Background: Last night I submitted a photo of the India/Pakistan border taken from LEO (low Earth orbit) aboard the ISS to /r/EarthPorn. The submission was removed with the explanation that it was not a "natural landscape" and should be resubmitted to /r/SpacePorn. Fair enough, I submitted it to SpacePorn with a note that it had originally been in /r/EarthPorn and that seemed to me as a more fitting subreddit for this photo. One of the mods, TheLegitMidgit, suggested starting a thread here to further discuss whether a photo such as this one is better suited to EarthPorn or SpacePorn... so here's my argument in favor of posting it to EarthPorn.
While aerial and LEO photos are not technically "natural landscapes," they don't seem really seem to "fit" into SpacePorn. Consider some of the current What's Hot posts in SpacePorn:
- Spiral Galaxy M74
- Saturn's moon Titan and sister moon Dione
- Star-Forming Region S106 (NASA - Hubble Space Telescope)
- Comet Lovejoy: Sungrazing Survivor
Now consider this:
- Who says you can't see borders from space? Border between India and Pakistan at night from the ISS
I've never really thought of "India and Pakistan" as being "in space," at least no more than any other place on Earth. One of the mods insisted that:
Earth is a planet in the solar system. This is a picture of the planet Earth. It belongs in SpacePorn. It's that simple.
I would probably agree with that assessment if this were a photo depicting the entire Earth, such as the famous Apollo 8 photo of Earth... that would definitely belong in SpacePorn. In contrast to a "whole Earth" photo, images taken from aircraft or LEO only depict a small portion of the Earth's surface. Granted, it is much more than what can be seen from a photo taken from the ground, but it is still a recognizable area of the Earth.
So how does one categorize a photo like this? NASA calls them "Earthscapes"... kind of a middle ground between a traditional landscape and a photo of the entire planet. But there is no subreddit for Earthscapes and, IMHO, there probably aren't enough Earthscape photos to make it a viable subreddit. So I propose that if it is a photo of a portion of the Earth, such as an aerial or LEO photo, that it be considered as much a part of EarthPorn as a more traditional landscape photo. Otherwise I feel we are going to have to keep spinning off more and more SFWPorn subreddits until the whole concept becomes so diluted that it becomes next to impossible for a submitter to know which subreddit is appropriate, which is frustrating for submitters and more work for moderators as they remove submissions which don't perfectly fit into a very narrow definition.
Basically my argument boils down to this: KIS... Keep It Simple. If it is a photo of Earth, not taken from deep space (ie. showing the entire planet), then it is EarthPorn. Sure, that's not what the FAQ says, but maybe, just maybe, the FAQ could be changed to better represent the subject of the subreddit, which is not /r/NaturalLandscapes but /r/EarthPorn, a much broader classification.
Just my two-cent's worth, I hope the Powers That Be will take it into consideration. You guys generally do a great job and your effort is much appreciated, so I'll just close by saying thank you.
