I’ve been told that there is no way for a Unit Admin to add adult pictures for other adults in the unit.
While I can understand the logic behind this, it means that a unit must rely on EVERY adult to upload their own picture to their profile, which means that it will not be done…
REQUEST: Allow a Unit Admin to add pictures for registered adults/leaders.
I really like the idea, but I bet the assumption is “if an adult is going to have a picture on the Internet, they are going to have to do it themselves, then, they are the only one to get mad at”.
I don’t really want anyone else choosing and posting photos of me anywhere without my explicit permission. I’d have a real problem with any admin that decided they were going to change my profile like that.
I know of an adult volunteer who is a criminal court judge and has sent many people away for a very long time. He is very careful about how much of his private information gets on the Internet, and I think he has good reason. My guess is that he would be furious if someone else had permission to upload a photo to his profile.
Geez, I really didn’t think this would have any negative feedback. We had an ASM take pictures of all the Scouts at a recent meeting to upload. I’d like to do the same thing for the adult leaders so new Scouts can put a face with a name, with their permission of course. For people as bad with names as I am, it is helpful to be able to go back and remember who is who, especially for new Scouts & parents.
I know that the Pack I came from didn’t try to do this and only the CM, ACB and one Committee Member bothered to upload a picture. Most leaders just cannot be bothered to do something else.
And Peter, I guess your adult volunteer friend doesn’t have any friends that might post a picture of him on Facebook, Instagram, etc. That is a much bigger issue than having a picture on a Scouting platform hosted behind a login…
It’s not just judges… I can think of plenty of reasons people may not want their info out there… I have a friend that went incommunicado for years, trying to get away from an abusive ex-husband. I can’t imagine making the decision for her whether to share her private information anywhere.
Let me put it this way. I’m the COR for my unit. Anyone that would try to post photos of anyone in the unit without permission will be looking for a new unit.
@ErikOlson1, I have never seen a photo of him on Facebook. I don’t use any other social media platforms. I am friends on Facebook with his son, who is in his mid 30s. Within Scouting circles, he asks not to be introduced as a judge. He thinks it best that fewer people know that about him. Although I don’t recall seeing a photo of him on social media, I don’t troll his son’s posts, so I cannot be sure there isn’t one. He has also served on several Wood Badge staffs, so there might be a group photo that includes him, but I am certain no one who knows him would identify him by name in a social media post.
He presided over trials of some very dangerous people and put them away for a long time. In some cases, these folks might have friends with whom the law has not yet caught up. I don’t blame him at all for being hyper-careful.
Steve, you obviously don’t have parents that are on Facebook posting pictures of campouts, Scouting for Food, Pinewood Derby, etc. In this day and age you don’t have control over what folks post. That’s why we all have to be on our best behavior.
Peter, I’m not on Facebook often, maybe once a month if that. However, it knows who I am and folks I knew from childhood post pictures tagging me. That’s out of my control and there’s nothing I can do about it. I don’t want FB tracking me and thus don’t use it, unless in a container, I get it. But it is out of my control.
You guys are coming up with the 1 in a million folks that would be opposed to having their picture
I’m not talking about outing CIA agents, and I’m not talking about posting pictures of folks that don’t want theirs out there. However, if a unit with 75 Scouts wants pictures of their leaders, why can’t Scoutbook enable the Scoutbook Admin to upload them? Experience shows that adult leaders have their hands full just doing what is required to lead their units and they aren’t going to take the extra time to upload their own pictures.
Geez, this isn’t rocket science. Make it easy for folks…
There may be legal issues. Here are some resourses.
I do, and they’re not acting on behalf of the Troop, or by extension the Chartered Organization when they’re doing that. And they’re not rude enough to post pics of people without saying “Hey, I’m gonna post this picture of you”…
You made a request and @PeterHopkins and I pointed out quite reasonable (absolutely not “1 in a million”) reasons why we don’t agree with it. It’s not rocket science, but there’s no need to get upset that we didn’t agree with your request.
And I stand by what I said. If this were to be enabled, I’d kick any SB admin out of my units for using it.
I have a personal policy of not posting photos of other people’s children on Facebook. This is why you will never see me post a picture of my unit or any of its activities. The only exception I make to this is if a parent explicitly gives me permission to post a specific photo. It is extremely rare that I ask for such permission. If I want to share a photo with the parents, I send it to them directly, not via social media.
I also do not believe Scoutbook should allow anyone except the adult to upload their photo. If you want all leaders in a unit to have a photo in Scoutbook, take a laptop or device with the photos pre-loaded to a meeting then let every leader log in and upload their own photo.
I think that’s a pretty good work-around. We had to take a similar approach to getting parents to sign in to Scoutbook for the first time.
I ask that all of the leaders post their pictures so the Scouts and parents know who they are. Some do, some don’t.
The argument that the picture of someone who participates in person at meetings and camp outs - that is behind a password wall is going to somehow magically out them seems a bit of a non-sequitur to me.
These forums, for example, are public. If the forums drew their images from the “future” Scoutbook2 (i.e. IA2), rather than requiring separate images, then any photos on Scoutbook2 would be displayed here, in public with a name attached to it. I’m not saying that this is going to happen, but it’s an easy example of how personal images could easily “escape” from behind the nominal shield of credentials.
Frankly, whether or not it’s an issue in the opinion of any particular leader, it seems like an important question is whether enough units need/desire this feature to justify adding it, whatever “enough” means. This is separate from the question as to whether or not there are potential risks attached to permitting unit admins to post the image. The risks might (in theory) be resolved by a unit-level policy requiring adults to explicitly opt-in to permit the image to be posted, or by giving individuals sole control over whether or not their image is displayed in Scoutbook.
If I were concerned that scouts/parents can’t identify our unit leaders on sight, I would be prone to solve this issue by creating a “rogues gallery” for my unit, and linking to it from somewhere shared (like the unit forums), or distributing the link to the parents and requiring folks to log in to access the link.
All of that said, I suspect that, if this feature was hypothetically implemented, the BSA would want to move the “Talent Release” switch out of the control of Unit Admins so that individuals had to permit the photos to be displayed, no matter that one was uploaded or not. That feature would then undermine the “everyone’s photo is shown” approach, since any individual could, at any point, turn off their image display without Unit Admin recourse.
Steve, don’t know where you got the idea that I was upset because things didn’t go my way. This isn’t significant enough to get upset about. I’m just trying to make it as easy as possible to get pictures of our adult leaders into Scoutbook so that new families can be on the lookout for someone in particular at meetings. With 75 Active Scouts & 6 different grades, there are a lot of folks running around in uniform at the beginning of the year. I for one, would have appreciated having pictures of leaders in Scoutbook that I could refer to back during our Tiger year when I knew utterly nobody in the Pack. I’m now moving to our affiliated Troops, but the same thing applies. I’m new and I don’t know everyone. It would be nice to look up their picture so I could tell my son or daughter who to go to for assistance.
I tend to agree with Mark. If you are in participating in Scouting events, in person, in public, then a picture in a Scouting app, behind a password shouldn’t be an issue. There are many parents and others in the community taking pictures and posting them to Facebook, Instagram, etc. I’d be more concerned about those.
“The argument that the picture of someone who participates in person at meetings and camp outs - that is behind a password wall is going to somehow magically out them seems a bit of a non-sequitur to me.”
Agree with Ed even further in that I don’t post ANYTHING to Facebook. However, I’d say that 75% of our parents do post to their Facebook feeds thoughout the year and I’ve never been asked if my kids or I can be in the pictures. That’s sort of the way it goes these days…
For comparison, I’m also a USAA Certified Archery Coach and our league has everyone (Archers AND coaches) sign a photo release before the season allowing photos to be utilized for marketing and social media posts before we can participate. We restrict our school’s archers from taking & uploading pictures to social media via our school’s conduct policy, but have utterly no control over parents, other teams, media or the league itself.
It’s obvious that there are folks that don’t want this feature, but for units like ours, it would be nice to be able to give that authority to the Unit Admin to make it easier for all of us.
Signing off…
@ErikOlson1 - I believe there is a setting in Facebook that makes it impossible for anyone else to tag you in a photo.
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