This forum's image implementation

[CIJ]

I guess the reason you have to essentially link to images on this forum from hosting sites is for space reasons. But it means all the valuable modding and wiring information (for instance) from years past is lost forever, rendering big chunks of the site completely useless. Surely there's a better way?

[GilmourD]

I guess the reason you have to essentially link to images on this forum from hosting sites is for space reasons. But it means all the valuable modding and wiring information (for instance) from years past is lost forever, rendering big chunks of the site completely useless. Surely there's a better way?

Realistically that is mostly due to whatever hosting the poster used for photos.

Personally, I use Imgur.com. I don't foresee them going away any time soon and I have a terrible habit of never deleting anything. My biggest issue with them is organizing what I post there, so there's probably some duplicates... LOL

I keep threatening to put together a guide for using Imgur that makes it nice and simple but I've unfortunately found myself with precious little time to barely even read the forum, lately, due to work and events in my life. I've even had multiple new acquisitions that I haven't posted about due to lack of time... One day I'll actually put together that guide, though.

[Pepe Silvia]

This is a problem on all forums since Photobucket started charging. Forum platforms that allow photo hosting like Vertical Scope, don't keep the images forever anyway. It seems they are cleared out after 6-12 months.

[CIJ]

This is a problem on all forums since Photobucket started charging. Forum platforms that allow photo hosting like Vertical Scope, don't keep the images forever anyway. It seems they are cleared out after 6-12 months.

Maybe that's true but it somehow seems worse here to me. It's a real shame that what could be an invaluable archive is instead a transitory store of (visual) information.

[GilmourD]

This is a problem on all forums since Photobucket started charging. Forum platforms that allow photo hosting like Vertical Scope, don't keep the images forever anyway. It seems they are cleared out after 6-12 months.

Maybe that's true but it somehow seems worse here to me. It's a real shame that what could be an invaluable archive is instead a transitory store of (visual) information.

The unfortunate truth is that persistent storage on the web isn't cheap.

[seenoevil II]

I've always used Imgur. I joined in 2009 (the first time), so it was impossible to know which of the photo hosting services were going to "jump the shark" back then. However, I was an avid Redditor back then and I saw that most photo content was hosted on Imgur on there, which gave me the impression that the service had a healthy built in clientele that would keep it afloat.

In fact, funny story, I was such an early adopter of Imgur that I never noticed when they pivoted to being a social network on top of photo sharing. So, I kept uploading photos purely to link to them on other sites like this one.unbeknownst to me, I was being absolutely shredded by Imgur weirdos for my seemingly nonsensical stream of photo posts. I have since learned to post things as private.

[CIJ]

This is a problem on all forums since Photobucket started charging. Forum platforms that allow photo hosting like Vertical Scope, don't keep the images forever anyway. It seems they are cleared out after 6-12 months.

Maybe that's true but it somehow seems worse here to me. It's a real shame that what could be an invaluable archive is instead a transitory store of (visual) information.

The unfortunate truth is that persistent storage on the web isn't cheap.

Fair enough. My frustration lies in the fact I've been hopping across several forums for weeks trying to scrabble together a few mods for a used Jaguar I bought recently, and to troubleshoot or amend a few aspects of vintage wiring I didn't like. It's taken me so long and a lot of detective work to get this info together, and I know that all the info used to be on these forums but vital pieces of the jigsaw are missing. And all these mods are so simple as well - you're just moving a very small number of connections in each case.

It seems like there's no real solution. Even if imgur is the best option, trying to get a movement going so that most forum members would start using it would be like herding cats.

[GilmourD]

Maybe that's true but it somehow seems worse here to me. It's a real shame that what could be an invaluable archive is instead a transitory store of (visual) information.

The unfortunate truth is that persistent storage on the web isn't cheap.

Fair enough. My frustration lies in the fact I've been hopping across several forums for weeks trying to scrabble together a few mods for a used Jaguar I bought recently, and to troubleshoot or amend a few aspects of vintage wiring I didn't like. It's taken me so long and a lot of detective work to get this info together, and I know that all the info used to be on these forums but vital pieces of the jigsaw are missing. And all these mods are so simple as well - you're just moving a very small number of connections in each case.

It seems like there's no real solution. Even if imgur is the best option, trying to get a movement going so that most forum members would start using it would be like herding cats.

Fortunately, in the case of OSG at least, there's such a large userbase that there's a pretty good chance that somebody has one of the missing pics somewhere and can repost it.

Also... There's a possibility that The Wayback Machine at www.archive.org may have cached the pictures in old threads, depending on where they were hosted.

[Jay]

Maybe that's true but it somehow seems worse here to me. It's a real shame that what could be an invaluable archive is instead a transitory store of (visual) information.

The unfortunate truth is that persistent storage on the web isn't cheap.

Fair enough. My frustration lies in the fact I've been hopping across several forums for weeks trying to scrabble together a few mods for a used Jaguar I bought recently, and to troubleshoot or amend a few aspects of vintage wiring I didn't like. It's taken me so long and a lot of detective work to get this info together, and I know that all the info used to be on these forums but vital pieces of the jigsaw are missing. And all these mods are so simple as well - you're just moving a very small number of connections in each case.

It seems like there's no real solution. Even if imgur is the best option, trying to get a movement going so that most forum members would start using it would be like herding cats.

The OSG Library was intended to remedy this... we'd have users identify the "good" info, and submit it or reference it to the moderator team and then it could be added to the library as an OSG hosted item that would at least last as long as the site did. Unfortunately, users simply didn't bother to do this.

[timtam]

Long time user of Imgur. Was a big fan but not so much lately. I used it without an account for years because I didn't trust any online repository - they originally didn't guarantee that images would last forever. Then they changed that, saying they would never delete images. Then a year or so back they announced that they would be deleting older images not tied to accounts (not long after being bought by another company, and the founder leaving). But I missed the announcement and half my images disappeared (although luckily I have all my uploads backed up). Anyway I created a free account and started moving my images over to that. Then some but not all images that had disappeared at their old links re-appeared.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imgur

Recently they changed the way that you add images, making it much more difficult to add them to a particular album. From a one-step process to a multi-step one. And if you add a title to an image after uploading it, it gets put in its own, new album. So you have to ignore the naming screen and delay naming it until you put it in the album you want. Inconsistency seems to be their hallmark now, and the interface is an illogical mess.