Original Content vs. Web Content

I know there are several different view points between GFX members on whether only original content should be allowed or if members can upload content that is found on the web (as long as it fits the broad definition of "Gear Fetish".)  Together lets lay out all the pros and cons of allowing non-original content.  I don't think there is any debate about the original content as long as it is relevant to the site.

Pro(s):

     • Safe Space for Tumblr Refugees

     • Provides much needed content for the site to help in its growth

Con(s):

     • Copyright Infringement (Commercial or Personal)

     • Clogs up "New Photos" Feed

As the discussion continues I will update this original post with the pros/cons of non-original content.

Here's a list of reasons why we should stick with original content.

- Many members from the original GF and tumblr don't show their face anymore, but still upload content that includes their body/gear, I find it in poor taste that certain members upload images with people's faces against their wishes, and certain people who aren't members here don't really get a say, because they're not here and it's out of their control.

- It feels like spam. Most recently, somebody uploaded 25 pages worth of tumblr images, it's annoying, certain people who come here are looking for meetups too which brings me to the third on the list.

- People don't know who they're talking to, I know a lot comment on others photo's with "hot" or "nice pics" and it's not really that person in the image they're commenting on, it happens on many sites.

- People may distance themselves from the site, If I were a new member and I came here and saw 25 pages of tumblr images, I'd probably leave and think "nah, this site doesn't have members, it's just a bunch of dude sharing pics they found online"

I can understand people wanting to share the things their into, but original content is the way to go, that way it won't confuse anybody, plus people can share images in chat and on the forums anyway.

I guess the basic question is, "What should GFX be?"  Should it be just like old GF?  Should it be Tumblr (before it was shut down)?  Should it be Grindr?  Should it be something else?  I don't personally think it can be all of these things, or at least that it can't do a good job of being all of these things.

To NewdDawg's existing points:

> Safe Space for Tumblr Refugees

I understand the idea, but I don't like the phrase.  To me, a "safe space" is for people who are getting bashed because of who they are, or whose families can't accept who they are, and things like that.  A "refugee" is somebody who bailed out of their country because there's a war there, or drug gangs shooting everybody, or a big natural disaster, and walking across the border with the clothes on their back seems like a better option.

I don't think that losing a place to post porn online is on the same level as either of those situations.

> Provides much needed content for the site to help in its growth

If your metric for "growth" is "site has a lot of pictures", then I guess you want to be Tumblr.  I feel like there's a "quality over quantity" argument to be made here, though.

Before maybe about 2005, and definitely before about 2000, some kinds of kink were rare enough online that if you found it, you posted it or reposted it; the sites didn't care that much if the content was original or not, because there was so little of it around.  From looking at what little archives there are of old GF, I'm pretty sure it was like this too in the early days; it accepted both "found" images, and original images made by GF members.

I feel like those days are over, now, though - if you just want to see random images of whatever kink, there are plenty of places to find them.  If you want to see original images or videos, made by people who aren't actors, that's maybe a little bit harder to find; i think that's what GFX and similar sites should concentrate on.  (By the time I joined GF, in about 2010, their policy was to only accept original images made by members.)

> Copyright Infringement (Commercial or Personal)

I am not a lawyer, but I don't think there's really any difference, legally.  Practically, there is a difference, because individual people probably won't get a lawyer or make DMCA requests, and companies might.  One thing that inadvertently helps a little is that most commercial porn sites don't seem to care that much about copyright, or at least they don't care about it once their content is not very old.  But if they did decide to care, suddenly the GFX admins have to go through 32,000 images at once.

> Clogs up "New Photos" Feed

I agree that this is a con.  Some of that could be mitigated by different site design (for example: only post the most recent 3 or 4 photos from each member in "New Photos", and then have a link like "See 6 more new photos from John Doe"), but you're probably constrained by what Dolphin allows you to do.

I also agree with butts12567's points: it feels like spam; it hinders using the site for hookups; people don't know who they're talking to; it may turn off new members or potential members.

New con:

If GFX is going to allow random porn dumps, eventually somebody is going to dump something illegal.  I don't mean "not my kink", or "squicky", or even "wouldn't be acceptable in some highly religious country".  I mean flat-out illegal in the USA or Canada (where the server is), to where if anyone complains, or the 5-0 see it, the server gets pulled out of the rack and the admins suddenly require legal counsel.  This is a big part of why Tumblr went away.

New point, not sure if pro or con:

If you do decide to have mostly or only original content, somebody has to be in charge of deciding what is allowed.  Once you state the policy, it's easy to implement it for new uploads.  You can either allow new uploads to become visible immediately (the way it is now), and then the admins review them all later and maybe move or delete some, OR you have new uploads go into an approval queue, and then the admins say yes or no to allowing each one to be visible (this is how old GF worked). For images that are already on the site, you can either do nothing, or the admins can go through them all and move or delete them.

On old GF, the site owner could do approvals of new uploads, and it also had at least one (and maybe two) paid, part-time employees, whose job it was to do approvals.  Depending on how much time the GFX admins have to spend on the site, having an "original only" policy may require additional admins, to get photos approved in a somewhat-timely manner.

SRG

I agree with butts and SomeRandomGuy, they have expressed it as well as I could.

I'd like posted images to be original content only, and I'd expect that people depicted should only be of the member posting them, or someone who has explicitly given consent for their image to be posted by that member - even though that may be difficult to enforce. If I converse with someone in chat or post a comment on their profile, I want to get an idea who I am talking to. If there is a need for general interest images that are not original - and I don't think there is a need, but if there is - then have a separate section that is not part of someone's profile. Call it "Interesting images from the internet" or something like that.

I have almost given up browsing the images on the timeline, because I so often find myself trawling through dozens of images that are obviously not even of the member, not to mention those members that post ten near-identical photos of themselves in some gear, when one or two would be enough to lshow us and let us appreciate. This is one of those cases where less is more.

I'm glad I'm not the only one participating in this thread haha.

I think the phrases are ok? if I'm not mistaken, refugee can mean someone from a place that is no longer there? and safe space is fine too, space or place that people can post their content without worrying about it being NSFW or not, I don't think people should read into it so much.

The old phrase, "quality vs. quantity" comes to mind here.

While I'm not saying go to the extensive levels that BLUF does (https://join.bluf.com/), they seem to have developed a system that weeds out what they DON'T want their site to become. In other words, they don't give a rat's ass about providing "safe spaces" for anyone but what they have set out on a mission to create. And that's THEIR choice and it obviously works for them.

QUALITY vs. QUANTITY. Just like sex! :-)

Welp, dvssneax has flooded another 5 pages :/

I didn't realize people were posting other's face pics, that's pretty bad form... although I have posted one pic to a group that wasn't of me... it was a gasmask and drysuit pic with the eyes showing but not the whole face. Is that offside? I figured it was a pretty anonymous pic and I just liked the gear on display but perhaps I should reconsider that approach?

One other thing about the pics feeds is that there's not that many gear pictures relative to nongear pics and overall that's less compelling to my own interests.  Am I just being a snob and gatekeeper what "gear fetish" is?  I'm not about to tell people what or what not to post but I know I'm less inclined to come back for jeans and shoes.

Requesting quotes be done a little bit better than just slanting the text haha.

Yeah, @Geakboi, there's so many different things that are considered a fetish these days. Shoes and Jeans I guess can be gear because... hmmm, I guess it'd be something you don't wear in your day to day life I suppose? I love skate shoes, but I wouldn't wear them out or whatever (and don't have any haha) there use to be one guy on the old GF that would upload images of what he had done to bread haha.

Anyway, when I think the word "profile" I personally think of a page with information about said person, and images of said person, not a gallery of images somebody found on the internet, If I go through recon, I wouldn't bother interacting with somebody who doesn't have their own pics, same with reddit, twitter, etc.

If I were to be told that jeans were not considered "gear" then I'm afraid i would be out of here. I'm much more likely to seek out pics of guys in jeans than in gasmasks or Hazmat suits.

If someone else doesn't find my fetish in teresting, they have to accept the possibility that I might not find theirs interesting either. Just saying.

Like I said, not trying to gatekeep here.  But that highlights the point, doesn't it?  If people login and see a feed full of stuff media they're not interested in, then they're less likely to come back and contribute themselves.  Since everything gets a tag, would it be possible for the newsfeed to prioritize tagged media that corresponds the a users profile?  Just a thought/suggestion.

I pretty much agree. I still think the display of the full size photo on the timeline is unnecessary and is one of the causes of frustration. The screen is only olarge enough to show two or at most three images, and if those don't interest you it becomes tiresome to scroll down several pages in the hope of finding something that catches your attention.

Much better would be for the forum software to show thumbnails, large enough to show you what it is and whether you want to open the full size version. 30 or more such thumbnail images would fit onto one screen, giving a quick visual summary of what has been posted recently. I also still think that only one entry per member should appear on the timeline per day. this would allow more members to appear on the screen.

Things are getting better... only four pages of non-original content today!

Maybe everybody currently gets a pass on non-original content, because there isn't a site-wide policy about it one way or the other.

This may be a can of worms, but: maybe the policy is that if you spam non-original content that one of the admins likes, you get a pass.

SRG

Just another note, it's possible that we'll get duplicate images from the people that don't upload their own content.

>>Just another note, it's possible that we'll get duplicate images from the people that don't upload their own content.

It's already happening as of today. 20+ pages of "new" content, but they were mostly images anyone could find online in Google.

Again, QUALITY or QUANTITY -- what does GFX want to be known for?

Welcome to ShoeFetishX!  The best of Tumblr and Google Images, reposted daily for your browsing pleasure!

Don't worry about mods or bans - the ShoeFetishX owner is a shoe guy just like you, so you can post all the unoriginal pictures you want!

As of this writing, the front page says there are 34,022 photos and 6,200 members on the site.  That's an average of 5.5 photos per member.

Dvsspammer420 has 1,280 pictures on their profile.  That is approximately 3.8% of *all of the pictures on the site*, posted by one member.

Put another way, dvsspammer420 has *232 times* as many photos on their profile as the average ShoeFetishX member.

I'm blanking my profile until this is fixed.

>>I'm blanking my profile until this is fixed.

I commend you for taking the stance you did -- nice job!

As much as I hate to keep referencing the "old GearFetish.com" site (the mourning period is over now -- haha!), they did have a nice feature that simply put a yellow border around users' profiles when new content was added and it remained for a period of 24 or 48 hours if I recall correctly.

I liked that because it allowed EVERYONE to upload whatever they wanted and how much they wanted (subject to approval by moderators), but users were not FORCED to click through page after page after page after page of pictures they simply weren't interested in.

I don't want to get too "pissy" here because this IS a free website, and beggars (we all wanted a new "GearFetish") can't be choosers. There's a lot of work into keeping a site like this running -- I don't dispute that in the least. However, having SOME sense of decorum beyond a "safe space for all" is eventually going to be necessary. If not, the member roster here will eventually start to take a hit all because of quantity vs. QUALITY and another iteration of GearFetish will be down the tubes.

As for the member roster taking a hit, we already have SomeRandomGuy to thank for taking a stand for the benefit of everyone when it comes to this issue.

Let's hope he's the first and last.

Wow, I've logged on to find more images spam, it almost feels troll'ey doesn't it? :/ I looked through 2 pages, gave up and now have no interest in browsing.

@NewdDawg is something going to be done about this soon? it's getting a little crazy.

Then there's accounts like this that are actual spam advertisements

https://gearfetishx.com/aaavape09

This stuff is bound to happen as any site grows. It sounds like there needs to be some guidelines for posting and perhaps a volunteer mod team to help enforce.  What those rules should be though are up for debate.

I for one am a fan of original content. I can look up "professional" gear pics anywhere on the web. But here, I would hope to meet and see other average Joe's into gear. It's the reason why I joined in the first place. I'm all for policing some of the content that may be more spam than actual gear photos. 

As for pics from the web, isnt that what the group sites are for? A mix of web images and original content? Profiles should be your own content. At least it is for me. 

On a side note, kudos to the mods for streamlining the home page. 20 pics of the same item is not what I want to see first thing. 

Aaaaaaand, now we have another moron doing it.

+1 for original content, AND preferably original content of the member in the gear in the pics!

I would be totally okay with and welcoming of mods vetting uploaded images to weed out all the image spam and fake member profiles and help to possibly rebuild and grow the more intimate world-wide online gear fetish family that was at the core of the old GF site. I guarantee you that there are still a lot of old GF site members out there who are still searching for a place where they feel at home and this site is obviously working on getting there but it's obstacles like this thread's topic that keep getting in the way.

I'm very happy that GFX is around and trying to build a good place for the gear community and actual gear fans to gather without all the noise of the ad filled web and other fetish worlds constantly bombarding our senses too, with the exception of the recent "new photos" spam that does kind of suck.
Side note; I think we have to remember that the old GF site was around for something like 15 years and it took a long time with good admins and good members for it to grow and evolve into that place on the web that we all knew, loved, and miss a lot.
In comparison, I consider GFX to kind of be in the toddler phase of its' life, got some steady footing and has learned to walk (an unintended pun for the topic I suppose) but it's still going through some early growing pains, and it takes a lot of admin time and member feedback and patience to really build a good community for gear fans.
I'm happy with what the admin has done overall so far and totally appreciative of the time and effort that has gone into what the GFX site has become and I look forward to its' hopefully very long future.

But back on topic a bit...  ;)

I prefer suits (bike, wet, dive, space, etc). I also like boots (goes with the suits). Some sneaks are interesting at times. An occasional pic of a member's closet full of footwear, especially if it also shows his other gear, can also be appealing.

But how many random pics of a pair of shoes or pile of shoes laying on the floor that can also be found in a google image search do we really need piling up on the main page of GFX? (not to pigeon-hole just one gear type or single out sneaks fans with that observation, it's just a current example.)

At least it appears that the 4x4 rubber fan and inner tubes guy is either posing with them in one way or another or is the one who set them up for the pics he posts of them and he doesn't usually post a gazillion of them all at once. (again, not to single anyone out, it's just an example that came to mind.)

I feel like an occasional "not of me, but I really like this!" pic where the poster points out in the pic's comments that it's not a pic of him and explains details of why he likes it, which a mod would see, seems okay but bunches of random non-member web pics in a "member" profile is beginning to degrade the "community" feel of the GFX site.

I'm on Recon and a few other places but most of them don't have the community feel of the old GF site at all and don't seem to care about it. Recon used to feel like just another hook-up site, complete with a "cruise" button, but since the old GF site went down it seems to be slowly evolving into something more which is what I was hoping would happen here during the GFX evolutionary process but there seem to be a lot of growing pains like the topic of this thread that are taking time to process and learn from.

Fetlife is more of a community in comparison at this point but it's been around a lot longer and to me it feels more like a strange world of almost anything goes like a facebook for all things fetish rather than a good place for a proper gear fetish community.

If others choose to flame me for this, so be it, but I for one am somewhat glad that tumblr is gone and there's a specific reason for it.
A prime example of why I say that is specifically because one member on there had gone on the old GF using a free account just to collect many GF member pics as a quick, easy, free way of getting a lot of appealing gear content to post on his new tumblr feed and draw a lot of attention to it for his own benefit which totally sucked for the rest of us and most of my dive gear pics, some of them being face pics, were scattered all over his feed and they got shared and reposted all over tumblr and trying to get them removed was like playing whack-a-mole. As fast as I could get one tumblr member to acknowledge that they had my pics in their feed and consider doing the right thing by removing them, a lot more tumblr members had already re-shared them all over tumblr and many tumblr members didn't care who the pics belonged to because the stolen GF site members' pics were getting a lot of attention for their feeds.

But that wasn't the worst part of that problem coming from tumblr in my opinion, at least not for me anyway...
The worst part was when another tumblr jacka** found one of my casual diving GF face pics on someone else's tumblr feed and decided to take it from the original tumblr pics thief, use it as his avatar, and create a custom banner for his tumblr profile with my face pic mirrored at either end of the banner for a cool rubber diver symmetry look and then trying to claim it as a pic of himself in rubber. Reporting such things to tumblr proved to be a futile effort as they instructed me to contact the offending members directly with requests to remove copyrighted content.

Then another group of thieving tumblr members figured out what the rubber tumblr guys had did to GF, created their own free GF accounts, and stole a bunch of GF members' bike leathers pics to fill their tumblr leather feeds with. One of those pics was of me posing with my bike in a set of totally custom racing leathers which other GF members quickly spotted elsewhere on the web a few times and recognized from my GF profile and they would frequently inform me of and send me the links to, and many of them were GF members who I didn't even know until I got their message. That's an example of the "community" aspect of the GF site.  Even other GF members I didn't know were messaging me links to my stolen pics on other sites.
I've even had a few people over the years send outside pic links in ISM, claiming the pics were of them in their gear, that turned out to be my own gear pics which was easy to prove without confronting them by just asking for more details about the pics' content without revealing any info myself, and getting either vague answers of no response at all. I don't know if they were really clueless, maybe trying to phish me somehow, or what, but none of that kind of stuff seemed to happen before tumblr came along.

Pardon the rant...

...and now back to your regularly scheduled program...

Good post, Ssuitmeup! I particularly liked this paragraph:

>>I'm on Recon and a few other places but most of them don't have the community feel of the old GF site at all and don't seem to care about it. Recon used to feel like
>>just another hook-up site, complete with a "cruise" button, but since the old GF site went down it seems to be slowly evolving into something more which is what I was
>>hoping would happen here during the GFX evolutionary process but there seem to be a lot of growing pains like the topic of this thread that are taking time to process
>>and learn from.

Recon never did seem very "welcoming." While I agree it seems to have that "hook-up" vibe going on, it also keeps me away because when I go there, I feel like I'm sitting at the "nerd table" back in school during lunch hour. A lot of Recon's member base seem to be VERY advanced (BLUF-ish for a lack of a better term) in their "craft" and I for one consider my fetishes a small part of who I am.

The design and aesthetics of Recon is that of a professional venue. It immediately has that Studio 54-ish vibe going on where one has to wonder "am I worthy of being let in behind the velvet rope?" Recon's site design projects that unique aura/ethos. While that seems to work for them, it's NOT inviting or indicative of that "community feel" that you so perfectly referenced above.

Packaging for products speaks volumes and Recon's "packaging" is done very, very well. It's as if Silicon Alley's high-tech decided to hop into bed with Madison Avenue's creative (just a stone's throw uptown!), fornicate for hours and nine months later Recon was born.

While they have mastered a lot, they clearly have no clue on developing a sense of community. This is precisely why I liked the old GearFetish.com and now this site -- it feels like home in comparison to other options available to me -- despite the not-so-pleasant packaging.

Thank you for clearly reminding me why I click my ruby slippers together on here while reciting "There's no place like home." ;-)

So are any kinds of policy changes being considered in light of this conversation and the recent increase in photo spam?

The issue seems to be getting worse while unaddressed :(

 I'm hoping so... The culprits seem to be DVSSneaks, Sddvr, and I think Exsneakerlover was one too but when I searched their name, it came back with no results :/

Also just want to make a point that, these members uploading things they found on tumblr, may also be posting our own pictures on their twitter profiles, the more safe for work pics on their facebook pages, and so on.

Slightly off topic, but... it's a bit sad isn't it, when this site's most active thread by far is one discussing badly behave members rather than discussing our fetishes.

Pretty much :/ and there's so many GF members on twitter, and recon who I know would use the site. TBH, if I were joining now and saw all those tumblr pics, and pictures from catalogues, I'd probably think it was just an image sharing site, rather than something where people want to connect with others.

That's what it's all about isn't it? connectivity, people don't want to feel alone in the world, and it's very similar to the gear subreddit, it's all re-uploaded pictures.

Here are a few possible solutions (although, it would require a moderator(s) just like on the old GF).

Let's have an approval process for photos and then SORT them appropriately. That way, ANYONE can upload whatever they want. If they are personal profile photos, they would be approved as such. If they are photos that any Tom, Dick and Harry could find online, they could get put elsewhere. This method would not change the content that is uploaded, just sorts it appropriately. Perhaps even having two "RECENT" galleries. One would be "RECENTLY UPLOADED MEMBER PHOTOS" and another called "RECENTLY UPLOADED GENERAL PHOTOS."

I will admit, I've seen a few (just a FEW!) of the non-member photos that have captured my attention on here, so maybe that sort of a gallery would be justified.

If that doesn't work, perhaps it's time to start sending out "nasty-grams" to offending members. For those members who are uploading their own content, but it's 200+ pictures of the VERY same item, they could be notified to perhaps start being a bit more original with their photos. For those who are uploading photos already existing on the web, they could be told that if the pattern continues, it may result in account deactivation.

There are details and "fine print" to be worked out here, but perhaps adopting some of these ideas may help.

The other GF was successful in part due to the moderation of photos -- period.

Without SOMETHING being done here, the old concept of punishing the entire class because of one or a few people comes to mind. You're pissing off your core users (classroom) because of one or a few students who can't get their shit together!

Another culprit... ugh, Is this going to get sorted or not?

I think the recent set of photos (hiddensock) is actually legit.  They all seem to be original photos of the same guy, or guys that he was playing with.  It isn't a case (I think) of uploading random pictures that he found elsewhere on the net.

It looks like he took the photos over several sessions, and then uploaded a bunch of them to his GFX profile here at once.  This tickled the problem that when a guy uploads a bunch of photos to GFX, they all go on the "new photos" pages.  If I remember right, old GF would display a handful of the new photos, and then have a link like "17 more new photos from CoolGuy1".  If you were interested, you could click the link; if not, you could scroll by.  GFX doesn't have this functionality at this time.

I was referring to raingear :P

Oh look, now we have footshortsbulge, at this rate the site will be 90% tumblr images, and 10% original content.

Oh great, here comes all the straight porn...

I noticed that too, butts12567.  I wonder...has anyone contacted these members about posting so many pictures?

 It's not really my job to contact them :/ but they'd probably ignore my request, or if Julian somehow made the site work so that if I block somebody, their content doesn't appear? then no one has to sit through tons of spam images.

Good point.  I like some of the posted pictures, but many are just repetitive and boring.