Digital hoarders ....?

Quicksnapper

Quicksnapper

Suspended / Banned
Messages
704
Name
Sara
Edit My Images
Yes
During a recent conversation with a few of my camera club pals, someone mentioned that he had not deleted an single email, image, document or any other "digital" asset from his computer since 1998!!

His reasoning was that storage is cheap enough, so why not keep everything. This is a guy who is a prolific and highly accomplished amateur photographer and an intelligent and rational (or so I thought) bloke to boot.

I watched a programme on TV a while ago about hoarders ... Folks who suffer from a psychological condition which compels them to cram their homes from floor to ceiling with mounds of unspeakable junk and rubbish and never dispose of anything. To me, keeping absolutely everything that has every been received or created on your computer is just a short step from this.

Personally I regularly purge my in- box, photo files and other digital nooks and crannies of junk.

But is my digital hoarder friend unusual, or is this compulsion to keep absolutely everything a common thing?

I'd welcome your thoughts.
 
Being a user of gmail......I never have to delete emails. The beauty of this is I can quite easily do a search and find a message or online receipt very easily. I agree with the guy.......storage is cheap. I can't believe you think storing stuff on a computer is a short step from filling your house with junk. Thats completely different imo.
 
Agree with Lee.. its a totally different thing to hoarding dissorder.. I personally wouldt,, it would be too many to go through looking for anything.. I have over 200 thousand edited and ready to sell pics.. couldnt handle duffs as wel l:)
 
I don't really see the point of keeping absolutely everything keeping decent files yeah of course but every single file really what's the point I agree that is bit odd...IMO that is
 
Suppose it also depends how prolific you are?
 
KIPAX said:
Suppose it also depends how prolific you are?
Click to expand...

Well yes as lets face it even a prelim sketch on the back of napkin would be worth good money now if done by a Mr P Picasso :D
 
thinking........... I throw a lot of pictures away that are perfectly good.. sharp well exposed and capture the action... but if they are simmilar pics to others taken at same event/match then they get dumped as suprlus to requirements ... just saying not all binned pics are bad...... This is why I hate keeper rate questions :)
 
KIPAX said:
thinking........... I throw a lot of pictures away that are perfectly good.. sharp well exposed and capture the action... but if they are simmilar pics to others taken at same event/match then they get dumped as suprlus to requirements ... just saying not all binned pics are bad...... This is why I hate keeper rate questions :)
Click to expand...

Indeed while we shoot very different subjects (polar opposites you could say) when I got out shooting if its say something like light trails especially the more generic say motor way trails I'll shoot maybe 25-30 exposures, I'll not keep all of those, probably only 5 of them will be kept the ones I like the most, or where I've done something different :)

That said when I shoot a star trail that folder will contain 600-700 files for a single image :eek:
 
MWHCVT said:
That said when I shoot a star trail that folder will contain 600-700 files for a single image :eek:
Click to expand...

eek indeed :)

So i suppose then.. going back to the OP .. it would depend what he is shooting and how prolific he is...that would determine if it was odd... thosuands of good but unusable pics? thousands of samey pics.. 4 or 5 duff pics... without knowing what he has stored then we cant pass our usual TP judgment :)
 
I'm guessing from his comments, everything. All the oof shots, duplicates, samey stuff. Everything...!! But not just that, ALL his emails sent and received for years and years...?! All his word documents ... The lot ...

I guessing he's not as prolific as KIPAX when it comes to producing images ... (200k is a lot ... But it's not everything you've ever shot...) but none the less,why keep it all? There must be some sort of criterion for obsolescence ... Especially for emails etc, surely?
 
Quicksnapper said:
During a recent conversation with a few of my camera club pals, someone mentioned that he had not deleted an single email, image, document or any other "digital" asset from his computer since 1998!!

His reasoning was that storage is cheap enough, so why not keep everything. This is a guy who is a prolific and highly accomplished amateur photographer and an intelligent and rational (or so I thought) bloke to boot.

I watched a programme on TV a while ago about hoarders ... Folks who suffer from a psychological condition which compels them to cram their homes from floor to ceiling with mounds of unspeakable junk and rubbish and never dispose of anything. To me, keeping absolutely everything that has every been received or created on your computer is just a short step from this.

Personally I regularly purge my in- box, photo files and other digital nooks and crannies of junk.

But is my digital hoarder friend unusual, or is this compulsion to keep absolutely everything a common thing?

I'd welcome your thoughts.
Click to expand...


So someone who doesn't delete their digital assets regularly suffers from a psychological condition? Wow.. you're pretty judgemental don't you think?

I've not deleted a single e-mail (except obvious spam and junk), or a music file, or a RAW file, or a negative scan, or a word document, or graphics file, or any other digital asset (unless it was culled during a first edit) since 1992ish. I even still have all the graphics files and midi music files produced on a Commodore Amiga, and older stuff from my Commodore 64 days. I've accidentally lost a few along the way, but I've never once thought, "I don't need that... I'll delete it", no. If I deemed it worth keeping for more than 10 minutes, I have in all likelihood, still got it.

The guy is right. Storage is cheap. I'm not cluttering my home, or altering a lifestyle... I'm not making any compromises to an otherwise "normal" level of existence, and nor is he. All of this information is archived on a collection of digital media that occupies no more space than a shoebox. How is that comparable to someone who fills their home from floor to ceiling with accumulated filth and crap?

They are of worth: The times I've found useful things in my archive to help with a project are beyond count. I have research files, imagery and documents that have solved problems and offered answers to creative blocks; I have things of great sentimental value. Why should I delete it? What possible advantage could it offer?

I think judging people to have a borderline psychological problem because they do something you yourself don't consider fitting some acceptable pattern of behaviour quite reprehensible actually.

You can have literally many terrabytes of data stored in objects no bigger than a packet of fags, and a 1TB drive costs less than a good meal in a decent restaurant. How is that a sign of having a psychological disorder? Some could argue that obsessing over someone else's behaviour to the extent of discussing them in online forums is indicative of less than "normal" behaviour too.

The fact that you no longer deem an otherwise perfectly normal person to be rational......

This is a guy who is a prolific and highly accomplished amateur photographer and an intelligent and rational (or so I thought) bloke to boot.
Click to expand...

...just because he decides to keep digital assets you would delete is quite frankly absurd. Does he know you are discussing him in here? It's no more irrational than collecting stamps. Would you think someone who collects stamps has a psychological problem? After all, that serves no purpose whatsoever... costs a great deal more money, and occupies far more space. At least storing your digital life in full serves a purpose. One potential problem with the digital world is that we lose great historical context. The "shoebox" of vernacular images that offer so much richness to history that is found after someone's death is fast becoming a thing of the past .. all he has there is a digital shoebox... we'll all be thankful for that one day perhaps. After all, Jacques Henri Lartigue wouldn't be famous, nor would we be able to enjoy his work if he threw his "shoebox" away now would we?

It's not the fact you think it's interesting to discuss that I find distasteful, but the fact that you are actually forming an opinion of him as irrational, and suffering from psychological disorders, and that he is comparable to the people you see on TV with bags of cat sh1t up to the ceiling just because he sees value in keeping the digital files he creates.

Shame on you.
 
Last edited:
Quicksnapper said:
During a recent conversation with a few of my camera club pals, someone mentioned that he had not deleted an single email, image, document or any other "digital" asset from his computer since 1998!! .
.
Click to expand...

since 1998 ?? - there's a good chance that a lot of the early files won't even be readable anymore - I think ive gone through about 8 computers since 1998, and I just trash all the extraneous cobblers when I change machines.
 
I can still read all my files back to 1992. As new media is released, you transfer your archive. I have emulators that can run all my files from the C64, Amiga and Atari ST. If things became unreadable with age, then what do you think archives will do in the future... just cease to exist?

You also have to remember that the files from those early days were TINY. I can fit everything I created on those old 8 and 16bit machines on one USB pendrive that costs £35.

Don't listen to me though... I've clearly got a psychological disorder :)
 
Last edited:
but why bother - is there really any need to go to all the hassle of transferring archives of emails, word files and so forth - I keep my decent photos, and I can see why someone might keep projects they'd created for sure, but keeping literally everything as per the OP is a little bit like compulsive hoarding.

do you really keep every email you send or receive ? - never mind 1998 , I trash mine on a daily basis , only saving anything genuinely important , or where an audit trail is needed
 
While I try to delete shots as I go (in camera).

Once they are on the computer they pretty much stay there forever (unless hardware breaks etc). As people have mentioned above, storage is cheap enough. Plus it takes time to go through and delete the bad ones, if I rushed it, I bet I'd delete something and regret it a year down the line. I leave photos from an event in a folder, and then copy and paste ones out into a separate folder that I like; a month later I might be browsing back through the folder of originals and pick some more out to play with in PS.
 
big soft moose said:
but why bother - is there really any need to go to all the hassle of transferring archives of emails, word files and so forth - I keep my decent photos, and I can see why someone might keep projects they'd created for sure, but keeping literally everything as per the OP is a little bit like compulsive hoarding.

do you really keep every email you send or receive ? - never mind 1998 , I trash mine on a daily basis , only saving anything genuinely important , or where an audit trail is needed
Click to expand...

I hate to think how many times I have referred back to emails over a year old. Why delete them? There is literally no advantage unless you are paying for the space used. It's not like lots of emails in an inbox is messy, very different to a wardrobe full of clothes or a desk full of papers.
 
It depends on the email - I'd keep if it was important but "hey bro meet at the white horse at 7 for a quick one ? " "yeah okay see you then" doesn't really need to be kept , likewise with "is 1pm on the 10th okay for your 1-1 " "yeah no problem" , and " team , the blog hasn't been updated for over a month, get it sorted before anyone outside the department notices " to take 3 examples from my email load today.

in all I sent 36 emails today , and received 38 - of these I've kept 2 - one from my boss on procedures for year end (which I need for reference while I carry them out but will get trashed thereafter), and one I sent to the CEO of BT asking why they haven't fixed our phone line yet (which will need keeping at least until they actually do )

as to why delete them - its a work inbox , and its limited to 90mb. That aside even on a personal webmail why wade through acres of irrelevant crap in order to find the few emails that are genuinely important ?
 
Last edited:
big soft moose said:
but why bother - is there really any need to go to all the hassle of transferring archives of emails, word files and so forth
Click to expand...

It's no hassle. For instance, when MS stopped supporting Outlook Express for mail, I just imported the mail folders into Thunderbird. It took a few minutes, that's all. Same with Kodak PhotoCDs... they're no longer supported, but I still managed to rip the .pcd files and archive them as TIFFs. When zip disks became obsolete, I just copied them over to a hard drive. No big deal.

No one's suggesting you keep every single email BTW. In the examples you quoted above, I'd have deleted those as soon as I'd read them... as I do with spam. I doubt the person being discussed in the OP would keep all his Viagra selling spam mails going back to 1998 :)

big soft moose said:
in all I sent 36 emails today , and received 38 - of these I've kept 2
Click to expand...

And I'd keep those 2 indefinitely.

As for work e-mail, that's different. You don't administer it, and as you said, you'll have finite space. My work e-mail has a 500MB limit. When I ran my own businesses though, I'd use a proper local e-mail client, and all messages were stored and archived locally. If a client had an enquiry about a job.. no matter how long ago, I could go straight to all correspondence with no difficulty. I'd say there are advantages to that.
 
Last edited:
Guilty as charged. To be honest I don't mean to, I'm just lazy:rolleyes: I end up just copying the whole memory card onto my external hard drive to sort out, but it never does get sorted out. My pictures normally get left in folders and I use the ones I want. I do have to have a good clear out some time, no hurry though I have 1TB of space left, I'm a typical bloke, everything will come in handy at some point haha, the wife hates me for it.

As of emails, I have over 3000unread. I get sent so much crap to be honest I can't be arsed deleting them. I just read the ones I have to
 
Last edited:
Pookeyhead said:
As for work e-mail, that's different. You don't administer it, and as you said, you'll have finite space. My work e-mail has a 500MB limit. When I ran my own businesses though, I'd use a proper local e-mail client, and all messages were stored and archived locally. If a client had an enquiry about a job.. no matter how long ago, I could go straight to all correspondence with no difficulty. I'd say there are advantages to that.
Click to expand...

When you get into regulatory compliance issues, having a proper and secure archive of all email traffic can become somewhat important.

Some of the legal battles that are being fought these days is where e-comms are occurring in other places for which no such archive exists, such as internet chat.
 
Pookeyhead said:
I can still read all my files back to 1992. As new media is released, you transfer your archive. I have emulators that can run all my files from the C64, Amiga and Atari ST. If things became unreadable with age, then what do you think archives will do in the future... just cease to exist?

You also have to remember that the files from those early days were TINY. I can fit everything I created on those old 8 and 16bit machines on one USB pendrive that costs £35.

Don't listen to me though... I've clearly got a psychological disorder :)
Click to expand...

I don't think I said that I thought my associate has a psychological disorder, and, clearly, neither do you. Nor was I implying that by my comments, although you clearly feel I was. And I apologise if you have taken that inference from my comments. I was simply expressing the personal view that i thought that keeping absolutely everything for year after year is a little extreme and (to me anyway) pointless. Amongst all of that accumulated stuff, there must be a great deal that is outdated, past it's sell by date, and of no use whatsoever, so why keep it? I wouldn't, and, indeed, don't. In mentioning the "hoarder" programme I saw on TV I was seeking to make a comparison to people who accumulate and keep un-necessary stuff and just let it accumulate for no purpose.

You mention your past work / business mails etc in one of your responses. Quite clearly in this situation one would want to retain records of contacts, enquiries, quotes and another relevant stuff, in the event that you need to refer back to them. Indeed I did the very same in my own working life and my work emails were regularly archived for long periods for that very reason. But why keep the "See you at the pub later" type stuff as well? As someone has said, weeks and months later it is of little or no use. Similarly with images ... I delete anything which is obviously OOF, poorly exposed or otherwise technically poor or useless, but keep the stuff I want to use now or may want to go back to at a letter date. I currently have around 20K images on various bits of storage and suspect that's quite a conservative number, compared to others. But again, that's not everything. My personal, digital "shoebox" is as full as anyone's of old family pictures, records of special events and places, fun times, travel memories and friends and long may it be so.

I find your somewhat extreme reaction interesting because, when I laughed and (jokingly) told my associate I thought he was clearly losing the plot for holding onto stuff in what is (to me) an extreme way, he laughed as well and thought my "chuck out the useless" approach equally bizarre. We parted as friends from the exchange and no-one suggested to the other we need to seek professional help for our obsessions - him for his "keep everything" habits and me for my "chuck it out if its useless" approach. He thought it was funny and in no way offensive at the time ... I'm sorry you don't agree.

Nor, I have to say, do I feel ashamed in any way for asking views on the matter. Quite clearly there are loads of sane, rational and capable folk on here (including myself and you) who either keep everything for one reason or another, or follow my own methods of getting rid of anything they feel has served its purpose. Neither is right or wrong, just us doing our own thing. Each to their own I say.[/quote]
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I try not to delete any pictures I take. Anything a complete mistake, out of focus, accidental shots of feet etc. And I have that all backed up too, on multiple drives. :) Memory is cheap, and gets cheaper all the time. In around 2003 I bought a 1Gb Microdrive for £150, :eek: for that no I could get 3-4Tb.

As for emails, interesting emails from people are are kept, anything correspondence of anything I buy online is kept, ads and spam are deleted.

I find those that delete almost everything they do, especially emails, odd. Different points of view, and neither bothers anyone else, it being digital and all. ;)

There are other psychological disorders were people feel the need to keep things tidy and organised, OCD I think, but I wouldn't infer that anyone were OCD from such little information. ;) :LOL:
 
I pretty much keep everything, unless its unusable, keeping those is pointless.


In terms of emails I have a lot of rules in outlook that keep me organised. I don't get a lot of spam as I have a random gmail account for dodgy stuff and when I sign up for online stores and whatnot I'm careful on what boxes I tick.


With hard drives and cloud storage being very affordable I see no reason to picky about waht you keep.
 
My work email has a finite limit buy I'm legally required to keep all correspondence for 7 years.

We have an argument aboit once a month about it.
 
up to about 4TB of images on the backup drives now, I know that there are so many useless images on there but reality is that I've passed the point of no return in the fact that it's no longer feasible to spend time reviewing the archives to clear out the duds
 
colda said:
... it's no longer feasible to spend time reviewing the archives to clear out the duds
Click to expand...
That's it, isn't it.

With any digital artefacts (photos, music, documents, emails, whatever), keeping them costs virtually nothing and causes no inconvenience whatsoever. But periodically reviewing the collection and deciding which ones to keep takes a lot of time.

Example: We have nearly half a million emails in our system at work. Most of them are of no value now because they relate to orders, contracts, transactions which are now complete. Of the ones which are more than (say) a month old, a small percentage might have some future value but I can't necessarily predict which and there's no obvious point in time at which the probability of them being useful declines to zero. So how much time are we going to spend pruning that lot? None, that's how much.

If we ever reach our Gmail storage limit, I'll either take a bunch of them (say everything more than 3 years old) offline or pay just a few £££ for more storage. It's a total no-brainer.
 
StewartR said:
That's it, isn't it.

With any digital artefacts (photos, music, documents, emails, whatever), keeping them costs virtually nothing and causes no inconvenience whatsoever. But periodically reviewing the collection and deciding which ones to keep takes a lot of time.

Example: We have nearly half a million emails in our system at work. Most of them are of no value now because they relate to orders, contracts, transactions which are now complete. Of the ones which are more than (say) a month old, a small percentage might have some future value but I can't necessarily predict which and there's no obvious point in time at which the probability of them being useful declines to zero. So how much time are we going to spend pruning that lot? None, that's how much.

If we ever reach our Gmail storage limit, I'll either take a bunch of them (say everything more than 3 years old) offline or pay just a few £££ for more storage. It's a total no-brainer.
Click to expand...

Well at least 3 of those emails will be about me an my incompetence :( but I'm somewhat the same with emails I just don't bother deleting and while not the same I've probably got close to 60,000 emails it's not that I've made an effort to keep them, it's that I have made an effort to delete them
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top