Regarding Thomas Hawk getting referral traffic from a private Flickr forum discussing the possible Flickr-Yahoo Photos consolidation:

the flickr staff rarely uses the central-admin backchannel. when they do, it is to coordinate the activities of running the "flickr central" group, a job that is mostly left to volunteers. ... that link was posted in the backchannel feb 12th. i checked the backchannel and to comment with the link currently has no comments from anyone, let alone flickr staff.

Commenter Julian amplifies:

The post in question didn't even get replies until someone posted a link to your post, and even then, it's not exactly like we know anything you don't. ... As to Hawk getting "a lot of referral traffic" from us, I rather doubt it, seeing as we have a grand total of 30 members, many of which don't check the group that frequently.

As they say, developing, though maybe not in that forum.

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