Community uproar at fotolog.. Over at Scott Heiferman's marvelous Fotolog, there's a classic community uproar going on.
Fotolog has hit a success crisis, becoming quite popular, and, because it focuses on pictures rather than words, it has attracted an enormous international community (particularly Brazilians, for some reason.) In response, the Fotolog staff has adopted the standard solution - limit the number of posts that can be made using the free service to control bandwidth and storage costs, and institute a paid Gold membership for people who want more serious usage.
And then chaos ensued. In Scott's log, he posted a user's picture of herself with her hand stuck out, on which had been written "Fuck fotolog" and then tried to address the reasons behind the change. This opened the floodgates, with a whole range of meta-discussion arising -- Two-tier systems damage the community; Most Brazilians can't pay for things on the internet with a credit card; You americans are murders, unfair and capitalists; Who do you think pays for this, the internet fairy? and so on.
.....
One of the things that precipitates these kind of constitutional crises is manifest evidence that the users don't control the system. They know that, of course, intellectually, but when a community forms, they feel as if they do own it, and as long as the actual owners do nothing to disturb that illusion, things can hum along, but whenever anything happens unilaterally... (emphasis added)
Wednesday, June 04, 2003
