In the background

We had a regular contributor ask us this week why we had taken more than a week to approve some of their pictures and why we were rejecting so many of their pub contributions when they weren't being reported on postcode match.

They were actually different issues but both demonstrate that work goes on after every contribution to the site. Pictures at their most basic level do need approving, way back when we started the site anyone could post a picture and it would just appear, this didn't last for long as it turned out to be an open invite for people to contribute any old rubbish including a certain amount of porn. Approval was the first thing added, that at least meant we could stop the most obvious rubbish getting through. Next added was the members only aspects which also allows us to credit the user who contributed, by doing this it tends to detract users from doing things that are too silly, but also means that appropriate credit is given (both equally important).

Once all this was in place we put some basic checks in place to try and ensure that the images are not taken from other sites on the Internet. This has complicated the running of the site, we have had to remove a whole users contribution when it became apparent all of it was taken from different sites on the WWW. We have had to clarify with a user who was taking a great deal of images from bite, they confirmed that they had contributed them all to that site though (as there currently is no recognition there we couldn't instantly tell [apologies for the cattiness but this is the Pubs Galore blog]). Also there are judgement calls to be made, where a member has left a positive review of the pub, linked to the official site and posted a picture from that site but left no other contributions on our site we tend to assume they take a hand in the running of the pub and want us to reuse their image (hopefully we are generally right in that call).

Arguably where a person has put the image up on the Internet it will be fair use if we then put it on our site (and I can see how the Internet in general creates this perception), but to be honest this isn't an argument we want to have, and in any case if someone else is wrongly claiming credit for the photo it is not very fair. We have had a couple of threats of legal action relating to photos we have in good faith displayed, they have all been settled amicably with us immediately removing them. It is costly to both the person who has had the image stolen (at the least in terms of time, and in one instance a properly drafted letter) and to us, our reputation is affected and we have to take the time needed to handle any issue. That said there can be good reasons the images are reused, the photos may have been taken by the person who is submitting and they are also allowing us to display them.

Anyway where we spot that an image is being double posted we can approve it if we think it is someone responsible to the pub, contact the contributor to clarify the situation or reject it with an explanatory rejection reason (hoping the user will contact us and inform us if we are wrong). The decision we make on this is mainly driven by instinct. Also once we become aware that a poster is possibly using other sources we tend to take our time to check all their submissions to try and ensure it is not a pattern.

As to the pubs, again we have more tools available than the user to check the pubs, so we also search the area for pubs with similar names or addresses (similar to the user typing in the filters on the town pages that list all pubs). In this instance the user was very sensibly taking the pubs from the official site that slightly less sensibly had all the wrong postcodes (where we have more than 1 postcode for the same pub we check the Royal Mail web site to see which is correct). I think that we will probably have to improve the pub addition so that members can see all the information checks we have, the reason that we have not done it yet is that it is a fairly heavy duty process and could slow the site down if too many people played with it.

All fairly innocent stuff, but at least you know we really are looking at your contributions and it does take time, so we can't always do things as quickly as we like. Please be patient with us and just let us know when we get it wrong.