Return of the APUG Robot on Flickr

[bjorke]

For a long time I was unable to alter the APUG Robot on flickr because its account was listed as "old skool" -- it had no corresponding Yahoo! account and was considered active but inaccessable. I've fixed all that.

• What is the APUG Robot?
  It's a dedicated flickr account that does nothing but have friends and contacts. Once you are listed as a contact of the robot, then your flickr stream will be automagically merged into the robot's contact list, making it easy to browse all APUG members in a single search or to provide a single dedicated RSS feed that follows the flickr images of all APUG memebrs who are also contacts of the robot.
• Could you just tell me the steps?
  1. Have your own flickr account
  2. Go to the apug_robot profile page
  3. Click "add apug_robot as a contact"
  4. Wait for the robot to add you, too (you will get flickr email. This can take a little while since I do it by hand)
  5. Your flickr pictures will now be automatically merged into this RSS feed making it easy to see new APUG-member work on flickr without having to search all over for it -- whenever someone uploads new stuff, it goes right into the robot's maw

 

[jd callow]

cool

 

[Andy K]

I can add the apug_robot as a contact but I don't think I should subscribe to the RSS feed, I have a section on my flickr account detailing the destruction of a local park by a developer. Many of the pictures in that are not analog (it is easier to get a phone past the security), I would not want one appearing in other APUG members' RSS feeds! Is there a way for me to choose for those images not to be seen by the robot account??

 

[Sino]

bjorke,

Isn't using a group and submitting photos there easier than using the robot? That way we can avoid Andy K's problem or similar ones too. If I am correct I've already seen a group with the APUG logo, it must have been 'Analog Photography' or with a similar name.

-Sino.

 

[bjorke]

Groups are the standard way, but require more maintenance. Plus, group pools often get bombarded by "group whores"*

Photos that are marked "private," should not be added to the RSS (and you don't want people randomly browsing these, right? So you should be marking them private anyway)

I have a few robots set up -- originally to "compartamentalize" my own contacts lists -- a lot of people have found them useful (including a few flickr & Yahoo employees, so I'm not too worried about the fact that they appear to be, technically, a violation of the Yahoo TOS -- but doggone it, they were there before Yahoo bought flickr! )

KB

* A "group whore" is someone who massively cross-posts every picture they have into every group they can find just for the sake of coverage. They rarely, if ever, participate in those groups, and the material they post is often 100% inappropriate for the group pool -- in APUG's case, the criteria would be pretty obvious.

In "New Black and White," which I attempt to moderate, in the past eight hours of Sunday morning the group has received over 50 submissions from cross-posters, most of which I will delete. The same posters will continue to blindly bombard, because frankly they're just spammers. They cant however, spam the robot since they need to have been selected as a contact before.

(Oh, and if a group is private, it doesn't publish an RSS feed)

 

[Andy K]

I can't mark them private because I WANT people to see what this developer (the non photographic kind) is doing.

 

[bjorke]

You want and don't want?

This is the great paradox of flickr, actually.

I can add 150 party pix to my stream in an hour, but now my stream is full of grinning strobe-lit digisnaps. Is that what I want people who are looking for PICTURES to see? *sigh* NO

 

[Andy K]

I don't think it would be fair for them to appear in other APUGers RSS feeds, but i still want other people, friends, family, activists etc. to see them. My flickr account isn't just about APUG.
It is one set of images, is there a way to prohibit the APUG robot from seeing that set?

 

[rusty_tripod]

Maybe if you marked robot as a contact without checking friend.

 

[bjorke]

Not really, except to create an account specific to that work. Which is what a lot of people do for, say, party snaps.

 

[jd callow]

You want and don't want?

This is the great paradox of flickr, actually.

I can add 150 party pix to my stream in an hour, but now my stream is full of grinning strobe-lit digisnaps. Is that what I want people who are looking for PICTURES to see? *sigh* NO

How do you manage that without making them private? If I want most of what I post get to be sucked into your robot and few others to be public but not to included in the RSS feed are my oprions:1) make the few private; or 2) create a 2nd account?

 

[Sean]

Looks like a good project, thanks Bjorke

 

[ntenny]

Wait, is the robot offended by accounts that aren't all-analog? I have a mixture of stuff in my Flickr account; I've made the difference obvious and assumed that neither the robot itself nor the people following it would be traumatised by seeing the occasional d*g*t*l photo---is this a problem?

-NT

 

[rusty_tripod]

What I have observed is that if I make myself a contact of robot, he is advised when I have changed my photos. The pictures do not go into any great file for anyone to view unless they look at his list of contacts and click on my name. In order for my photos to show up for general viewing, they must have the "apug" tag and they will only appear when I search the tag "apug".

If there were an APUG group, as such, we could add images to that group for all to see, but adding the images would be a choice and they would have the group name as a tag. apug_robut is an individual account rather than a group listed as APUG from what I can gather.

Only one of my shots has appeared, because I have added the tag "apug" to only one shot. However, individuals can click on my one image and go to my account and see any photos that are posted and labeled "public". Anything I wish to control would have to be labeled "Private".

 

[clayne]

I just added myself to this, but I'm noticing a good amount of digital photos. Is there anyway we can just have the bot only accept photos tagged with "film", "analog", or "apug"?

 

[ajuk]

Some of my pictures on Flickr are digital.

 

[polyglot]

I was going to make exactly the same suggestion as clayne - have the APUG robot feed only images that contain at least one of a handful of tags, e.g. film, analog, apug, 120, 135 or known film and developer names. I do analogue about 50% of the time now and (though I haven't posted to flickr in ages) my flickr stream should soon reflect about that mix. I suspect this is the case for many many people who use film - it's not the only thing they use.

 

[Christopher Walrath]

Done.