Melissani Cave, Kefalonia

kerbcrawla Hi Pawel. Interesting article, although it's surprising that you're choosing to treat your clients like this.

I used to do a 365 project on another website called shuttercal (you may have heard of it) which sadly closed down because they couldn't find a way to monetise it. Shuttercal did not have these 'rules'. They understood that everyone wanted to use the website in their own way. They understood it, and they encouraged it. And through that, their users began to love both the website, and the team that ran it. It grew so popular, that without a viable funding structure, they could no longer afford to keep it going. But the key point here is that it was a hugely successful site that it's users missed when it shut down.

Some religiously used it as it was intended. Others, like myself, chose to approach it in a different way, where it was simply a reminder of all the best moments of your year, nicely packaged and personal to the user.

I discovered this only because my intention to follow this doctrine you speak of failed extremely quickly. Instead of leave the site, I could upload what I wanted, when I wished. After a year of doing this I looked back at the photographs and instead of finding masses of gaps, or pointless and panicked photographs of nothing particularly interesting, I found a bounty of the best memories.

Choosing 7 of your best pictures with your best camera from holiday in Greece can be preferable to some of us than uploading unedited snaps from your camera phone. Choosing to upload your wife's picture from last week because she forgot to tell you about THAT story. Choosing not to post a photograph of your father whilst he was dying in his hospital bed, and instead choosing one you love from better times to mark the day might be something your users would appreciate. I can attest to them all.

Choosing to victimise rather than embrace the creativity of your users is an appalling business strategy, and one I hope you will reconsider. If you really still feel the need to refer to some of your users as "cheats", and "embarrassing", and penalise from accessing certain features, then go ahead, "mate". I was willing to ignore all that. But if you are going to stalk them with these types of comments, and remove them from the platform, I can't imagine that the passage of time will be kind to you.

Paweł Kadysz The rules of 365 projects are very simple. Take photos every day and publish one of them. Assigning 8th of August to a photo that was taken on July 11th has nothing to do with 365 projects.

What you are describing above is not a 365 project. 365 project is not about the highlights of your life. It's about daily life, whether it's marvelous or miserable. It's about documenting and learning photography every day. It's not about taking photos once a week to post them over next few days. For this you have flickr, instagram, tumblr and hundreds of other services.

The rules are all listed in our Terms of Use that you accepted when signing up. And from what I know - not following the rules can be called "cheating" - or am I wrong here?

If you don't want to follow the rules - the consequences are also pretty straight forward. Your photos will be hidden from the rest of the community. So if you want to do it against the rules everyone else follows - go ahaead, but don't expect any appreciation.

As for the ShutterCal - how can you call a site that died a successful project? From what I read it got $52k in seed funding and still didn't manage to survive.

Tookapic is 100% bootstrapped. No outside funding. And somehow, we're still here.

kerbcrawla "The rules of 365 projects are very simple. Take photos every day and publish one of them. Assigning 8th of August to a photo that was taken on July 11th has nothing to do with 365 projects."

Missed the point.

"What you are describing above is not a 365 project. 365 project is not about the highlights of your life. It's about daily life, whether it's marvelous or miserable. It's about documenting and learning photography every day. It's not about taking photos once a week to post them over next few days. For this you have flickr, instagram, tumblr and hundreds of other services."

See above.

"The rules are all listed in our Terms of Use that you accepted when signing up. And from what I know - not following the rules can be called "cheating" - or am I wrong here?"

Read by 0% of your users (because they don't care, they are just looking for a bit of fun, right?) And your are completely within your rights to label your users as cheats. That's an awesome business strategy. Said by no one.

"If you don't want to follow the rules - the consequences are also pretty straight forward. Your photos will be hidden from the rest of the community. So if you want to do it against the rules everyone else follows - go ahaead, but don't expect any appreciation."

I'm not here for appreciation. I literally couldn't care less about the 'dictatorship', sorry, 'community' you speak of. I was hoping your website may offer a way of using, storing and presenting my calendar in a way that suited me. I would have also been keen to see the services you would offer, but your 'terms of service' didn't let me get that far.

"As for the ShutterCal - how can you call a site that died a successful project? From what I read it got $52k in seed funding and still didn't manage to survive."

Your's and my version of success clearly differ so much that it is a waste of time to argue my point... again.

"Tookapic is 100% bootstrapped. No outside funding. And somehow, we're still here."

Took the words right out of my mouth

I'll take my potential business and reviews with me. Oh, and you may want to read this post, and then re-read my post again. You may learn something (all be it doubtful): tookapic.com/talks/454-project...

Nilson Menezes @kerbcrawla, your photo is superb. Both of them either.
Unfortunately, in real life, there are plenty of rules: you cannot drive a car in the UK as you can drive in the rest of Europe, for example. Most of the rules are there to facilitate and better lead our "common way of life".
The rules are also there to mark the course and put everyone at the same level of difficulty.
Like you, everyone takes a lot of beautiful pictures one day, and nada the next day. If this simple rule did not exist we would try to put one of these beautiful photos to fill this day of scarcity, but we would not, therefore, be in the spirit of the site.

kerbcrawla It's not my circus, you are not my monkeys. Paweł can make his own decision, but after emailing me last night to discuss my ideas for tookapic, it's clear my words rang true.