In memoriam accounts

pegelli

Flickr just announced the option of "in memoriam" accounts for deceased members: blog.flickr.net/en/2019/03/08/update-on-creative-commons-licenses-and-in-memoriam-accounts/?fbclid=IwAR2X6B0b9tD14uZe-elZYITEr10XFa-UrFIVK77iphqBGsve7KL873pWESY

Since SmugMug and Flickr are closely related I was wondering if the same service will be set up for deceased SmugMug members, so the images they linked to other websites/photography forums will stay intact.

Allen

It sounds like it's only for public photos. I think they have forgotten all those families with their family history of photos behind passworded galleries.

pegelli

@Allen said:
It sounds like it's only for public photos. I think they have forgotten all those families with their family history of photos behind passworded galleries.

That's true, but I don't think it's wise that SmugMug is the only photo repository for those families, if you want to make sure those images don't get lost it's a good idea to put them on a hard drive somewhere.

For me the main issue is that if the Flickr or SmugMug account lapses after a member is deceased all the images linked on websites and photography forums get lost and there is no way to prevent that from happening.

leftquark

This is in particular to flickr and it does not only pertain to public photos. Anyone can submit a request to have a Flickr account (and all its private photos) turned into an In Memoriam account.

colourbox

@pegelli said:

@Allen said:
It sounds like it's only for public photos. I think they have forgotten all those families with their family history of photos behind passworded galleries.

That's true, but I don't think it's wise that SmugMug is the only photo repository for those families, if you want to make sure those images don't get lost it's a good idea to put them on a hard drive somewhere.

Hard drives can easily go bad, and drive interfaces change too quickly. (Ask a random family member the best way to quickly get data off a FireWire external, IDE internal hard drive, or data DVD/CD-ROM into a current Mac or PC that has USB-C ports and no optical drive. Any geeks will figure it out, but otherwise...)The only long term way to solve this is that if a family member has online photos that are too valuable to lose, how they will be preserved into the future should be thought through and specified in an advance directive. The fate of those photo accounts should be decided along with all their other valuable assets, like their logins, bank accounts, online accounts, and digital documents they hold that are critical for family assets and history, etc. This must be done while they're still alive.

If necessary, the ongoing payment and maintenance of their Smugmug (and other) online accounts must be assigned to a family member or trust that's set up. The responsible party must also be charged with migrating the photos in case keeping them on Smugmug becomes impractical, too expensive, Smugmug goes out of business or is sold, etc. If the photos are stored on a hard drive instead, that responsible party must agree to migrate the photos to newer media before the old drive stops working or can no longer be accessed due to (probably inevitable) changes in data interfaces and standards.

That family member should also be responsible for maintaining backups of the photos, so the answer is probably not "either" online "or" hard drive, but "both," with a plan for maintenance and access across family generations, indefinitely.

I specifically mentioned "maintenance" because if I had died before Smugmug 2.0 rolled out, it wouldn't matter much if Smugmug kept my account going because my old HTML/CSS customizations and settings would look like trash under the new responsive templates and revised customization tools. Maybe the links would still live, but my site would not be presentable. I can't keep up with Smugmug technical announcements if I'm dead, but I don't know anyone else in my family who knows how to manage a Smugmug site.

For all those reasons, if you really want to solve the problem, In Memoriam accounts are only a minor part of the problem that needs to be solved. In Memoriam accounts can help keep images around for the world at large, but at the family level, a complete solution must involve advance family planning that treats the photos as assets to be included in end-of-life plans.

Or you just say there are a limited number of photos that should be kept, you gather them up, print them or dump them into photo books, and stop worrying about long term care of digital files or online accounts.

leftquark

As you pointed out, there's a lot to consider with setting up In Memorium accounts on SmugMug. We're happy to work with individuals who would like to have something setup in the event of their passing, but we don't have an official program for SmugMug.