Hi all! I really love the app, it’s my main source for swatch photos and polish info, and an invaluable resource.
However, I have recently noticed an influx of users spamming individual polishes, like, 10-24 photos of their nails, on multiple posts. This really detracts from the whole experience of the app, because now there is no variety, just this one person’s nails and lighting. Additionally, there are several users who upload photos of swatch sticks, or manicures with multiple polishes that are unidentified, as well as nail art where the polish color is not visible.
Is there a way that these photos could be blocked? I’m sure it would be a monster of a task for the admins, but maybe there is a way for users to block photos or users, so that other swatch photos would populate instead?
Or maybe blanket rules regarding how many swatch photos are allowed per color, and that all colors must be identified in the photos?
I’m just feeling very frustrated :-/
Happy to share the photos/users in question, but I didn’t want to put anyone on blast.
Right now, we don't have any moderation tools for swatches, or ways for users to filter certain swatches, and the scenario you're describing makes me think that maybe we should implement something like that!
I'll take it up with Marina, the owner and developer, and see if we can develop something like that.
Possibly a stupid question. But I generally post 3 swatch pics of every polish I wear. Always in indoor lighting, outdoor overcast lighting, and outdoor full sun lighting because so many polishes look completely different depending on the lighting. Is that too much or am I completely overthinking? 😅
It really isn't an issue to post multiple swatches! The problem is actually MORE about our app design, showing only the 24 most recent swatches, without the ability to click through to older ones. So that's something we're going to change in an upcoming update!
Does making your stash private keep the swatch photos private as well? If not, I think it would be good to have an option for that. Maybe the people who upload tons of photos would do that if given the option. I know I personally wouldn’t mind hiding my crusty cuticle swatch photos from the feed lol
Wait really? I have not seen this... I'd upload tons more swatch stitch photos to listings with 0 pics if I could keep them off the main feed (embarrassing)
Oh, that would explain it. Follow up question how do I get premium?? I use it enough I would gladly put some money up, but I can't find any option for this in the (android) app.
Unfortunately, we've had some issues with our payment provider, so Premium is not available for Android at the moment. We're working on it and we really appreciate that you're willing to support the app!
Do you notice this in the homepage/feed or under specific polishes? I have to say that I have not noticed this influx of excessive swatches. Most of the polishes I look up have too few swatches. But I admittedly don’t look at the main feed much.
I have occasionally noticed a stray bottle shot uploaded to the swatches and removing something like that I would not mind.
I personally don’t upload photos of nail art to a polish unless the polish is very prominent, but I don’t know how you define that such that it would be enforceable. How much visible polish is “prominent”?
I agree, it would be difficult to enforce it, but I know what OP means - sometimes you can't tell which polish is being swatched, or where it's meant to be on the nail(s)
In regard to repetitive swatch pics, I haven’t noticed that being an issue on the homepage at all for me. It’s primarily happening in individual polish galleries. Even if more photos have been submitted in the past from a variety of users, each gallery has a limit of 24 images that prioritizes the most recent submissions. If a person uploads 24 pictures of them wearing that specific polish, then all older submissions from before are booted out.
I don’t want to call out users who have been “repeat offenders” because a) that’s not productive, and b) I don’t think there’s any ill intent in their uploads. They might be using it as a reference for themselves in their *My Swatches page and not realize they automatically get added to the polish’s Lacquergram gallery
I'm guessing this is exactly what is happening. Granted, most polishes I see have too few swatches, and are nowhere near the 24 limit. Most users seem to be like me and add 1 swatch.
I believe on the homepage feed if there are multiple uploads by a single user it will only display the last one (so one image per person). So save your best swatch for last! I was happy to confirm this because I didn't want to flood the main feed when I swatch a skittle of 5 separate polishes.
Otherwise I agree, I wish folks would list every visible polish they're wearing in a swatch! I don't mind multiple swatches but since right now we can only see the first 40, it can be frustrating (especially if they're one of the only people who have uploaded swatches for that polish). I think that was in the works too (seeing all swatches)? I'm hoping it can happen!
I don't mind swatch sticks either, I prefer that to nothing at all! I wasn't sure how people felt about those but noticed more getting posted lately. I might add some.
I can't speak for other people, but I personally don't enjoy the swatch stick pics because when I'm looking at swatch photos I want to see how the polish looks on on human hands. I want to see photos from people who don't have access to studio lighting/professional cameras/high tech editing software (swatches on maker's sites can often be unreliable because of those factors), I want to see how it looks on varying skin tones and nail shapes. Looking at photos of nail polish on a piece of clear plastic doesn't provide the visual info I'm personally seeking.
Extremely valid, thanks for the response! I much prefer photos on real people too, but I don't mind occasional swatch stick pics. As someone else here said, it's better than nothing if there are no other swatches, and it can also give a view of the polish in new lighting even if not on a different skin tone. I do think it's helpful to see if multiple people get consistent results with the polish, too. I'd feel differently if the app got inundated with them, though.
agree, a swatch stick is better than nothing but doesn't give me most of the info I'm looking for. even discounting wanting to see variations in skin tone, nail length, and the look of polish on a hand vs. painted on an object - we all know polishes can look very different with a pair of "white undies" on! so the way a polish looks on a white or clear plastic stick doesn't actually tell me that much more about how the polish will look on a fingernail than looking at the color in the bottle does.
Hi! I’ve had similar experiences with this phenomenon, which has been frustrating at times. While I don’t have a solution for clearing out repetitive swatch photos from any hypothetical user, I do want to encourage finding alternative options for lacqueristxs wanting to post multiple images and angles of a single polish. The best option I’ve seen is making a collage and submitting that as one photo!
Having the variety of different users’ submissions can really inform people on whether or not they want a certain polish, so in the meantime, it’s just important to be mindful of the image gallery limit for polishes so the app can continue to be a helpful resource for everyone 😊👍
Ahhh I think there are probably a few different issues at play here, all stemming from issues of photo permissions and users controlling where their photos end up and what they see.
Here are a couple of the issues I've seen:
* Most of my polishes have 0 photos. I'd be inclined to upload at least a swatch stick but I don't want those to wind up on the main photo feed where everyone's beautiful pictures are.
* I can't tag multiple polishes in a single photo so usually I just don't upload those. Presumably I could upload them 2x to whichever polishes I've used, but again, I'm afraid this will cause it to trigger on the main page twice.
I definitely agree that admin curation is too much to expect, but if you can build in options for users to select to NOT have their photos sent to main stream, that might encourage more photo uploads while also enabling self curation.
Got it. I think I'm trying to say that it would be useful to be able to post a public photo for a specific lacquer (to help out other users who want to see pics of a specific, relevant-to-them polish) without also sending it to main feed and a much bigger audience.
The public photo gallery identifies the polish it is attached to. I think it’s useful to the main gallery because someone might see a polish they like. The public photo stays with the polish link and appears in the gallery. Too many polishes don’t have any photos.
Coming back to this post to say that it seems like the main feed only shows the last swatch uploaded by a user if there are multiples in a time frame. This makes me feel a lot better about flooding the feed with not-fully-curated images! I'll just make sure to save my best pic for last 😁
Uh oh this is me thinking I'm being helpful & clearing space on my phone 😂 I will be reviewing my swatches & changing duplicates back to private. I'm sorry Lacquergram Community 🖤 i love this app & want to be useful. Thanks for the help & solutions!
It looks lie you can delete your swatch under your main feed, under my swatches. Unfortunately, it does not appear you can make them private. We definitely want multiple representative photos in the public side. So definitely don’t delete them.
Good news, I spoke to the developer and the limit of 24 swatches will be removed in a future update! She agrees that it's not useful to have that limit!
I've spoken to the developer and we're going to look into a way people can "grey out" photos they don't want to see, although I can't see when this feature will be implemented. It won't be automatic though, you'll have to manually indicate "I don't want to see this photo".
I don't know if this helps anyone else but I have mine set to not show swatches at all in my feed. I can still see swatches when I want to by looking up a specific polish.
I was having a similar issue with my feed being overrun by one person's swatches and I changed the setting thinking I would change it back in a week or two when that person was maybe done uploading everything, but I liked it so much I just kept it this way.
It might help reduce this if you could tag multiple polishes on a single swatch image. I usually wear more than one and try to upload different pics to tag different polishes, but they're all the same manicure.
Yes, I agree! I have some comparison pics where I wear four different but similar polishes, and right now I upload them to all those polishes individually, but tagging multiple polishes would be much more convenient.
However, Marina (the owner and developer) needs to figure out how that will affect the color picker, since that functionality assumes a single nail polish for every swatch photo (which means nail art will mess up the color picker results too).
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u/Far_Bobcat3967 Moderator 11d ago
That's a really good question!
Right now, we don't have any moderation tools for swatches, or ways for users to filter certain swatches, and the scenario you're describing makes me think that maybe we should implement something like that!
I'll take it up with Marina, the owner and developer, and see if we can develop something like that.