> Smart albums are collections that support rule based additions, as well as one-off additions. So a contributor can add photos directly to the collection, without the owner's clients not having to perform any extra computation.
What I meant was that if the smart album's purpose is allowing contributions to a tag in some other album, then contributed photos will have to be tagged & added to the original album by the owner, won't they, since only the owner holds the collection key.
> For the workflow you've mentioned, we have plans to make albums where collaborators can only view the items they have added
I'm not sure this would cover my use case. 1) I don't like other people's photos getting mixed up with mine for various reasons, which is why I typically set up one subfolder (or in Ente: a separate album) per contributor. 2) I want different people to have write access to their corresponding subfolder, but they should have read access to a larger set of subfolders (e.g. each others' photos, or maybe even the entire "summer vacation" album, though not necessarily).
All in all, the mechanisms you propose seem rather complex to me (and still inferior) compared to simply allowing albums/collections to be nested. And when I say "complex" I mean this not just from a technical point of view, but also from a conceptual & UX one. In the interview on YouTube you mention that a folder hierarchy might seem foreign to younger users but even if I believe that, is the solution really to come up with a solution that's foreign to everyone?
Besides, the entire industry has settled on nested folders as the primary way to organize files & documents as well as access control, from traditional file systems over Dropbox, M365 / SharePoint / One Drive to Confluence. So I'd say whoever is unfamiliar with that will become familiar fast, don't you think?
