Ever get unwarranted, nasty, vulgar comments in your galleries?

tlphotostlphotos Registered Users Posts: 63 Big grins
edited June 21, 2008 in SmugMug Pro Sales Support
Do any of you get prowlers who visit your site and leave unwarranted vulgar comments in your galleries?

My Smugmug Pro site is mainly for selling little league pictures (my daughters teams and their friends), I password protect all of my sales galleries and only leave them posted for a few weeks after the event. I also use the site to share our family pictures with our out-of-town extended family - and I password protect those galleries too.

Last night, while uploading our vacation pictures to a new gallery (that I was going to set the password protection after the pictures were done uploading), someone found this new gallery and left explenatives in the comment section, the jist of it saying they did not like password proctected galleries. It was only one sentence albeit filled with vulgarity - including the vulgar "c" word for female anatomy.
Has this happened to anyone else, and if so, how often?:dunno

I was pretty creeped out and disgusted that someone would do that, especially to my family album with pictures of my three daughters and girl cousins (ages 2 to 9).

I was also surprised that I was found. I know that I am not invisible, but I am very low key. I do not advertise my site to the general public. Through the sports leagues and friends, I send emails to coaches and parents about shooting specified games (maybe three of four a season) - and I've only been doing this for a couple years, so I thought I was a relative unknown on the web. And, all of my galleries are password protected except for a couple of galleries of my daughters that I use as my sports portfolio. So, did I just get "lucky" or is this not an unusual occurance for many of your high traffic sites to get unwarranted nasty and crude comments?:dunno Also, I am pretty darn sure that it is random. I have never had any complaints about my work and the password protection is always asked for.

I am trying to not let it bother me, but I was angry that someone would take the time to do that on my site - especially the "c" word on my site that mainly shoots young girl sports.

Comments

  • gusgus Registered Users Posts: 16,209 Major grins
    edited June 19, 2008
    Have you shown this to smugmug help desk so they can trace the perpetrator ?
    Normally i would ignore stupid comments however one of that nature needs serious attention in my opinion.
  • AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited June 19, 2008
    gus wrote:
    Have you shown this to smugmug help desk so they can trace the perpetrator ?
    Normally i would ignore stupid comments however one of that nature needs serious attention in my opinion.
    We can't trace them :(
  • AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited June 19, 2008
    Hi, I'm very sorry that this has happened to you :( Best is to turn on comment approval
    http://www.smugmug.com/help/photo-sharing-comments

    then you'll be able to delete them before they go public.
  • nobodynobody Registered Users Posts: 94 Big grins
    edited June 19, 2008
    tlphotos wrote:
    Do any of you get prowlers who visit your site and leave unwarranted vulgar comments in your galleries?

    For that reason, I disable comments completely except in hidden galleries that are intended for family only. If there is one thing that my year of having a pro flickr account taught me, it is that there are creepy people out there who are fixated on certain things. I just don't like to deal with them, so I disable comments.
  • TangoTango Registered Users Posts: 4,592 Major grins
    edited June 19, 2008
    ahh, i wondered what would happen once "caller ID" took affect....
    now the kids do this.......i see....

    but hey, this is nothing compared to having a stalker find me by googling my names leading them to me here at dgrin and leaving e-mails....:D

    ne_nau.gif crazy people everywhere
    Aaron Nelson
  • denisegoldbergdenisegoldberg Administrators Posts: 14,361 moderator
    edited June 19, 2008
    That really stinks.

    I have two suggestions. If the gallery is intended to be password-protected, I would set the password as soon as I created the gallery, and before uploading any photos.

    The other is to turn comment approval on. See details at http://www.smugmug.com/help/photo-sharing-comments.

    --- Denise
  • aerialphotoaerialphoto Registered Users Posts: 299 Major grins
    edited June 19, 2008
    I have two suggestions. If the gallery is intended to be password-protected, I would set the password as soon as I created the gallery, and before uploading any photos.


    Ditto what Denise said. I have a few "stock" gallery set-ups that I use from the get-go (no fiddling with the settings after the fact), but when I don't use that I'll create the gallery, set it up, then add the pictures...just in case.
  • OffTopicOffTopic Registered Users Posts: 521 Major grins
    edited June 19, 2008
    Wow that's scary and I am so sorry that happened to you. Thank goodness it hasn't happened to me (yet?), but I did want to make one suggestion to you.

    Whenever I upload photos to a private gallery I make sure I have all of my privacy settings including the password set BEFORE I upload the photos. The reason for this is that when the photos are uploaded to a public gallery they are immediately picked up by the feed...and once they're on "teh internets" ...people may not be able to access the gallery/photos by clicking on the link AFTER you have set your privacy settings, but many feed readers show a large-sized thumb of each photo that people would still have access to. I'm still stumbling around trying to figure out the whole RSS thing; as soon as I realized this I changed my workflow.

    You have both feeds for both Recent Galleries and Recent Photos enabled on your site. You may want to consider either disabling the feeds or changing your workflow as noted above.
  • AllenAllen Registered Users Posts: 10,013 Major grins
    edited June 19, 2008
    Been saying this for some time now, After creating a new gallery bring up the
    gallery customize page and NOT the add photos page. This thread helps prove
    the point, bet that the majority will not remember to set things like password,
    unlisted, thumbs, watermark to name a few. Happens to me all the time.

    Imagine a large over-night upload of unprotected family photos. The security
    is not fail-safe. At least put a "customize gallery" button on the "create
    gallery" page with a RED warning note.
    Al - Just a volunteer here having fun
    My Website index | My Blog
  • tlphotostlphotos Registered Users Posts: 63 Big grins
    edited June 19, 2008
    Thanks for everyone's input. I am definitly going to enable the comment approval function, thanks for bringing that to my attention. I usually always set up my gallery parameters before uploading pictures, this was the first time I did not, will not make that mistake again.
    Also, thanks for the Feeds information, I need to figure out what all that stuff means.

    I would like to throw the question out there, how many of you allow comments on your site, and if so, how much weeding out of off-color comments do you do? I'd especially like to hear from you semi-pro sports shooters.

    I receive pretty all of my customer comments through email, so I do not have a need for it there. However, my extended family seems to like to leave comments in the galleries, so I may leave it open for them but shut it off in my customer galleries.

    Thanks for the replies, have a great day!
    Lynn
  • mike.strockmike.strock Registered Users Posts: 147 Major grins
    edited June 20, 2008
    tlphotos wrote:
    Thanks for everyone's input. I am definitly going to enable the comment approval function, thanks for bringing that to my attention. I usually always set up my gallery parameters before uploading pictures, this was the first time I did not, will not make that mistake again.
    Also, thanks for the Feeds information, I need to figure out what all that stuff means.

    I would like to throw the question out there, how many of you allow comments on your site, and if so, how much weeding out of off-color comments do you do? I'd especially like to hear from you semi-pro sports shooters.

    Lynn - I'm very new to Smugmug, still in my trial period. But I will be getting my membership at the end of the trial, I believe.

    Anyway, I shoot non-pro sports. Little League, select softball (tournament softball, U12,U14,U16), and always turn comments off. I've got a blog, and have seen off color stuff there, so it's just easier for me to turn the comments off. That's just my experience though.

    Mike.
    http://www.fourangelsphotography.com/
  • Bill_MBill_M Registered Users Posts: 119 Major grins
    edited June 20, 2008
    tlphotos wrote:
    I would like to throw the question out there, how many of you allow comments on your site, and if so, how much weeding out of off-color comments do you do? I'd especially like to hear from you semi-pro sports shooters.

    I personally don't allow comments...I don't see a purpose to it. It looks very unprofessional, in my opinion, when I go to someone's professional gallery & see a bunch of "nice shot" comments under it. Who needs that validation?

    I also truly wonder how perople found your images so quickly after upload. Did you give any 'thumbs up'? That would cause them to appear in the "Most Popular" gallery. ...or are you a member of any Smugmug Groups?
  • georgesgeorges Registered Users Posts: 138 Major grins
    edited June 20, 2008
    second the motion
    I absolutely agree with Allen on this one.

    The first thing I do after creating a gallery is go back to the customize page to set security.
    See you later, gs

    http://georgesphotos.net
  • tlphotostlphotos Registered Users Posts: 63 Big grins
    edited June 21, 2008
    Bill_M wrote:
    I personally don't allow comments...I don't see a purpose to it. It looks very unprofessional, in my opinion, when I go to someone's professional gallery & see a bunch of "nice shot" comments under it. Who needs that validation?


    FONT]

    I also truly wonder how perople found your images so quickly after upload. Did you give any 'thumbs up'? That would cause them to appear in the "Most Popular" gallery. ...or are you a member of any Smugmug Groups?

    One of my first galleries was of a U14 girls soccer team, and some of the girls left encouraging comments to each other under their pictures - and young girls can use all the encouragement they can get. On family galleries, our extended family leave funny comments about the kids. I am still pondering if I want the comments on since most of the teams I shoot are elemetary school age and do not leave messages to each other - actually I am not even sure their parents show their kids the gallery. However, I do need to add comment approval and only allow in password protected galleries.[/That is one of my biggest wonders too. I am a member of DigitalGrin, does that send out a signal that I have a newly uploaded gallery? If so, I need to turn it off.
  • tlphotostlphotos Registered Users Posts: 63 Big grins
    edited June 21, 2008
    Lynn - I'm very new to Smugmug, still in my trial period. But I will be getting my membership at the end of the trial, I believe.

    Anyway, I shoot non-pro sports. Little League, select softball (tournament softball, U12,U14,U16), and always turn comments off. I've got a blog, and have seen off color stuff there, so it's just easier for me to turn the comments off. That's just my experience though.

    Mike.
    http://www.fourangelsphotography.com/


    Thanks for the reply, I think I am just going to keep comments off for now, it'll be much easier for me too. I am going to use Allen's method of fixing the gallery before uploading for now on, I guess I was a little naive about the whole thing. I thought my little site was a relative unknow and under the radar, now I know better.
  • OffTopicOffTopic Registered Users Posts: 521 Major grins
    edited June 21, 2008
    tlphotos wrote:
    [/That is one of my biggest wonders too. I am a member of DigitalGrin, does that send out a signal that I have a newly uploaded gallery? If so, I need to turn it off.

    You may not have read my response because I had responded to you in the other thread you posted, then the moderators merged the two here. It is the RSS feeds for Recent Photos and Recent Galleries that announce to the world as soon as you upload to a non-private gallery. If you look at the bottom of your site you'll see "Available Feeds" and both are enabled. Anyone who had previously visited your site and chose to subscribe to yours feeds will be almost instantly notified when you upload new photos and the feed shows large thumbs of the photos.

    That's why the suggestion to set your privacy settings before uploading. :D
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