Reminder - photo guidelines

Hvedekorn said:
EDIT: Never mind. I should have read the thread more thoroughly
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To be fair though - some galleries have tens of thousands of photos in them. In those cases it can be quite impractical to have a thorough knowledge of the existing content (although you could almost assume that every angle has already been covered anyway :eek: )

This is a "guideline" rather than a "rule" - we encourage you to avoid duplication, but we recognise that sometimes it is going to happen.

We may take a slightly different approach to these guidelines once we launch the new version of the site - I won't go into details yet as this is still to be finalised and depends on how I go with developing the new version.
 
IMPORTANT ADDITION: If you have photos from an established zoo that is not listed on ZooChat yet, please have that facility added and upload them there instead of just posting them in "other" under the general country index.

You can have a facility added by going to the main header "ZooChat Website Help & Feedback" (the same main header this thread is in) and then look for "New Gallery Request Thread 2018" (or 2019 or 2020 or whatever year it happens to be). Just type a reply saying please add Zoo X (whatever the facility name is) under Costa Rica (or whatever country it is in). It could take either a few days or a couple weeks for it to be added, but you should get an email notification when Jobalba adds it to the thread. It is also helpful (but not mandatory) in your request to include a link to the facility website if they have a website.

I am posting this reminder because I just spent a good amount of time moving three dozen photos from the "other" category of a major African country to the newly created listing (which I asked to be created). The "other" listing is for places that are too small to have a separate listing, like a pet shop or a hotel animal exhibit or similar. Any established zoo or aquarium that you visit needs to have a separate listing.
 
Arizona Docent said:
IMPORTANT ADDITION: If you have photos from an established zoo that is not listed on ZooChat yet, please have that facility added and upload them there instead of just posting them in "other" under the general country index.

You can have a facility added by going to the main header "ZooChat Website Help & Feedback" (the same main header this thread is in) and then look for "New Gallery Request Thread 2018" (or 2019 or 2020 or whatever year it happens to be). Just type a reply saying please add Zoo X (whatever the facility name is) under Costa Rica (or whatever country it is in). It could take either a few days or a couple weeks for it to be added, but you should get an email notification when Jobalba adds it to the thread. It is also helpful (but not mandatory) in your request to include a link to the facility website if they have a website.

I am posting this reminder because I just spent a good amount of time moving three dozen photos from the "other" category of a major African country to the newly created listing (which I asked to be created). The "other" listing is for places that are too small to have a separate listing, like a pet shop or a hotel animal exhibit or similar. Any established zoo or aquarium that you visit needs to have a separate listing.
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It's not just South Africa. In my opinion, the 'other' galleries for all the countries should be sorted through.
 
birdsandbats said:
It's not just South Africa. In my opinion, the 'other' galleries for all the countries should be sorted through.
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We (the moderators) take care of these kind of issues as we come across them. In this specific case someone visited a major wildlife park and uploaded several photos in "other" and had the facility name in the caption. I happened to notice it because the photos were at the top of the new media page when I looked at it. You (plural "you" as in the members) can help us by reporting these as you find them. One or two photos are probably not worth the trouble, but if you see several photos from an established zoo (posted in "other") please click report on any one of them (NOT all of them) and we will get to it.
 
I've recently added some photos from various Danish "deer gardens" ("dyrehaver"), and I purposely added them to the Danish "other" gallery. I did this because that while they may be interesting enough to share and are technically zoological institutions, I thought their scope was too limited to deserve their own galleries (only one or two species at each place, and I only uploaded maybe five photos for each).

Was this wrong? Should I have asked for separate galleries for each of them even though I would only upload five or so photos?
 
Hvedekorn said:
I've recently added some photos from various Danish "deer gardens" ("dyrehaver"), and I purposely added them to the Danish "other" gallery. I did this because that while they may be interesting enough to share and are technically zoological institutions, I thought their scope was too limited to deserve their own galleries (only one or two species at each place, and I only uploaded maybe five photos for each).

Was this wrong? Should I have asked for separate galleries for each of them even though I would only upload five or so photos?
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If they are generalized attractions with only one or two animal species, I don't think they need their own listings. It sounds like you did the correct thing.
 
It's been over 12 months since this thread was last updated, so I'm going to bump it again to remind all of our users about what we expect for the photo gallery.
 
Hi, how is it about watermark on photos and "art" photos? Is it acceptable in Media section, or just plain photos? (of course I mean photos of animals or exhibits from zoo)
 
Flyer.Nick said:
Hi, how is it about watermark on photos and "art" photos? Is it acceptable in Media section, or just plain photos? (of course I mean photos of animals or exhibits from zoo)
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Funnily enough this is an issue we have been discussing of late, and hope to clarify soon :) but broadly speaking watermarks are fine as long as they don't overwhelm the image or advertise outside websites.
 
Flyer.Nick said:
Hi, how is it about watermark on photos and "art" photos? Is it acceptable in Media section, or just plain photos? (of course I mean photos of animals or exhibits from zoo)
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I'll go one step further than @TeaLovingDave and specify that watermarks should be subtle and not detract from the image.

Once we're ready to publish our guidelines, I'll include some examples for reference - but for now, I suggest you proceed with a few uploads and we'll let you know if we think there's an issue. If you like, you could report one of your own photos and ask for confirmation - we'll let you know if they are okay.
 
I reported a few basically duplicate pictures just now. I am happy to be more thorough in this as I have quite a lot of time at the moment, if that is helpful of course.
 
Just want to confirm that photos on the forum, not in the media gallery, must also be taken by the user making the post or from within zoochat (with a link, using the bb code). There's been several newer users posting photos from off forum lately.
 
TinoPup said:
Just want to confirm that photos on the forum, not in the media gallery, must also be taken by the user making the post or from within zoochat (with a link, using the bb code). There's been several newer users posting photos from off forum lately.
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I don't have a problem with people using photos from other sites in their forum posts - provided that they give attribution to the source.

If you do see photos that are not from ZooChat and don't include attribution, please report them.
 
Just to clarify my previous post:

Images owned by professional photographers or hosted by commercial photograph licensing services (eg Getty Images) should never be posted on ZooChat.

Services like Getty Images have automated bots that search the internet for people using their photographs without a license - and they will send their lawyers after you with a bill if they find you doing so.

Attribution is not just a link to the jpg or png file - it means linking to the actual location you found the image online. If you can't provide attribution, you should not use the photo.

Google images or similar search engines are not acceptable sources - and neither is a photo sharing site where people share copyrighted images. It must be the original source of the image.

Pinterest is not an acceptable source and images found on Pinterest should not be posted on ZooChat unless you can locate the original source and attribute that.

Photos you downloaded at some point in the past should not be uploaded as an attachment, unless you can locate the original source and give attribution.

It doesn't matter if you have been given permission from the copyright holder of the image to use it - I would also require written permission given explicitly to ZooChat to publish the photo, directly from the copyright holder.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Simon Hampel said:
Just to clarify my previous post:

Images owned by professional photographers or hosted by commercial photograph licensing services (eg Getty Images) should never be posted on ZooChat.

Services like Getty Images have automated bots that search the internet for people using their photographs without a license - and they will send their lawyers after you with a bill if they find you doing so.

Attribution is not just a link to the jpg or png file - it means linking to the actual location you found the image online. If you can't provide attribution, you should not use the photo.

Google images or similar search engines are not acceptable sources - and neither is a photo sharing site where people share copyrighted images. It must be the original source of the image.

Pinterest is not an acceptable source and images found on Pinterest should not be posted on PropertyChat unless you can locate the original source and attribute that.

Photos you downloaded at some point in the past should not be uploaded as an attachment, unless you can locate the original source and give attribution.

It doesn't matter if you have been given permission from the copyright holder of the image to use it - I would also require written permission given explicitly to ZooChat to publish the photo, directly from the copyright holder.
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Can you clarify what you mean by "professional photographer"?
 
Simon Hampel said:
One more reminder - we do not permit photos of people to be uploaded to the gallery, especially members of the public. The exception would be zookeepers holding an animal at some kind of talk, or photos taken from behind a group of people at a crowded exhibit where nobody is really identifiable.
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Would photos of visitors feeding animals where you can't see any identifying features fall under this exception?
 
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