Dropbox Etiquette
Friday, June 10, 2011 at 12:04AM ;)
I’m a huge fan of Dropbox. I use it every day both to make my work computer-agnostic and to collaborate with others. I wrote about how I use it to monitor After Effects renders.
But there’s a problem with Dropbox, one that will be familiar to anyone who’s ever had a roommate. Actually, anyone who’s had more than one roommate.
If you have one roommate, the house stays pretty clean, because there’s accountability. If I see dishes in the sink, I know who left them there. I am unlikely to leave dishes in the sink, because I know that my roommate will know it was me who did it.
Add a third roomy to the scenario and an important thing happens: Now I can’t be certain whose dishes those are in the sink. I might be tempted to leave dishes in the sink myself, because no one roommate will know with certainty that I’m the messy culprit. Instead of accountability, I now have just enough anonymity to be a slob with impunity.
It gets worse. As soon as one dish gets left, and it most certainly will, the next anonymous roommate will almost certainly add his dish to the mess. The sink is already full of untraceable dirty dishes, what’s one more?
I share Dropbox folders with a great many people, and the only ones that ever sprawl out of control are the ones I share with more than one other person. It’s become enough of an issue that I decided to write up my three rules for a tidy Dropbox.
Name your Shared Folder Something Non-Stupid
With Dropbox, you can share a folder with one or more other people, and this becomes a synced folder on both of your computers. This is one of the fundamental awesome Dropbox features, and it’s where people immediately go wrong — by naming the folder something that makes sense to them, but not to the person with whom they are sharing it.
I have countless shared folders in the top level of my Dropbox directory called “Stu,” “Stuff for Stu,” “Red Giant,” “Client,” “Files for Stu,” etc. These folder names made perfect sense to the person making them, on their hard drive, but on mine they are criminally useless.
Thinking of a folder name that makes sense for all the people accessing it is surprisingly hard, but I have a system that I use, and that I wish you would too if you ever share a folder with me. I name all my folders “Stu & ______”, with the blank being filled in with the name of the person or organization with whom I am sharing the folder. My favorite part of my Dropbox is the long list of folders that look like this:
- Stu & Aharon
- Stu & Atomic Fiction
- Stu & Ben
- Stu & Gus
- Stu, Aharon & Harry
- Stu, Mike & John
There are two things that this naming scheme is accomplishing. First, and this is always the guiding principal when naming shared folders, it’s the simplest possible expression of what’s actually going on. The primary feature of this folder is that it is shared among these people. No need to call out a specific project or event — that can be done with subfolders.
Second, since my name is first, you can assume that I “own” the folder. I invited you to it, not the other way around. I’ll set the tone for the organization within the folder, delete old files, and delete the folder if we don’t need it anymore, not you. If you want to wear the pants in a Dropbox folder, create one called “Handsome Reader & Stu” and invite me to share it.
Or pick another system and stick to it. The point here is that when you’re creating that shared folder, you’re naming for two — or more.
Within That Folder, Use a System
Now that you and I are sharing a folder, the name of which makes good sense on both our drives, let’s make sure the contents of the folder make equal sense. There are an infinite number of ways to organize projects, but one technique I come back to again and again is the idea of “from” folders with a date in the name. I’m I’m sending you new files via Dropbox, I’ll first add a folder called “From Stu” with today’s date tacked on the end. I’ll format the date YYMMDD, so that it will alphabetically sort in chronological order. So you might see folders like this:
- From Stu 110519
- From Stu 110602
- From Stu 110609
Within each of these folder are the files I sent you that day. If I need to distinguish among posts on the same day, I’ll add alphabetical suffixes to the dates:
- From Stu 110610a
- From Stu 110610b
- From Stu 110610c
That’s what I do. You might like something else. But as the owner of the folder, you decide. Set the precedent early and watch your collaborators follow suit without you even having to ask.
Do the Dishes
There’s only one thing left to say, and that’s simply to clean up after yourself. Like the dishes, this is all about accountability. Since it’s now clear who owns each folder, and who posted what within those folders, it’s also clear whose responsibility it is to tidy up. Remember, if you delete something from Dropbox and want it back, you can restore it from the web interface — so there’s no reason not to be ruthless.
I Can’t Believe I Read This Far
I know, this is nerdy stuff. But when you share files via Dropbox, you’re sharing what many people consider to be their most personal living space. Dropbox is wonderful, but there’s a slippery slope from collaboration Utopia to file frat house. Be a good Dropbox roommate.
Stu
@klavr adroitly pointed out on Twitter that you can rename shared Dropbox folders, and that the new name will only be visible to you. So you can share a folder with me called “Files for Stu” and I can rename it to “My Friend is an Idiot.” But I don’t like this feature, because it means we no longer have identical file paths. You call me up and tell me your latest awesomeness is in Dropbox in the “Monkey Sauce” folder and now I have to remember what I renamed that to? I bought a computer so I don’t have to remember stuff.
Still, it’s a powerful feature of Dropbox and one you can use to impose tidiness on an unruly roomy.
Reader Comments (13)
Funny, I have the exact same problem. I start to encourage people to move the stuff out of the DropBox once they got it, or to email me once they copied it out, so I can delete it myself. It's a bit of a hassle but I guess the only way right now.
Thanks for sharing the above advice!
This will save you if you're trying to share a paid account with a team of free accounts. Once the group exceed the free gigs, their account locks up. Dropbox sharing means everyone shares everyone's files. So if a paid account uploads 10 gigs to the "Project Folder" everyone shares, everyone's shut out.) Rather than police your and EVERYONE'S files, share many folders with 1 or 2 people. If they lock up their folder, no one else is affected.
Dropbox and YouSendIt are great for sharing files, but the upload/download time are perhaps less efficient than using a thumbdrive for in-office/town sharing.
Another even geekier point Stu: you noted that you have countless Shared folders in the top leve of your Dropbox, but a lesser known features since Dropbox went to 1.0 is that you can also now move shared folders in to subfolders. I for example have a top level folder called "Shared". Whenever I accept a share invitation it is created at the top level of my Dropbox by default but then I just move it in there. That way it doesn't interfere with the way I organize the rest of my OWN stuff.
I like that better than renaming the individual folders — the paths will only differ on our drives by one additional nesting, which would be easy to strip out of a filepath in an email, for example.
To me the naming convention with the date is the best way to keep the overview. I hate people who do the date system but don´t understand why to use the YYMMDD format - believe me, there are lots of them out there... I tried a lot of using folders named "Input" and "output" for sharing - but even then people got confused. I guess the declaration to use the names of the owner followed by the user is a great psychological trick. At first it doesn´t look very professionalI but at the end of the day it makes sense at all. I think I´ll give it a try...Thx Stu!
thanks for the post stu. i've been reading your blog and you post lots of informative articles.
I try to name my files in a logical way, but lots of times it becomes illogical real quick.
do you have a folder convention for job folders? for instance, if you're working on a video, how do you organize all of your material?
I do, and now that I know people are interested in this stuff, I might just post about it.
Thanks for the, post. Really like the photo you've got as the header!
Thanks so much for this post. I've avoided using drop box for a long time because, well, I was stupid....
After reading your article, and thinking about how difficult, nay I should say "impossible" it is for one of my oldest clients to keep versions and files straight I set it up, set up a shared folder just for us, logged on to her laptop with net meeting and installed and set up drop box on her desktop, and now, for the first time in 10 years we're in sync. She knows what is current and more importantly, where to find it. The days of digging through her e-mail to find the latest graphic and putting last years logo on something are gone, hopefully forever.
You've made my life easier. I owe you again
Great post! It's these little details that really help make a post production workflow efficient. Here at Steelehouse, we're a small company, but have around 20-30 projects going at any given time. With multiple editors and animators we've learned the importance of a standardized system that lacks ambiguity. When simple effective systems like this are established, then the creativity can truly flow.
Great post Stu! I have a set up on one machine that at 2am, goes in and copies any new files to a folder out side of dropbox. That way our team has a back up of everything thats ever been in there. This has saved me (and my shared folder friends) a few times!
Dropbox has been making life easier for me for a while now, and since reading your post a few days ago I have been implementing your file naming suggestions and telling my friends to do the same. Once these kind of protocols are in place things get better. I guess I have a question about how to deal with recalcitrant partners, collaborators who resist the change to a more streamlined way of doing things.
For example, is there a setting in Dropbox which allows you to define sharing permissions, and keep it a share with one partner (that they cannot then go and share with third, fourth, or more other people)? Maybe I'm a control freak, but I like the guest-host concept and the idea of one person being in charge of a folder. Coming back to my shared folder and finding that files have been deleted by the person I'm sharing with, without any prior communication with me about it... sometimes that's cool, and other times, it creates problems.
I'm glad you sparked a dialogue on this topic, and I look forward to hearing more about it. Thanks...
Thanks for sharing, makes perfectly sense!