While I support the use of technology, I also
fear that people put so much trust into this technology they aren't aware of
the lame content being uploaded. They love to reiterate that if the "bot
approves it" it's okay and fine to be on Commons, but so much content that is
pornographic in nature is often uploaded, bot approved, then the Flickr
account is deleted. This is a rather broken approval process or system, IMHO.
Myself:
My problem with Flickrbot is that it
encourages the transfer of images without editing. So many Flickr images could
be improved even with minimal Photoshop skill, or even a few juducious crops.
There are very few of the many Flickr images I've transferred that I didn't do
a little work on.
Sarah again:
I have said this before, and I'll say it
again: Automation is good to a point. It's destructive to the community in
many ways though: it removes personality and human touch, it removes human
connection, empathy and awareness from work, and it has this surreal ability
to have people fully trust it. That's something that really disturbs me, and I
think it's one reason why we have a hard time retaining editors. Everything is
automated.
Myself:
I do wonder if automating some tasks cost us a
few editors ... as opposed to how it worked in the real world, editors who
specialized in these things, who may not have felt up to any editorial task
involving extensive writing or rewriting or image creation were certainly
welcome to stay, but just didn't find anywhere else they could fit in
when the bots took over.
Daniel Case