Profile Expectations

DigitalScrapbook.com is a community site for digital scrapbookers and designers. We want it to be a place where we can get to know a little bit about each other, rather than just one more faceless, impersonal website.

We provide a lot of free resources at DigitalScrapbook.com, and in return for those resources, we have a few suggestions/expectations about the way users present themselves here in order to maximize the community feel of our site. If you have any concerns about any of these expectations, please feel free to contact us.

You will get community points for filling out your profile, which will help you earn more download credits.

Please use your real name or a real-sounding pseudonym

We ask that all users fill out their first and last name fields, and that you use your real name or a real-sounding pseudonym rather than the name of a shop, or business. So please don't use "Mary's Digi Designs" as your name. You can link to your design studio in the "social media" section of your profile.

It's fine if you prefer not to use your real name, but please use a full-name pseudonym in that case, rather than using only their initials. Most of the time, initials are simply too short to create a meaningful identity, especially if you're uploading layouts to the gallery: your work deserves a name to go with it, so people can find and remember your creations.

If you do use a pseudonym, feel free to be creative, but please use a name, rather than something silly or strange: using a pseudonym like "Purple Dinosaur" or "Minnie Mouse" is distancing. Try something like mixing your middle name with your grandmother's maiden name, or the city you were born in...

Profile Picture: Use a photo of yourself, or a public domain photo

All users are expected to upload a profile picture, and are encouraged to upload a real photo of themselves; a shot that shows your face well is preferred. Our faces tell a story, and it's one way for us to connect online, when we can't meet together in person.

If you really, really don't want to upload a picture of yourself for some particular reason, that's okay. But please, use a picture of someone, rather than a logo or clip art, etc. Perhaps you have an old picture of your great aunt lying around, which you could use. Or just go ahead and use a public domain photo; for example, all photos in the searchable Flickr Commons are in the public domain, and can be used freely for any purpose without requesting permission. Check out their nice collection of female portraits, and feel free to use one as your profile photo if you really don't want to use a photo of yourself.

If you need help uploading a profile picture, see here.

Other Profile Fields

We expect all users to fill out the "about me" field, and encourage everyone to fill out the rest of the fields as well. Letting us know what tools you use to scrapbook, for instance, will help you connect to others who use the same software, and get better help in the forums later on.

Why do we have these expectations?

The internet is wonderful for the way it allows us to connect with people from around the world who share our interests. But it can also be a bit cold, and anonymous, and isolating... sometimes it can be downright scary and mean. Look at the collection of comments underneath your average YouTube video, and you can get a quick glimpse of how the anonymity that is ubiquitous with the internet often brings out the worst in people.

Even when people aren't being mean, bizarre usernames and random profile pictures often make internet communities feel more like a group of random cyber-entities than a community of real flesh-and-blood people.

At DigitalScrapbook.com, we want to create something that feels a bit more real than that. Of course, all this doesn't mean that you have to go by your real name. As long as you create a pseudonym that sounds real, we'll take it. We aren't doing background checks on people to be sure they are telling the truth. We just want them to sound like people.

The idea with the real names and photos isn't necessarily to be truthful (although I like to think that I'm really talking to the person in the photo), but to at least give us a real-seeming person to connect to. Online identities will always be constructs, to some extent, but it's still much easier to connect with a photo named "Stephanie Rose" than to a flower named "blue giraffe" -- even if "Stephanie" is your grandmother's name, "Rose" is your favorite flower, and the photo is of one of your ancestors who immigrated from Scotland 100 years ago.

We believe that together, we can make a better internet. Thank you for your help!

Privacy Policy

It is our intention at DigitalScrapbook.com to treat our users and their information with the utmost care and respect. Please be aware of DigitalScrapbook.com's privacy policy, which can be found here.

By creating an account on our website you accept our privacy policy and terms of service.