If photos that are private or locked are sent to any group, they become available to that group. And if a group is public, all of the photos become available to anyone who finds the group.

One of the most irksome things about Flickr is that it offers a very limited number of "privacy" settings. One can make a photo completely private, for friends, or for family (or friends and family). Having a private group that we can all send photos to effectively gives us all one more "locked" variation. For instance, I can make all of the Buffistas photos completely "private" and then send them all to the Buffistas private group. Thus you all have access to all of the photos, but they're not viewable to my friends or family (unless I also overlap those settings). So it gives each of us more flexibility in what we allow our "standard" friends and family to see. And it also puts an end to the frantic pleas and frustrations of Buffistas who need to be friended in order to see photos.

As it is, I had to de-friend some people in my personal/work life in order to properly protect the F2F photos (had to demote previous "friends" to "contacts", so that they wouldn't have access to the F2F photos, and they noticed and it was a crappy situation). If the group is private, I can simply lock ALL of my Buffista photos as "private", send them to the group, and feel secure in knowing that my colleagues won't see them but my Buffista family will.

If people really want to keep the group public, that's fine. I think everyone's had a chance to see the F2F photos, and so I'll take them down off of my account.

I thought that if the picture was in a private pool it couldn't be viewed as part of the group if you're not in the group.

ita, I am not sure I know the difference between pool and group. Are you saying that our group is public but the pool is not? I guess I always think they're synonymous? As long as there is a way to have my F2F photos made "private", and send them to a pool that only Buffistas can see, then I'm good.

ETA: I sent a "private" marked photo of Juliana, Suzi and Deb to the pool. Is there a way to check to see if a non-member has access to the photo? If there is, and s/he doesn't, that's awesome.

java, I logged out of flickr, and I can't see any of the photos.

From flickr:

Only group members see the pool.

It looks like a public group marked private allows the group to be found in a search and show up in your individual group contacts. You must be a member of the group to actually see the photos.

Thanks for checking that!

It looks like a public group marked private allows the group to be found in a search and show up in your individual group contacts. You must be a member of the group to actually see the photos.

Yes. This. I picked this specific type of group because I wanted people to be able to *find* the group, but not be able to see anything in the group without being a member. The only difference between the group as it is and a private group is a private group is totally hidden from the world and I saw no need for that.

Anyone who wants to join must be screened by an admin.

mwahahaha you can see we exist, but you can't see our foaminess. Perfect.

allows the group to be found in a search and show up in your individual group contacts

I can see this creating a potentially sticky situation when a family member or co-worker asks why they can't see any of the pictures in that group. (Or requests to join the group and is rejected.) Honestly I'm not sure why having the group be public on Flickr is necessary since anyone who wants to join would need to be a member here and could simply follow the link.

Jessica,that's my thought, too.

The group can be switched to private, but I'm not sure how people would request being added to the group then.