Flickr Content "Filters"

A new feature got launched this week, content filters. (no not those filtrs, alas). And for a feature that quietly, but seriously rocks, it got kind of a “meh” response from the blog community at large.

Partially the official blog post is a bit TLDR (hey, its complicated!), but more to the point I don’t think we’re culturally prepared for progress on issues like censorship — things are supposed to only get worse.

So let me put it this way

Upload your screenshots!

Your SL avatars, your historical anthropology of web design, your worst-UI-evar samples.

Upload your art!

Your paintings, your drawings, your renderings, your Photoshop tennis.

Upload your photos!

Including your arty nudes, and, um, less then arty nudes.

Murky Light Beams of Clarity!

NIPSA is a tricky and subtle tool for managing the delicate balancing act which is community norms. But it was largely opaque. Content filters are transparent (translucent?) and designed for use by the community to self-negotiate those community norms.

Tools like tags, and groups, and sets already allow people to explore and classify the various vectors of their self expression in all its crazy and complex permutations. But this takes that landscape of expressions, and adds new dimensions to it. (hyper-cubic landscapes of expression for Web 3.0 win! You heard it here first!)

Just do us a favor, and tell us they’re screenshots, tell us they’re illustrations, tell us they’re arty.

Photo by justinlincoln

update: 2007/6/13 reconsidering.