is all encapsulated in the "we do not think anyone should / would want to".
And ok -- so go fix the stylistic issues that reduce comments, and let's see if you are right.
Just stop telling all the people asking for it we are wrong. Prove. Proof is easy or hard.
Easy: Turn it on as an option (default off), see what happens.
Hard: Fix the stylistic problems in the new formats that you believe are the core problem, and show us that comments return.
It's been almost two years if memory serves -- let's do SOMETHING!
leftquark I think parts of what you are describing what will be possible in the future with the - now new - guest accounts is parts of why people now might avoid any type of commenting on a site where they are forced to use any type of "real login". Sure, you get that type of login by buying stuff at A..., but then you might not visit a photographers website for the main purpose of buying his or her work {I'll drop the political gender correctness at this point as it will just make this terrible to read} but because there are some nice photos to look at or because one could look at what one would see once one would get the chance to visit that country / area.
Those are the people that might comment on photos if there was no "real login" required, but they would not set up an account for this purpose when they would have to "fear" that they would be getting mails of offers or the service at some point no longer being free or ...
Not to mention you have those people who are not fluent in English and cannot read the conditions that come when creating a guest account, yet they would possibly comment on the page in their mother tongue (if they were somehow sure that they were understood at the other end).
I would be absolutely for the idea of asking for peoples name (ok, they could use a nickname too) and their email address before they can comment - the way it is done on plenty of blogs that I have seen so far. That would give them a chance to be notified if someone answers to their comment (if they did not put in something like [email]polar_bear@polarbear.polarbear_country.home[/email]) yet without more "informal" mails about products that might be on sale from that photographer or well everything that one could consider spam which they did not sign up for.
I also wonder if people are turned down from commenting in case that they are asked to create an (even free) account somewhere to do so. It is another party they have to trust with their data. Another party that gathers information about them. And not the least: the login/guest account would come via a smug mug page, yet the common visitor of say www.lilleulven.com has no clue about what smug mug is and that it is somehow "related" to lilleulven.com. So that pop-up window (or new window, as most people might even not allow pop ups these days) might actually look for some people as if they got a virus on their machine.
Just a few days ago I heard from a friend "In... is asking me to verify my e-mailaddress. It has never done so before. What is wrong? Did I get a virus on my machine? What do I need to do to stop this behavior"?
And that friend was not the only one with this kind of question.
I have had people rather sending me an email via the contact form than commenting on a photo...
I have a suspicion that as long as guest accounts are connected directly with smug mug (and do not come via an invitation - which I could only send to someone who has previously had any business with me or is someone I know in person anyway) and not the specific photographers page there will be many people who will avoid creating that account because they don't understand the connection between the two. (And if it was directly connected to that photographers page, I wonder if they would use it then - I suppose they would not, for my part I think I would not because I would wonder what that photographer would do with my data than.)
So I wonder if the forced "real login" will annoy a certain age group why some younger folks out there might just set up a new account and not bother about whom they give their data. (Considering what is shared on social media these days...) Yet those in that older age group might be those who would actually buy stuff because they have that kind of money...
For the year that I have been a member of smug mug I have not had a single comment on my photos (except via direct mail or well by people I know in person anyway).
But then I don't have the huge numbers of visitors yet either (yea, I'll have to take a closer look into my SEO stuff).
I guess there is more to it than just black & white though...
Again, not one word on passworded galleries. I create that password and anyone using it should be able to add comments without an additional log in. Maybe adding name and email to add a comment in this case would be okay. Email address only seen logged in. I do not want Smugmug or anyone else data mining this info.
Allen, I didn't touch on passworded galleries because I've answered this many times with you. Would you confirm with me that you've received my responses? Entering a gallery password does not tell you who left you a comment. If you give a gallery password to 200 people at an event, and 30 of them leave you a comment of "Can you email me a copy of this photo" how will you know who to email if they left the comment anonymously? Gallery passwords are not the same as identifying a user, which is what visitors need to do when leaving comments.
Imagine you visit a friend. You knock on their door and they welcome you inside. Later, you go to use the bathroom only to discover there's a lock on the bathroom door.
That's what it's like when I invite guests to my password protected site.
They enter using a password, yet when they go to comment they're asked to provide yet further credentials.
Imagine you go to a restaurant. You knock on the door and they welcome you inside. They tell you that they're fully booked unless you have a reservation. You do, so you give them your name and you're given the table. That's exactly what we're doing here. Entering a place doesn't identify who you are -- you need to make yourself known to properly interact and use a product to its best potential.
Any large community will have a subset of users who request and want certain features. It's impossible to build a tool that fits the needs and desires of absolutely every single one of its community members/users. We build tools that benefit the majority and attempt to meet the minimum needs of the others. Look at our UserVoice and you'll see thousands of feature requests, many of them for items that will only benefit a small subset of the community. We would love to make a perfect SmugMug that gives every user everything they want but the reality is that we need to focus and keep SmugMug usable for what we want it to do: be a beautiful home for your amazing photos. There are resource constraints that dictate what projects get worked on and a Roadmap for where we continue to develop and improve SmugMug. When companies try to implement everything they end up losing focus and have a product that doesn't work and is impossible to use. We don't want that at SmugMug. We want you to have a great experience doing the things that offer you. When we improve SmugMug and implement new features, fix things, and update others, we're trying to meet the needs of this majority community.
DGrin, although a very amazing and vibrant community, is only a small subset of our users. We love getting your feedback and we love the discussion. There are also threads like this where I struggle ... I really want to make everyone happy but often, in the interest of the larger community, we make decisions that don't meet the needs of everyone on here. This is one of those cases. Yes, I understand exactly why there are some of you who want anonymous or easier commenting. You even mention that we had it before and that's one reason why you want it back. I can also tell you that for the majority of SmugMug users this was not a good experience. You say you want us to try it ... well we did and it didn't work out well for the majority. We don't remove features without reason and there was plenty of reason for disabling anonymous comments.
Giving you the option to enable/disable Anonymous Comments is an option but it's not one that we're going to explore at this time. We're working hard to take SmugMug into the future and we have a lot of exciting things lined up but allowing anonymous comments is not currently on our Roadmap. DGrin is here so that you can be heard and I've been responding to this thread because I want you to know that we're listening. I'm also trying to be transparent and let you know where we want to go forward with this in the future. I wish I could give you great news. I'm still settling into my new role as Product Manager and DGrin Administrator so I'd love some feedback from you guys on what you'd like. Would you rather get the bad news that we're not working on something, or would you prefer that I not discuss our Roadmap at all?
This is a case of Majority Customer Experience. For the majority of our users it didn't work and that's why it was removed. Maybe at some point in the future we can work on things like this, to implement something for a small and vocal subset of our users but I'm trying to be honest with you and let you know our thoughts. We think there's a lot of other work that can be done to help improve commenting and we're going to explore those options. Just as there are many sites that allow anonymous login, there are many sites that require information before leaving comments and they all work well. We think we can do the same.
Lille Ulven: you make some good comments about people not wanting to sign up for yet another service or don't even know what SmugMug is. That's why we're going to continue offering the ability to leave comments using other networks. Yes, some people don't have a social network but 14 months ago over 70% of internet users were active on Social Media and that # is growing. That's a staggering number and one that we're hoping will help give the ability for people to leave comments on your photos.
I ask you all to give us some time to work on fixing commenting. I agree there are issues. We want to help make it better and we know we can.
I keep reading your comments, reasoning, and justifications for forcing a commentator to sign in. I do want to kindly ask you to listen to my voice, please. If at all possible, can you read this and try to comprehend, please?
> I am NOT complaining about the decline in comments - check my stats, I have two and a half visitors in a month:)
> I want anonymous, absolutely login free, comments because I do NOT want SmugMug to benefit and profit from me, and the service I am already paying for, more than the previously agreed compensation.
I believe $250 a year is a fair price for your service. You have good platform and good reliability. You are all passionate about photography - I appreciate it very much. You are personal in your communication with customers - once I even got an email from the CEO (.. when he banned me from the forum:) ). Thank you for all of that, here is your $250 for a year. Perhaps you will profit more if I actually decide to sell through your platform. This is the extend of the agreement. I do not want to share with you and allow you collect visitors' identifiable and traceable information and benefit from such information that comes from MY PAID usage of the service in any shape or form.
Still one issue is the most important what I have expressed previously - it should be us, Customers, who decide what option is the best for us - not SmugMug Team. The possibility of choice of Anonymous comments: Off, on, default off added to Options is the easiest to do and leaves decision in our hands. I am not interested in Social Media at all - I hate them. I want anonnymous comments and if someone wants to contact me - he or she will leave the email or address. I agree with photoclick - I want anonymous, absolutely login free, comments as well because I do not want SmugMug to benefit and profit from me.
But once again - I do not accept your general idea taht you know better what is good for me.
leftquark first of all congrats to your roll as ProductManager - for sure not easy to make all of us happy on an every day basis. ;-)
Yea, numbers of people in social networks are growing. Or let us put it this way: they seem to be growing. For as I have read - not sure where but it was recently - in some countries people don't know about internet but know about (and are using) Facebook. But that is then their only internet component.
Would I be in if I hadn't been asked by another forum's admin - so that they can reach out to me should there be anything where they believe my skills could help them - the answer is simple: NO. I might by know have worked out how to have only the site for my photography on FB, but nothing more than that.
And I know a lot of that kind of people. Yea, I know others as well.
And latest with the reveal of what some security agencies controlled which they should not even have known about from the past couple of years ... one wonders will people really continue to make sure all their profiles are somewhat connected? Or will they become more and more careful with what type of data they are giving away - and to whom? But of course those things are only "exiting" when they happen just a day or two before an election, two weeks prior and all about it might be forgotten just in time.
(Oh what had Europe for one of its "presidents" telling we all had to live with the fact that nations we were friends with would of course listen and read into all we would to over phones and online... and what was that person screaming when it turned out it had not only happened to the men in the street but to that person self on the political-account ...)
But you have of course the numbers of how many complaints there were when fully anonymous commenting was still allowed. And sure enough we all want something that is somewhat smooth and working 99.99% of the time.
And OK, for my side - I will not add new comments on this case until you tell us that the commenting issues have been fixed. (Nothing worse than a customer telling you what does not work in the "old" system while you are already on a good way to fix all this and make it better )
For your question though (and this is just a single voice in the void):
- What I would like is getting to know when things are turned off why they are (does not have to be the technical reason, but maybe something like we got feedback from X% of our customers that they had problems getting it to work properly - so that those of us for whom it worked can say ok I've been in a rather small group of people where it worked and there has to be some sort of change made. But if you just say "the majority had issues with it" it will sound - how true it might be and even if the majority would be 99% of all customers - like some lame excuse. Or something like fixing the issues Y% of the customers had with this took us so much time per workday that it was not worth continuing to have this as it would have destroyed the possibility of making future enhancements and other fixes - because we were all short of throwing our machines out of the window [yea, database coder here... so I know that feeling far too well])
- By the way I do like that voting system to vote issues higher that I believe need a solution sooner
- A roadmap would be nice. Some sort of knowing what errors are on the priority list for the next releases (I make it releases, because that would allow you to have some room for pushing things - so if you said X, Y, and Z are to be fixed by the release after the next one, we are all happy if they are fixed by the next one [as you might have internally planned anyway] and no one should be too sad about seeing it a release after what you had planned) and maybe even giving us something new to look forward to from time to time - even though nice surprises as the carousel are very welcome
Of course priority lists can change - something that had priority "the day when easter, christmas and all the smug mug employees birthdays are on the same day" yesterday might be top priority tomorrow and kick out what we hoped to see fixed. But again I guess most of us can live with that - at least for my little voice in the void, I can
Allen, I didn't touch on passworded galleries because I've answered this many times with you. Would you confirm with me that you've received my responses? Entering a gallery password does not tell you who left you a comment. If you give a gallery password to 200 people at an event, and 30 of them leave you a comment of "Can you email me a copy of this photo" how will you know who to email if they left the comment anonymously? Gallery passwords are not the same as identifying a user, which is what visitors need to do when leaving comments.
I thought I also typed in a possible solution?
I have many hits from searches, Google, etc. Almost all are new, possibly only one time visitors. It would
be completely ridiculous if all these would have to create an account to comment.
I do not want to share with you and allow you collect visitors' identifiable and traceable information and benefit from such information that comes from MY PAID usage of the service in any shape or form.
I'll pass along your feedback the next time we discuss commenting with the team!
- What I would like is getting to know when things are turned off why they are
I'll certainly do my best to notify the entire community when we make any changes. I've already started to do that, for example, when we got rid of the ability to disable Page Pagination, and I'll continue to let you guys know!
- By the way I do like that voting system to vote issues higher that I believe need a solution sooner
- A roadmap would be nice.
We're trying to do both of these using the SmugMug Feature Request Page (aka "UserVoice"). We're going to be marking items as "Planned", "Started", and "Completed" to let you guys know which features are being worked on. Recently we just marked "Visitor Bulk Digital Downloads for Entire Galleries" as planned, for example!
I have many hits from searches, Google, etc. Almost all are new, possibly only one time visitors. It would be completely ridiculous if all these would have to create an account to comment.
I agree that this would be not a good experience, however, a large number of them will have G+, FB, Twitter, Amazon, other accounts that they can take advantage of and are probably already logged into. Give us some time to put something together.
it should be us, Customers, who decide what option is the best for us - not SmugMug Team.
But once again - I do not accept your general idea that you know better what is good for me.
We do our best to listen to you but you also have to remember that if we implemented every request that every customer makes we will have a product that grows out of control, isn't cohesive, and ultimately won't work for anyone. There's a reason why Apple and its design methodology of keeping things simple is being so successful and copied today.
What we do here at SmugMug is listen to your feedback and incorporate the ideas that make sense and fit in with the direction that we want to take SmugMug. We have an amazing Product Team that has a great Roadmap laid out and we're excited to bring these features to you. We need to stay on track to that Roadmap and, when we can, we fit in other Feature Requests. We want to bring features to you that are really crucial and will help run your business / site: things like Private Sharing or Visitor Bulk Digital Downloads, or Packages for Digital Downloads.
I'm not trying to tell you what is best for you -- I'm just trying to be open with where things stand on our Roadmap. I agree that the ability to turn Anonymous Commenting on is an option, but it would also be unfair of me to tell you that it's going to be coming when in fact it's not on the Roadmap.
Any large community will have a subset of users who request and want certain features. It's impossible to build a tool that fits the needs and desires of absolutely every single one of its community members/users.
Thank you. I offer one last parting thought... your comment makes much more sense when we are talking about adding a new feature rather than removing one that existed already.
Giving you the option to enable/disable Anonymous Comments is an option but it's not one that we're going to explore at this time. We're working hard to take SmugMug into the future and we have a lot of exciting things lined up but allowing anonymous comments is not currently on our Roadmap. DGrin is here so that you can be heard and I've been responding to this thread because I want you to know that we're listening. I'm also trying to be transparent and let you know where we want to go forward with this in the future. I wish I could give you great news.
I appreciate the time you have taken for this discussion, and would much rather have truth than spin, and know the path than left with pointless hope.
I do hope (ironically) that the discussion of something you will not do may spur whatever it is you will do to provide us with better feedback more quickly.
Really -- I think all of us just want the feedback. If (IF) that feedback can be had without being anonymous then all the better, because as you have said (and I agree) I would rather know who said what. So restore the volume of comments and I think (almost) all of us are happy. You (SM) have picked your path and seemingly a commitment to doing so; I hope to see it soon.
Will leave this thread now as to me the problem is as solved as it is going to get, with thanks for your hanging in there.
leftquark thanks I completely tend to forget about that feature request site... maybe I should add it as an external link to my webpage ...
I know that you do this "By the way I do like that voting system to vote issues higher that I believe need a solution sooner " - which is why I wrote my comment this way - else I would have written it in some kind of a wish-form (but then English is not my native language, so maybe it was written in a way that was easy to misunderstood after all).
Anyway: thanks for your help here and else - it is very much appreciated (even when I am not able to put it into words).
> I want anonymous, absolutely login free, comments because I do NOT want SmugMug to benefit and profit from me, and the service I am already paying for, more than the previously agreed compensation.
OK, I said I was gone, but this aspect is too interesting to ignore.
Leftquark, could you comment please?
I think this, if not true, as a rumor could certainly damage your goals of a connected, non-anonymous feedback system for the future.
And if true, I think it does merit disclosure, e.g.
- When a Facebook (etc) user logs in and leaves a comment, what information do you collect from that login?
- Is there a 3rd party privacy statement from Smugmug as to how that information may be used? (Not a subscriber one, but for non-subscribers leaving attributed comments)?
I know that Smugmug, to me, is one of the more respectful companies I deal with in terms of limiting them amount of crap-mail I receive. I very rarely receive unsolicited mail, and most of what I do receive is relevant. Kudos for restraint there. So I hope that such worries as expressed above are unfounded.
But it would be good to put them to rest with facts, if so.
- When a Facebook (etc) user logs in and leaves a comment, what information do you collect from that login?
- Is there a 3rd party privacy statement from Smugmug as to how that information may be used? (Not a subscriber one, but for non-subscribers leaving attributed comments)?
The only thing we store is the name of the commenter and their facebook or Google UserID. We then use the Facebook/Google API's to render the profile photo and link to their profile page. We do not store the profile photo, email address, friends list, or anything else.
The only thing we store is the name of the commenter and their facebook or Google UserID....
... and the only information Facebook or Google stores is what page a logged in commenter visited along with the actual comments. It is all about connecting dots. This is how today's targeted advertisement works. After a commenter leaves a comment on a website hosted on SM and later visits Facebook - guess what advertisement will be served to that user? - SmugMug's advertisement, NOT your customized photography website:)
In addition to the above, a very extensive and detailed statistical analysis can be run on such stored data. SmugMug and third parties (FB, Google, etc.) are the ones to benefit from such, NOT you, the renter of the services.
With social media sites this behavior is widely accepted - after all we do not pay money for the usage. But there is no free lunch. Instead, we pay by letting them to analyse and utilize to their advantage our browsing data. But SmugMug already charges $250 a year plus percentage from printing orders.
... and the only information Facebook or Google stores is what page a logged in commenter visited along with the actual comments. It is all about connecting dots. This is how today's targeted advertisement works. After a commenter leaves a comment on a website hosted on SM and later visits Facebook - guess what advertisement will be served to that user? - SmugMug's advertisement, NOT your customized photography website:)
But only if Smugmug pays for such advertising to be displayed, of course.
Though I do not know how, I presume you could pay to have that information displayed as well, advertising your photography website.
I do not dispute that there is value in the information collected, but I think it is not symmetric. Facebook is the one primarily benefiting in that situation, and benefiting from information about their subscriber. At some level you are not involved at all (I realize at some level you are, in that you brought the traffic to the login).
The flip side would be more egregious, however, I think -- if Smugmug was collecting that data to, say, start sending spam like "now that you saw great photos there, put your own here". That would be more intimately tied to visiting your SM site, and cast aspersions on you pretty directly.
I am not saying that I LIKE the inter-connected nature of data we leave behind, much less this situation. But I think our... I hesitate to say "right to complain" but however you want to say it... lies more with what Smugmug does with such data than the secondary effect of what their authentication partners do.
Not sure this has been mentioned before but as one who recently switched from Zenfolio to Smugmug I suggest Smugmug look at Zenfoilio and a number of other sites that easily allow comments for guidance. I had no problem with visitors making comments with my Zenfolio site and am tempted to go back. Simply put, if a visitor honors me by visiting my site and wants to comment about my work, why make it difficult? Seems like a pound of prevention for an ounce of cure.
Allow guest uploaders to comment please
I enable guest uploading to combine many friends' pictures in one place. The gallery is then viewable by the whole group of friends....great for a group traveling together! However once they upload their pictures many do not want to log in with another account to comment using Facebook, Google+, Smugmug.
Reasons vary: Some have none of those accounts, some don't want their account data cross-linked & others simply don't like the additional step. I support anonymous guest comments without a login. One security suggestion would be to have comments moderated: delayed until approved by the account holder.
Comment Area in Gallery / no signing in!
I am a professional photographer who has clients that that use the comment area in their private unlisted galleries to tell me their edits and various notes.
It is unprofessional to ask them to sign into Facebook, which some of them don't even have. They shouldn't and don't want to log in with goggle ---they don't want another step to take when communicating with me about their projects.
No one has ever posted rude or inappropriate comments in the galleries comment area---due to the fact that we are professionals not abusing this but rather using it as a tool to further aide the services we offer and provide.
Please amend this.
I'm already looking into other website companies that I can use.
People have been expressing this concern and voting for ages now.
What is the minimum number of 'votes' required by Smugmug, in order for them to actually care enough about putting the settings back to the way it was? Is there a certain number they are waiting for?
Does anyone have to have a Phd to understand, that for an unlisted private galleries, you are mostly communicating in an 1:1 manner, to discuss favourites and edit notes? Or let ppl mark the gallery that way (1:1) and allow those Smugmug not preferred no-login-required galleries finally, no? :-)
What is the minimum number of 'votes' required by Smugmug, in order for them to actually care enough about putting the settings back to the way it was? Is there a certain number they are waiting for?
Just like all our forums, the Feedback Forums (user voice) is just another tool to collect our customers interest in certain features, and to have discussions on those. Just because a request has some # of votes, doesn't mean that we will build that feature, though we certainly weigh it as we work through our Roadmap and prioritize our projects. We do often look at the highly voted items as we weigh impact of each of those projects that go into our Roadmap, and we look at the comments and other requests so see how everything can fit into an amazing SmugMug ecosystem.
The Product Team monitors every vote and every comment left on the feedback forums and we care about each item. Just because we can't build every one of them doesn't mean we don't care.
In this case, we think there's a lot of work that can be done to improve commenting without allowing anonymous commenting.
... we think there's a lot of work that can be done to improve commenting without allowing anonymous commenting.
Improving commenting and allowing anonymous commenting are two, absolutely separate issues. Improve commenting function all you want. But keeping commenting non-anonymous does not make the comments function any better or worse. It just makes the comments as... non-anonymous. And this is not what majority of people prefer. I believe you should not be controlling how I want my visitors to leave comments on my pages with my content.
Comments
People have thrown out the lawyer topic in the past so I want to make sure I was clear, open and honest. The removal of Captcha/Anonymous Comments was a Customer Satisfaction issue and not from lawyers.
If we were to re-implement Anonymous Comments that would be a good way to do it.
While this may be possible for a small number of people, data from multiple sources indicates the opposite: with billions of people using social media accounts, social media is one of the largest sources of traffic for photography sales. Many of our Top Sellers constantly tell us how important Social Media is to their sales. From my own personal experience, Social Media has been a great way for people to find my photos that otherwise would not have. There’s a reason why Facebook and Google and other ad services are proving to be so profitable: Social Media drives traffic and sales.
I have to question the purpose behind people wanting to leave an anonymous comment. Most people visiting a site want you to know who they are. Dave wants you to know that he viewed your photo and liked it. Mary likes your photo so much she wants to buy it but has a question. She wants you to respond to her. Bob saw your photo and offers some critique. You reprocess the photo and want him to look at it again. You’ve posted a thought provoking photo and a number of viewers have a discussion on it — they want to be able to refer to each others posts to keep the discussion going. You send photos from a family outing to your parents, siblings and cousins; they leave comments and you want to know which family member left the comment. These are some of the major use cases of comments and all of them benefit from having non-anonymous comments. The person commenting wants you to know who they are and you, the photographer, want to know who is leaving the comment.
The issue, from what I think I’m reading, isn’t anonymous comments. The issue is that it’s hard to leave a comment. The issue really is: What else can we, SmugMug, do to make commenting easier so that you don’t lose a comment?
Interaction with your photos, which is what you are wanting here, is a much better experience when we have some way of identifying who that is, so you can respond and continue the interaction. How do we do that if we don’t have a name and/or email address or account?
As of right now our direction is that we’re not going to go down the road of anonymous comments. Nothing is ever written in stone so maybe one day things will change but there needs to be justification and understanding about what problem anonymous comments is really trying to solve. So far I’ve heard “I just want it” and a little bit of “we think it will make people start commenting on my photos again.” We haven’t seen that this is actually the case in reality, unfortunately.
Does that mean we’re not listening or aren’t open to listening? No! Of course we are here and we want to deliver a product that meets your needs. We want people commenting on your photos. We want your photos to spark interaction and discussion. We want people in the SmugMug ecosystem and a social aspect is a great way to do that. What we’re not going to do, though, is to spend cycles on implementing something that doesn’t solve the ultimate problem. We want to make the best product we can and we don’t think that Anonymous Comments is the right step at this time.
Now that Private Sharing is released I can finally talk a little bit more openly about where commenting is going to go in the future. Users with SmugMug accounts can already leave comments on your photos without having to sign into a social network. Private Sharing created a new free Guest Account, and these Guest Accounts can also leave comments when they’re logged in. Anyone with a paid or free SmugMug account can leave a comment. The only way, at this time, to get a Guest Account, is to be invited via Private Sharing. That needs to, and will, change so that anyone can create a SmugMug account and use it to leave comments. We want people to use their SmugMug account because it will let us do so many more powerful features. We’re not there yet but when I talk about making it easier and better I’m talking about using Guest Accounts to notify users of responses, to store a users Purchase History … to use their SmugMug account to drive interaction and potentially sales back to you and your photos. There’s a lot we can do with having this information and we want to make it so you can take advantage of knowing who your visits are to provide an even better experience.
Part of my job here is to listen to grin and take it back to the team. I’m here with an open mind and I can even entertain the idea of Anonymous Comments but we need to be convinced that there’s a problem that it will solve. Let’s keep the discussion going and see if we can find a solution that would make as many people happy as possible.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
add comments without an additional log in. Maybe adding name and email to add a comment in this case
would be okay. Email address only seen logged in. I do not want Smugmug or anyone else data mining this info.
My Website index | My Blog
Imagine you visit a friend. You knock on their door and they welcome you inside.
Later, you go to use the bathroom only to discover there's a lock on the bathroom door.
That's what it's like when I invite guests to my password protected site.
They enter using a password, yet when they go to comment they're asked to provide yet further credentials.
Thank you. Interesting difference in position from before, but it leaves the door open.
There is no question that social media is large, but one of the dangers that all businesses (well, all non-social-media businesses) have is to presume that the whole world is part of it. They are equally wrong in assuming that part has no money, no interest, or no impact on their business.
Sure... follow the old "go where the money is". I am NOT suggesting you turn away from social media and its impact. But I am suggesting that presuming it as a prerequisite is a mistake.
I also offer the observation that anonymity is a fundamental part of the internet experience for some who are connected, who might not want that connection between their postings here and elsewhere. I may WANT their comments (I may not, and may delete them). But shouldn't that be my choice?
Your desire to understand that is well placed.
Your insistence on understanding it before reacting is not.
The fact is people DO leave anonymous comments. Their motivation is interesting, but is not necessary to knowing that as a fact.
If you are saying that somehow substantially ALL of those who have ever done so were forced by some feature of Smugmug and if only you could fix that they would all sign in.... I think you are not really saying that.
The reality is that there was a huge falloff of comments when this was imposed. Was it the contemporaneous "new smugmug" that was more at fault, as you seem to think? Maybe. Was it 1% and 99%, or 50/50, or... how can we ever know?
But here's the summary of what I hear from your comments:
- We do not have a legal issue, this is a customer satisfaction issue
- Customers were dissatisfied with anonymous comments, so we turned them off
- Yes, we could turn them on as an option, with the default being off, and that would FIX our customer satisfaction issue
- But we won't because we do not think anyone should leave anonymous comments at all, they have no reason.
Is that a fair synopsis?
If so, why even talk about customer satisfaction, as it is all encapsulated in the "we do not think anyone should / would want to".
And ok -- so go fix the stylistic issues that reduce comments, and let's see if you are right.
Just stop telling all the people asking for it we are wrong. Prove. Proof is easy or hard.
Hard: Fix the stylistic problems in the new formats that you believe are the core problem, and show us that comments return.
It's been almost two years if memory serves -- let's do SOMETHING!
Those are the people that might comment on photos if there was no "real login" required, but they would not set up an account for this purpose when they would have to "fear" that they would be getting mails of offers or the service at some point no longer being free or ...
Not to mention you have those people who are not fluent in English and cannot read the conditions that come when creating a guest account, yet they would possibly comment on the page in their mother tongue (if they were somehow sure that they were understood at the other end).
I would be absolutely for the idea of asking for peoples name (ok, they could use a nickname too) and their email address before they can comment - the way it is done on plenty of blogs that I have seen so far. That would give them a chance to be notified if someone answers to their comment (if they did not put in something like [email]polar_bear@polarbear.polarbear_country.home[/email]) yet without more "informal" mails about products that might be on sale from that photographer or well everything that one could consider spam which they did not sign up for.
I also wonder if people are turned down from commenting in case that they are asked to create an (even free) account somewhere to do so. It is another party they have to trust with their data. Another party that gathers information about them. And not the least: the login/guest account would come via a smug mug page, yet the common visitor of say www.lilleulven.com has no clue about what smug mug is and that it is somehow "related" to lilleulven.com. So that pop-up window (or new window, as most people might even not allow pop ups these days) might actually look for some people as if they got a virus on their machine.
Just a few days ago I heard from a friend "In... is asking me to verify my e-mailaddress. It has never done so before. What is wrong? Did I get a virus on my machine? What do I need to do to stop this behavior"?
And that friend was not the only one with this kind of question.
I have had people rather sending me an email via the contact form than commenting on a photo...
I have a suspicion that as long as guest accounts are connected directly with smug mug (and do not come via an invitation - which I could only send to someone who has previously had any business with me or is someone I know in person anyway) and not the specific photographers page there will be many people who will avoid creating that account because they don't understand the connection between the two. (And if it was directly connected to that photographers page, I wonder if they would use it then - I suppose they would not, for my part I think I would not because I would wonder what that photographer would do with my data than.)
So I wonder if the forced "real login" will annoy a certain age group why some younger folks out there might just set up a new account and not bother about whom they give their data. (Considering what is shared on social media these days...) Yet those in that older age group might be those who would actually buy stuff because they have that kind of money...
For the year that I have been a member of smug mug I have not had a single comment on my photos (except via direct mail or well by people I know in person anyway).
But then I don't have the huge numbers of visitors yet either (yea, I'll have to take a closer look into my SEO stuff).
I guess there is more to it than just black & white though...
Lille Ulven
Allen, I didn't touch on passworded galleries because I've answered this many times with you. Would you confirm with me that you've received my responses? Entering a gallery password does not tell you who left you a comment. If you give a gallery password to 200 people at an event, and 30 of them leave you a comment of "Can you email me a copy of this photo" how will you know who to email if they left the comment anonymously? Gallery passwords are not the same as identifying a user, which is what visitors need to do when leaving comments.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Imagine you go to a restaurant. You knock on the door and they welcome you inside. They tell you that they're fully booked unless you have a reservation. You do, so you give them your name and you're given the table. That's exactly what we're doing here. Entering a place doesn't identify who you are -- you need to make yourself known to properly interact and use a product to its best potential.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
DGrin, although a very amazing and vibrant community, is only a small subset of our users. We love getting your feedback and we love the discussion. There are also threads like this where I struggle ... I really want to make everyone happy but often, in the interest of the larger community, we make decisions that don't meet the needs of everyone on here. This is one of those cases. Yes, I understand exactly why there are some of you who want anonymous or easier commenting. You even mention that we had it before and that's one reason why you want it back. I can also tell you that for the majority of SmugMug users this was not a good experience. You say you want us to try it ... well we did and it didn't work out well for the majority. We don't remove features without reason and there was plenty of reason for disabling anonymous comments.
Giving you the option to enable/disable Anonymous Comments is an option but it's not one that we're going to explore at this time. We're working hard to take SmugMug into the future and we have a lot of exciting things lined up but allowing anonymous comments is not currently on our Roadmap. DGrin is here so that you can be heard and I've been responding to this thread because I want you to know that we're listening. I'm also trying to be transparent and let you know where we want to go forward with this in the future. I wish I could give you great news. I'm still settling into my new role as Product Manager and DGrin Administrator so I'd love some feedback from you guys on what you'd like. Would you rather get the bad news that we're not working on something, or would you prefer that I not discuss our Roadmap at all?
This is a case of Majority Customer Experience. For the majority of our users it didn't work and that's why it was removed. Maybe at some point in the future we can work on things like this, to implement something for a small and vocal subset of our users but I'm trying to be honest with you and let you know our thoughts. We think there's a lot of other work that can be done to help improve commenting and we're going to explore those options. Just as there are many sites that allow anonymous login, there are many sites that require information before leaving comments and they all work well. We think we can do the same.
Lille Ulven: you make some good comments about people not wanting to sign up for yet another service or don't even know what SmugMug is. That's why we're going to continue offering the ability to leave comments using other networks. Yes, some people don't have a social network but 14 months ago over 70% of internet users were active on Social Media and that # is growing. That's a staggering number and one that we're hoping will help give the ability for people to leave comments on your photos.
I ask you all to give us some time to work on fixing commenting. I agree there are issues. We want to help make it better and we know we can.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
I keep reading your comments, reasoning, and justifications for forcing a commentator to sign in. I do want to kindly ask you to listen to my voice, please. If at all possible, can you read this and try to comprehend, please?
> I am NOT complaining about the decline in comments - check my stats, I have two and a half visitors in a month:)
> I want anonymous, absolutely login free, comments because I do NOT want SmugMug to benefit and profit from me, and the service I am already paying for, more than the previously agreed compensation.
I believe $250 a year is a fair price for your service. You have good platform and good reliability. You are all passionate about photography - I appreciate it very much. You are personal in your communication with customers - once I even got an email from the CEO (.. when he banned me from the forum:) ). Thank you for all of that, here is your $250 for a year. Perhaps you will profit more if I actually decide to sell through your platform. This is the extend of the agreement. I do not want to share with you and allow you collect visitors' identifiable and traceable information and benefit from such information that comes from MY PAID usage of the service in any shape or form.
tailoredportraits.com
Still one issue is the most important what I have expressed previously - it should be us, Customers, who decide what option is the best for us - not SmugMug Team. The possibility of choice of Anonymous comments: Off, on, default off added to Options is the easiest to do and leaves decision in our hands. I am not interested in Social Media at all - I hate them. I want anonnymous comments and if someone wants to contact me - he or she will leave the email or address. I agree with photoclick - I want anonymous, absolutely login free, comments as well because I do not want SmugMug to benefit and profit from me.
But once again - I do not accept your general idea taht you know better what is good for me.
Yea, numbers of people in social networks are growing. Or let us put it this way: they seem to be growing. For as I have read - not sure where but it was recently - in some countries people don't know about internet but know about (and are using) Facebook. But that is then their only internet component.
Would I be in if I hadn't been asked by another forum's admin - so that they can reach out to me should there be anything where they believe my skills could help them - the answer is simple: NO. I might by know have worked out how to have only the site for my photography on FB, but nothing more than that.
And I know a lot of that kind of people. Yea, I know others as well.
And latest with the reveal of what some security agencies controlled which they should not even have known about from the past couple of years ... one wonders will people really continue to make sure all their profiles are somewhat connected? Or will they become more and more careful with what type of data they are giving away - and to whom? But of course those things are only "exiting" when they happen just a day or two before an election, two weeks prior and all about it might be forgotten just in time.
(Oh what had Europe for one of its "presidents" telling we all had to live with the fact that nations we were friends with would of course listen and read into all we would to over phones and online... and what was that person screaming when it turned out it had not only happened to the men in the street but to that person self on the political-account ...)
But you have of course the numbers of how many complaints there were when fully anonymous commenting was still allowed. And sure enough we all want something that is somewhat smooth and working 99.99% of the time.
And OK, for my side - I will not add new comments on this case until you tell us that the commenting issues have been fixed. (Nothing worse than a customer telling you what does not work in the "old" system while you are already on a good way to fix all this and make it better
For your question though (and this is just a single voice in the void):
- What I would like is getting to know when things are turned off why they are (does not have to be the technical reason, but maybe something like we got feedback from X% of our customers that they had problems getting it to work properly - so that those of us for whom it worked can say ok I've been in a rather small group of people where it worked and there has to be some sort of change made. But if you just say "the majority had issues with it" it will sound - how true it might be and even if the majority would be 99% of all customers - like some lame excuse. Or something like fixing the issues Y% of the customers had with this took us so much time per workday that it was not worth continuing to have this as it would have destroyed the possibility of making future enhancements and other fixes - because we were all short of throwing our machines out of the window [yea, database coder here... so I know that feeling far too well])
- By the way I do like that voting system to vote issues higher that I believe need a solution sooner
- A roadmap would be nice. Some sort of knowing what errors are on the priority list for the next releases (I make it releases, because that would allow you to have some room for pushing things - so if you said X, Y, and Z are to be fixed by the release after the next one, we are all happy if they are fixed by the next one [as you might have internally planned anyway] and no one should be too sad about seeing it a release after what you had planned) and maybe even giving us something new to look forward to from time to time - even though nice surprises as the carousel are very welcome
Of course priority lists can change - something that had priority "the day when easter, christmas and all the smug mug employees birthdays are on the same day" yesterday might be top priority tomorrow and kick out what we hoped to see fixed. But again I guess most of us can live with that - at least for my little voice in the void, I can
Lille Ulven
I have many hits from searches, Google, etc. Almost all are new, possibly only one time visitors. It would
be completely ridiculous if all these would have to create an account to comment.
My Website index | My Blog
I'll pass along your feedback the next time we discuss commenting with the team!
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
We're trying to do both of these using the SmugMug Feature Request Page (aka "UserVoice"). We're going to be marking items as "Planned", "Started", and "Completed" to let you guys know which features are being worked on. Recently we just marked "Visitor Bulk Digital Downloads for Entire Galleries" as planned, for example!
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
I agree that this would be not a good experience, however, a large number of them will have G+, FB, Twitter, Amazon, other accounts that they can take advantage of and are probably already logged into. Give us some time to put something together.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
We do our best to listen to you but you also have to remember that if we implemented every request that every customer makes we will have a product that grows out of control, isn't cohesive, and ultimately won't work for anyone. There's a reason why Apple and its design methodology of keeping things simple is being so successful and copied today.
What we do here at SmugMug is listen to your feedback and incorporate the ideas that make sense and fit in with the direction that we want to take SmugMug. We have an amazing Product Team that has a great Roadmap laid out and we're excited to bring these features to you. We need to stay on track to that Roadmap and, when we can, we fit in other Feature Requests. We want to bring features to you that are really crucial and will help run your business / site: things like Private Sharing or Visitor Bulk Digital Downloads, or Packages for Digital Downloads.
I'm not trying to tell you what is best for you -- I'm just trying to be open with where things stand on our Roadmap. I agree that the ability to turn Anonymous Commenting on is an option, but it would also be unfair of me to tell you that it's going to be coming when in fact it's not on the Roadmap.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Thank you. I offer one last parting thought... your comment makes much more sense when we are talking about adding a new feature rather than removing one that existed already.
I appreciate the time you have taken for this discussion, and would much rather have truth than spin, and know the path than left with pointless hope.
I do hope (ironically) that the discussion of something you will not do may spur whatever it is you will do to provide us with better feedback more quickly.
Really -- I think all of us just want the feedback. If (IF) that feedback can be had without being anonymous then all the better, because as you have said (and I agree) I would rather know who said what. So restore the volume of comments and I think (almost) all of us are happy. You (SM) have picked your path and seemingly a commitment to doing so; I hope to see it soon.
Will leave this thread now as to me the problem is as solved as it is going to get, with thanks for your hanging in there.
I know that you do this "By the way I do like that voting system to vote issues higher that I believe need a solution sooner " - which is why I wrote my comment this way - else I would have written it in some kind of a wish-form (but then English is not my native language, so maybe it was written in a way that was easy to misunderstood after all).
Anyway: thanks for your help here and else - it is very much appreciated (even when I am not able to put it into words).
OK, I said I was gone, but this aspect is too interesting to ignore.
Leftquark, could you comment please?
I think this, if not true, as a rumor could certainly damage your goals of a connected, non-anonymous feedback system for the future.
And if true, I think it does merit disclosure, e.g.
- When a Facebook (etc) user logs in and leaves a comment, what information do you collect from that login?
- Is there a 3rd party privacy statement from Smugmug as to how that information may be used? (Not a subscriber one, but for non-subscribers leaving attributed comments)?
I know that Smugmug, to me, is one of the more respectful companies I deal with in terms of limiting them amount of crap-mail I receive. I very rarely receive unsolicited mail, and most of what I do receive is relevant. Kudos for restraint there. So I hope that such worries as expressed above are unfounded.
But it would be good to put them to rest with facts, if so.
The only thing we store is the name of the commenter and their facebook or Google UserID. We then use the Facebook/Google API's to render the profile photo and link to their profile page. We do not store the profile photo, email address, friends list, or anything else.
Information on what we collect from Facebook/Google can be found in our standard privacy statement:
http://www.smugmug.com/about/privacy/
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
... and the only information Facebook or Google stores is what page a logged in commenter visited along with the actual comments. It is all about connecting dots. This is how today's targeted advertisement works. After a commenter leaves a comment on a website hosted on SM and later visits Facebook - guess what advertisement will be served to that user? - SmugMug's advertisement, NOT your customized photography website:)
In addition to the above, a very extensive and detailed statistical analysis can be run on such stored data. SmugMug and third parties (FB, Google, etc.) are the ones to benefit from such, NOT you, the renter of the services.
With social media sites this behavior is widely accepted - after all we do not pay money for the usage. But there is no free lunch. Instead, we pay by letting them to analyse and utilize to their advantage our browsing data. But SmugMug already charges $250 a year plus percentage from printing orders.
tailoredportraits.com
But only if Smugmug pays for such advertising to be displayed, of course.
Though I do not know how, I presume you could pay to have that information displayed as well, advertising your photography website.
I do not dispute that there is value in the information collected, but I think it is not symmetric. Facebook is the one primarily benefiting in that situation, and benefiting from information about their subscriber. At some level you are not involved at all (I realize at some level you are, in that you brought the traffic to the login).
The flip side would be more egregious, however, I think -- if Smugmug was collecting that data to, say, start sending spam like "now that you saw great photos there, put your own here". That would be more intimately tied to visiting your SM site, and cast aspersions on you pretty directly.
I am not saying that I LIKE the inter-connected nature of data we leave behind, much less this situation. But I think our... I hesitate to say "right to complain" but however you want to say it... lies more with what Smugmug does with such data than the secondary effect of what their authentication partners do.
I enable guest uploading to combine many friends' pictures in one place. The gallery is then viewable by the whole group of friends....great for a group traveling together! However once they upload their pictures many do not want to log in with another account to comment using Facebook, Google+, Smugmug.
Reasons vary: Some have none of those accounts, some don't want their account data cross-linked & others simply don't like the additional step. I support anonymous guest comments without a login. One security suggestion would be to have comments moderated: delayed until approved by the account holder.
I am a professional photographer who has clients that that use the comment area in their private unlisted galleries to tell me their edits and various notes.
It is unprofessional to ask them to sign into Facebook, which some of them don't even have. They shouldn't and don't want to log in with goggle ---they don't want another step to take when communicating with me about their projects.
No one has ever posted rude or inappropriate comments in the galleries comment area---due to the fact that we are professionals not abusing this but rather using it as a tool to further aide the services we offer and provide.
Please amend this.
I'm already looking into other website companies that I can use.
http://feedback.smugmug.com/forums/17723-smugmug/suggestions/4262376-remove-smugmug-facebook-log-in-requirements-for-co/
My Smugmug Site
What is the minimum number of 'votes' required by Smugmug, in order for them to actually care enough about putting the settings back to the way it was? Is there a certain number they are waiting for?
Film/TV Stills Photography
"When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt." ~ Henry J. Kaiser
Just like all our forums, the Feedback Forums (user voice) is just another tool to collect our customers interest in certain features, and to have discussions on those. Just because a request has some # of votes, doesn't mean that we will build that feature, though we certainly weigh it as we work through our Roadmap and prioritize our projects. We do often look at the highly voted items as we weigh impact of each of those projects that go into our Roadmap, and we look at the comments and other requests so see how everything can fit into an amazing SmugMug ecosystem.
The Product Team monitors every vote and every comment left on the feedback forums and we care about each item. Just because we can't build every one of them doesn't mean we don't care.
In this case, we think there's a lot of work that can be done to improve commenting without allowing anonymous commenting.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Improving commenting and allowing anonymous commenting are two, absolutely separate issues. Improve commenting function all you want. But keeping commenting non-anonymous does not make the comments function any better or worse. It just makes the comments as... non-anonymous. And this is not what majority of people prefer. I believe you should not be controlling how I want my visitors to leave comments on my pages with my content.
tailoredportraits.com