Helping Flickr members understand what Flickr is for with refreshed community guidelines.

Dazzled by colours

On March 31, 2023, we updated our Community Guidelines to help Flickr members understand the things they can accomplish as part of the Flickr community, and the behaviors they should expect and embody.

Previously, Flickr’s community guidelines were a list of do’s and don’ts. Because of this format, our community guidelines evolved into a long list of policies and prohibited behaviors with minimal information about what type of interactions Flickr is for.

With this update, we’ve done a complete refresh of the language and focused on adding more information about Flickr’s principles: inspiration, connection, and sharing. Most importantly, we explain how members should interact with one another in this wonderful community of ours. We’ve outlined six pillars for more positive community interactions:

  • Respect your fellow Flickr members.
  • Be constructive with your critiques, comments, and feedback.
  • Safety levels exist to make the whole community safer.
  • Connect like a human, not like a robot.
  • Be thoughtful about how you use the tools and services that Flickr provides.
  • Know that there are some behaviors that we simply won’t tolerate.

Another significant addition is the new “Give some grace” guideline, applicable to Flickr members using Creative Commons licenses on their work, asking licensors to give good-faith reusers a 30-day grace period to correct any error or misuse of their open-licensed content with no penalty. This change was introduced to prevent the malpractice of so-called copyright trolls using the threat of litigation to generate income, and in support of the strategy for addressing license enforcement described in the Creative Commons Statement of Enforcement Principles.

The edits we’ve made don’t change what Flickr is. Our policies–including our commercial activity policy–remain the same. In order to clarify how our policies are upheld and enforced, and to emphasize the value of community buy-in and reporting, we have also added a section on “enforcement.”

Want to learn more? Check out our updated Community Guidelines, and if you have any questions or need help, please let us know here.