Question about being a Flickr packrat

[kcoppock]

Okay, so I've been a Flickr user since Jan '07, but I've just recently (past week or so) started to pretty much take hold of it, get a pro account, and start organizing and highlighting my better shots. The problem is I have a lot of older photos on there, the majority of which are just snapshots, and the rest I'm just not that impressed with either.

I have the photos backed up elsewhere...do you think I should just delete all of the old ones (save a few that I like) and more or less start fresh, or keep them online, and maybe just hide them from public visibility?

(As a humorous aside, for whatever uncanny reason, this particular image of my old computer desk has by FAR the majority of views over anything else on my photostream... )

Thanks!

[Nicole]

I'd probably just make them private. I'd put them all in a set to make it easy to set which you want private and go that route. Mainly because that way you have yet another backup of the files, just in case.

[kcoppock]

Thanks for the input, Nicole.

I hadn't thought about throwing them all into a set. That would definitely make enabling/disabling later easier. And yeah, since the storage is unlimited, I suppose there's no point permanently deleting them...still they're kinda in the way. I guess I could always just view my stream while logged out. :P

[Nicole]

The other thing you can do if they're in the way (which is pretty time consuming I'll admit), is to change the date on the ones you don't want to see to earlier in time for their upload date. That will move them to the end of the stream. Or if there are only a few older ones, move the upload date to more recent (past the ones you want to hide). There used to be a web-based tool to change dates, but I'm not sure if it's still around.

[kcoppock]

That's an interesting thought, too. That tool is still there...but I don't know if I like the idea of modifying them to have an incorrect date. Maybe I'm just a bit OCD, but something about it bothers me. :P

Still, I think I may end up doing a bit of both -- deleting some of my crappier work (that I have backed up anyway), and then hiding some of the rest.

[Murtasma]

Personally I'd just remove them. I've wanted to do this for a long time on my stream but I don't have much time for something like that right now. If you already have a backup of these pictures and they aren't that important to you whats the point of cluttering up your stream with them if they are just snapshots like you said.

If you wouldn't loose any sleep over loosing them out of your backup they probably aren't worth dealing with anymore.

[SwissJon]

I used Downloadr to download all my private photos from Flickr deleted them, and then uploaded them to Photobucket. I've enough problems keeping my more recent photos organised, so Photobucket is just a dump for stuff I like but don't want associated with my Flickr stream.

[kcoppock]

Murtasma, Jon,

Thank you both for your thoughts on this. Come to think of it, I believe I already have my Flickr backed up with Backupify (ah, the wonderfully weird names of web services), so that would be a fairly easy transfer to Photobucket. I've used Photobucket it in the past as sort of a catch-all for photos, but that way they stay online should I need to link to them, and I can keep Flickr as my higher quality photo stream.

[wulf]

I would go with the use of privacy settings but keeping all the images on Flickr. I also tag my private images with private, privacy-family or privacy-friends as appropriate, which makes it easy to pull them up as a batch.

You might also want to consider the layout option that gives your five most recent photos in a larger size on the front page.

Wulf

[kcoppock]

Thanks Wulf, the idea of using privacy tags for grouping is clever as well; I definitely hadn't thought of that.