Site Image Uploader

[Dangermouse]

An open question/comment to the Mods and to members:

Should we be asking/encouraging/requiring members to use the Site’s Image Uploader, rather than just linking to a photo on another site, so that a specific image in a thread is stored on this site and is not lost if the third party website shuts down, or in the case of ebay, for instance, data is deleted after 90 days.


I am thinking specifically of images/photos that are of a technical or relevant nature and would render the thread useless if they were missing? Hotlinks to memes, jokes, non-DeLorean stuff could remain as they are.

[sdg3205]

Yes. I personally dislike linked pictures. I hate going back and forth between the forum and a browser, especially on my iPhone where I do a lot of DMCTalking.

Just my opinion.

[Ron]

Makes sense to me. The only drawbacks I can think of, for posts of a technical nature, involve rare problems with copyrights...and maybe the size of some pics.

Yes. I personally dislike linked pictures. I hate going back and forth between the forum and a browser, especially on my iPhone where I do a lot of DMCTalking.

Just my opinion.

I bet you love it when someone posts 10 high res pics, then someone else quotes it (right behind them) and replies with a smiley. lol

[sdg3205]

Quotes hi-res picks, yes. Smilies, j'adore.

[Dangermouse]

Yes. I personally dislike linked pictures. I hate going back and forth between the forum and a browser, especially on my iPhone where I do a lot of DMCTalking.

Just my opinion.

Well, that would certainly be a side benefit. I use TT a lot and, honestly, if the images are linked, it's too much of a pita and I just stop looking at them. Particularly recently where the first link seems to bring with it a pop-up ad or some link to iTunes to get the image hoster's App.

But my suggestion is intended to maintain the longevity of this site with meaningful images rather than broken links.

[Shep]

so that a specific image in a thread is stored on this site and is not lost if the third party website shuts down

Or is lost when the forum dies again. There was a lot of good stuff stored only on the .com that is now lost, and those third-party websites kept right on chugging. Unless the webmaster had explicitly forbidden it, various web crawlers (e.g. archive.org) cached those third-party pages periodically. Since image attachments here on the forum can only be viewed if you're logged in, the only images from these forums that were cached were ones linked to by a third party. The only images hosted on the forum itself that survived were ones someone saved to their hard drive.

The biggest problem not enough people do is create small thumbnails with supplemental links to the full-size versions (not making the small image itself link to the large image, which breaks Tapatalk). You can post hugely high-res pictures in a thread, and the forums will automatically downsize it to fit on your screen, but it will only make the image appear smaller while still downloading the entire damn thing. A 10 MP camera picture hotlinked to directly on these forums will download about 2 MB worth of data yet display it in a size that only requires 500 KB tops. As a general rule, I personally create 640 x 480 thumbnails of any large image, resulting in the user only needing to download about 200 KB per picture, which 95% of the time is more than enough to serve its purpose.

That being said, images should either be hosted on a user's own personal website or the forums. In my opinion there shouldn't be any exceptions for that. Image hosts such as Imageshack usually have bandwidth restrictions and will remove your image entirely if it uses up too much bandwidth. Photobucket disables all pictures on a user's account if they don't log in within 30 days. eBay takes the picture down a few weeks after the auction ends. Online retailers remove images a few weeks after those products are discontinued. Some douchebag webhosts will intentionally display a different (and often quite obscene and graphic) image when someone hotlinks an image from their site onto other sites. Some sites will keep the same image on their servers but due to a massive site redesign will completely change the image's location. Images from those sites should not be hotlinked, however a user's personal website should be fine to hotlink from.

[Dangermouse]

Or is lost when the forum dies again. There was a lot of good stuff stored only on the .com that is now lost,

This is obviously true and a risk. However, the thread that went with the photos was lost too.........

[Shep]

This is obviously true and a risk. However, the thread that went with the photos was lost too.........

If the forums go down, the photos would be lost, but the knowledge would survive. Threads can be rebuilt from the knowledge, or they can be gathered from archive.org, which has most of the threads from the .com still (although it's far easier to navigate with a direct url from a bookmark or internet history). Just need to wait ~6 months for it to be listed.

Then again, I'd like to think the admins have learned from their mistake and would take extra measures next time they change servers to ensure that they have adequate, redundant, and distributed backups of all forum data, and make sure to get the forums back in order on the new server before taking the old one down, instead of making a backup, switching servers, and then trying to get the forums up and running (which didn't work). DPI learned the same lesson the hard way a month or two ago as well.

[Jonathan]

If the forums go down, the photos would be lost, but the knowledge would survive. Threads can be rebuilt from the knowledge, or they can be gathered from archive.org, which has most of the threads from the .com still (although it's far easier to navigate with a direct url from a bookmark or internet history). Just need to wait ~6 months for it to be listed.

Then again, I'd like to think the admins have learned from their mistake and would take extra measures next time they change servers to ensure that they have adequate, redundant, and distributed backups of all forum data, and make sure to get the forums back in order on the new server before taking the old one down, instead of making a backup, switching servers, and then trying to get the forums up and running (which didn't work). DPI learned the same lesson the hard way a month or two ago as well.

As I understood it, the dot com to dot org change had more to do with the people side of life rather than the computer side. Some things you can't make back-ups for.

I do think we (as a group) are doing a great job at rebuilding and documenting the knowledge. A lot of that has to do with many of these files and photos stored on many of our own harddrives and even more in between our ears.

Hey, sometimes it is a good thing to start with a clean slate. Kind of like when you buy a new computer and get to set it up and organize it the way you want... and not the way your previous one had gotten itself a little messy and a bit out of control.

I think DMCTalk 2.0 is a-okay

[Shep]

As I understood it, the dot com to dot org change had more to do with the people side of life rather than the computer side. Some things you can't make back-ups for.

I'm having a hard time understanding what you mean by this. How did the people side of life factor in?