ADM: Change to Photo pages

[Guest guest]

The author of this message, Gordon, is a member of the team.

He says members of the " team " are now joining the unofficial moderators'

lists like emaillist-managers, a list I'm a member of, in hope of assisting

listowners and moderators and letting us know when outages and changes are

coming. That'll be so great if this really does happen!

After he posted his intro message to that list, he sent this one. I'm

sending it to these lists so members who are mods on other lists can pass it

along to their lists and so any member who uses the Photo section on any

group list frequently can see what changes are in store.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Groups team has been working on an upgrade to the photos

area, and we would really appreciate your feedback. To learn more and to try

out the beta, go to local/photosupgrade.html

As background, you should know that this upgrade will definitely not do

everything that you might be looking for from Groups photos. In fact, it's

primary purpose is to make the Groups " back end " more stable so that our

systems can better handle the hundreds of millions of photos that have been

posted to Groups.

But there are some useful features that we think folks will appreciate. They

include:

Photos Vitality

Now, when new photos are added to a group, we will alert you on the Group

Home Page in the same way that we already do for new messages, members,

files, and links.

" New Photos " Page

To make it easier to find the new photos, we're also creating a special " New

Photos " page, which will display all the photos uploaded to a group in the

last seven days.

The Power to Moderate

After this release, moderators who want to approve photos before they are

uploaded to the group will have the power to do so, in the same way they

already can for messages.

Bigger Views

Currently, photos can only be viewed as thumbnails and a " screen size " view

which is only about 400 x 300 pixels. We will be offering a new " large " view

that will be up to twice as big.

More Pictures

Currently, we store the original photos posted to Groups even though we

don't display them to anyone but the Group Moderator. Now, we will only

store the smaller display images, rather than the originals, which will mean

more space for more pictures.

We look forward to hearing what you think (and getting your help in spotting

bugs). Again, go to local/photosupgrade.html to

participate.

Thanks!

- Gordon