Tech Forum

If the circle mask will remain forced upon us, I agree that we need the option to reposition the circle. I'm not about to download a bunch of ward member photos from LCR just so I can re-upload them and crop them.

But I'd still prefer to see the circle mask go away entirely.

mevans wrote:If the circle mask will remain forced upon us, I agree that we need the option to reposition the circle. I'm not about to download a bunch of ward member photos from LCR just so I can re-upload them and crop them.

But I'd still prefer to see the circle mask go away entirely.

Downloading and uploading again will also degrade quality... I just got a message from our stake clerk with the following info:

Brethren, I have learned that since the upgrade to LDS.Tools several of of our ward members's pictures have dropped off LDS tools. I called head quarters and leaned that the sync feature with LDS.org is not working properly. I found that the best way to get the picture back is to upload it in "tools" A person can call up their name and click on their picture then they can click on Edit in the upper right corner and a menu comes up that so they can upload their pictures.
It is really nice to have pictures of everyone so please encourage ward members to up load their pictures.
Hopefully this helps. Thanks brethren for all you do to keep things running smoothly in our wards.

I'm surprised to see as many bugs as there are when the release process is relatively slow. Now, that's my impression, I don't know if it is really slow or not. I'm making that comment based on the 1 yr it took to address the image quality problem. If the release process is quick like the "release early, release often" software development philosophy, then having some bugs pop up isn't a big deal because you know they'll get quickly addressed.

It was hard to test photo uploading during the beta period because the change involved a switch to a new photo service that didn't communicate with the old one. If you uploaded a photo with the beta version of the site or app, it wouldn't show up in the released version and would have been deleted at the end of the beta period – so not a lot of people uploaded photos during the beta. Then they had to time the scripts to copy all the old photos over to the new photo service at the same time the updated directory and the updated LDS Tools app were released, which is difficult to time perfectly – impossible when you consider the window of time while scripts are running and people are still updating their apps.

I'm surprised headquarters would recommend to have members re-upload their photos. In my experience, very few members upload their own photos. Our ward has many photos, and most of that is because I and a few others took pictures and uploaded them. If we waited for the members to upload them, we might only have 10 families in our ward with photos.

I'm also surprised that they would recommend that the members upload their photos again, as I thought we were told that the church was working on fixing the problems of missing photos. Does that mean they are no longer working on that problem? My unit did not experience any missing photos that I am aware of, but I know others mentioned the problem.

I agree with mevans. We REALLY need some help in the area of getting the members to take photos seriously. I think it is HIGH time that photos are required on Temple recommends. The Temple is probably the highest security place the church has. A photo is definitely needed there!

WWS36 wrote:We REALLY need some help in the area of getting the members to take photos seriously.

Some people don't want their photos on the website. And given the different privacy options for different countries, you probably can't force them.

russellhltn wrote:

WWS36 wrote:We REALLY need some help in the area of getting the members to take photos seriously.

Some people don't want their photos on the website. And given the different privacy options for different countries, you probably can't force them.

I don't think that's the main reason people don't do it. They have pictures all over facebook but can't be influenced to update their pictures in the directory. I think the new ability to take a photo from the LDS tools app and update it that way is a big step in making it as easy as possible for people to do it.

I keep thinking I should be able to get the youth to use their parents cell phone to walk around their house taking pictures of individual family members and update their family photos. For example, one of our counselors in the bishopric has no photos of his family. I asked and it isn't intentional -- they just haven't gotten around to it.

chriswoodut wrote:I keep thinking I should be able to get the youth to use their parents cell phone to walk around their house taking pictures of individual family members and update their family photos.

With a parent's permission, of course. Otherwise the child is busted and on probation for a month.

I agree with you that the usual reason is that members just haven't gotten around to doing it. But there are exceptions as pointed out by russellhltn.

When I ask if I can take photos of families and individuals, I've found a few people who clearly don't want their photos posted, and I ask them to forgive me if I forget their preference and I ask again later--they're usually pretty understanding. The best way I've found to get photos is with new move-ins or convert baptisms. For new move-ins, I make it part of getting their records. Usually people are pretty cooperative. With convert baptisms, I tell them about the church directory and that it's there to help them get to know others and others to know them.

Even when people can upload their own photos and you tell them they can do it from their phone, etc., it usually doesn't happen, despite the best of intentions. And sometimes when members do post their photos, I get photos that aren't too good, or they're wearing sunglasses and you can't see who they are, etc.

Funny thing is that some ward leaders who don't want their photos posted are pretty appreciative that I have the photos of others.

I will say we have quite a few photos. I would guess 60%-70% have photos. The challenge with youth is they outgrow their photos. Maybe I'll ask the exec secretary to take a new photo as they come in for annual birthday interviews.