Remotely hosted Images peeve!

[Chris56000]

. . .Can't anything be done about the scourge of "remotely hosted Images" on this Forum?

. . .The Forum Threads are full of tens of thousands of images, snapshots of circuits, waveforms, etc., etc., that well–meaning posters intend to illustrate their poster but 95 % of them now say "content no longer viewable in your region" or "upgrade to paid premium" or "the image associated with this thumbnail is no longer available!".

. . .It means posts become useless and impossible to follow by others who would like to help the OP, and the UK Vintage Radio Restoration Forum specifically bans the use of "remotely hosted Images" for this very reason!

. . .PLEASE – if you want to include images, either upload them a "zip" file, upload them to Dropbox, Google Drive, or use an image editor to.save them within the Forum size limits!

. . .This practice of "remotely hosted Images" needs BANNING, once and for all!

Chris Williams

[Andy Watson]

Totally agree. Although, for those of us who shun interaction with big brother big "G", or may not have latest in web-browser, google drive can also be problematic.

[golden_labels]

Forgive me for giving a disgusting example, but as a former lead admin/mod of a big forum I have some stories to share myself. At some point quite a few of these domains are sold to the highest bidder or abandoned. A few years after the image is posted and embedded in a forum thread, I receive PMs from users inquiring about pornographic photos. Many of the illegal kind.

[Analog Kid]

Totally agree with the O.P. here.

Fortunately the solution is simple and at hand:
Use the forum's picture attachment facility.
The pics will always be available, and you have your choice of how they open.
(Never mind that the insertion code is kind of broken; you just need to work around that. There are threads here on how to do that.)

And for heaven's sake, please size your pictures judiciously! Nothing worse than coming across someone's post with a picture that's 2698x1895 pixels that fills the whole screen. Resize that sucker before posting! (That also puts less of a load on Dave's servers.)

[NiHaoMike]

And for heaven's sake, please size your pictures judiciously! Nothing worse than coming across someone's post with a picture that's 2698x1895 pixels that fills the whole screen. Resize that sucker before posting! (That also puts less of a load on Dave's servers.)

I use 1080p as the general guideline as it's the most common screen resolution according to Steam. Pretty much the only time I exceed that is for teardowns that need more detail.

[Analog Kid]

And for heaven's sake, please size your pictures judiciously! Nothing worse than coming across someone's post with a picture that's 2698x1895 pixels that fills the whole screen. Resize that sucker before posting! (That also puts less of a load on Dave's servers.)

I use 1080p as the general guideline as it's the most common screen resolution according to Steam. Pretty much the only time I exceed that is for teardowns that need more detail.

I don't understand; what does "1080p" mean? What is that in pixels?

I just go by raw numbers of pixels. For this forum on a desktop computer, 800 or maybe 1000 pixels wide is as large as I usually want to go. Often far less, like 300 or 400.

[NiHaoMike]

I don't understand; what does "1080p" mean? What is that in pixels?

1920x1080, currently the most common desktop resolution.

[Randy222]

And for heaven's sake, please size your pictures judiciously! Nothing worse than coming across someone's post with a picture that's 2698x1895 pixels that fills the whole screen. Resize that sucker before posting! (That also puts less of a load on Dave's servers.)

Doesnt this forum shrink the images down via HTML size code, and then you click on it to get the full pic?

[NE666]

Doesnt this forum shrink the images down via HTML size code, and then you click on it to get the full pic?

I'm shooting from the hip but iirc, that's an option you need to select at the time of posting ('Expandable thumbnail'), and not everyone seems to do that.

[NE666]

Nothing worse than coming across someone's post with a picture that's 2698x1895 pixels that fills the whole screen.

Nearly. The worst is when someone feels the need to quote that posting in it's entirety including said image, just to add a one sentence reply.

[radiolistener]

. . .The Forum Threads are full of tens of thousands of images, snapshots of circuits, waveforms, etc., etc., that well–meaning posters intend to illustrate their poster but 95 % of them now say "content no longer viewable in your region" or "upgrade to paid premium" or "the image associated with this thumbnail is no longer available!".

Could you provide an example of a post where this happens?

I haven’t personally come across the message “content no longer viewable in your region” on the forum. If there are particular image hosts causing repeated problems, it would be useful to identify them specifically.

It may also be related to censorship in your country.

[EEVblog]

Not sure how this would be possible without pissing off a lot of users.
Personally I post quite a lot of embedded image links all the time for convenience.
If I know it's needs to be properly archived then I'll attach it, but otherwise I use the most convenient option at the time.

[SteveThackery]

Not sure how this would be possible without pissing off a lot of users.
Personally I post quite a lot of embedded image links all the time for convenience.
If I know it's needs to be properly archived then I'll attach it, but otherwise I use the most convenient option at the time.

Dave, are there financial implications for you if we attach all our images rather than link to external images? I'm thinking about the server disk space that is required to store the images - I assume you have to pay for that.

[tooki]

Not sure how this would be possible without pissing off a lot of users.
Personally I post quite a lot of embedded image links all the time for convenience.
If I know it's needs to be properly archived then I'll attach it, but otherwise I use the most convenient option at the time.

The question is “piss off a few people now” vs “piss off everyone in the future when key images and files in a post go missing”. I think the first option is better for the long-term health of the forums.


Oh yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask: any chance the attachment filetypes could be amended to include webp? (More and more, I run into the situation where I download an image from a website, certain that the URL is that of a JPG or PNG, only to find the server has silently delivered the webp instead, since they use browser detection to serve the more efficient webp instead.) Like it or not, webp is becoming widespread, so it makes sense to support it now that browser support is effectively universal.

[factory]

. . .The Forum Threads are full of tens of thousands of images, snapshots of circuits, waveforms, etc., etc., that well–meaning posters intend to illustrate their poster but 95 % of them now say "content no longer viewable in your region" or "upgrade to paid premium" or "the image associated with this thumbnail is no longer available!".

Could you provide an example of a post where this happens?

I haven’t personally come across the message “content no longer viewable in your region” on the forum. If there are particular image hosts causing repeated problems, it would be useful to identify them specifically.

It may also be related to censorship in your country.

This must be mostly due to Imgur deciding to geoblock the UK (and maybe other places?), following the regulators deciding they are an adult only porn site and would need to collect users details to verify age, which they didn't want to do.

An example below from a thread on here, I wonder what kind of harmful content they could be saving us from seeing?



Yes some vile illegal Wallace porn of course, created in the UK too, how dare they. 



David

[BradC]

. . .This practice of "remotely hosted Images" needs BANNING, once and for all!

No, it just needs people to actually host stuff themselves rather than delegate to flaky second rate "image hosting services".

I self host. I have done for over 20 years, and I've put plans in place such that my images continue to get hosted for 20 years after I die (which hopefully is at least 50 years down the track). After that, frankly I don't care.

It's people using cheap/free "you are the product" image hosting services that are the problem, not "remotely hosted images".

[magic]

In principle it should be possible to disable the img tag, but that would break a lot of existing posts and yes, some users might not want to upload.

I sometimes don't bother uploading images which are not particularly important either.

And for heaven's sake, please size your pictures judiciously! Nothing worse than coming across someone's post with a picture that's 2698x1895 pixels that fills the whole screen.

You think? I recently saw a 5k×3k photo of a scribbled schematic with LM317 and two resistors

The real issue is that smartphones should be banned.

[Ranayna]

The way you attach images here needs work, to be honest.
I know i have been yapping about Xenforo here before, but it's image upload is so easy to use, especially for more throwaway images.

Just snap a picture for example with the snipping tool, and just paste it into the forum. Instant upload and embed. No need to faff around with saving the file locally to attach it. Which of course is still possible anyway.

[PlainName]

And for heaven's sake, please size your pictures judiciously! Nothing worse than coming across someone's post with a picture that's 2698x1895 pixels that fills the whole screen. Resize that sucker before posting! (That also puts less of a load on Dave's servers.)

I use 1080p as the general guideline as it's the most common screen resolution according to Steam. Pretty much the only time I exceed that is for teardowns that need more detail.

Browser window is NOT the screen resolution. And EEVBlog viewing is NOT playing full screen hi-res racing games.

[tom66]

You have to blame British politicians too.

They enacted the Online Safety Act, and the OSA places onerous requirements on providers to ensure kids don't see content that may be deemed harmful (porn, self harm, etc.) without verifying ID first. 
 
This is obviously unreasonable as a requirement for <1% of the world's population so Imgur just decided "f-k it" and banned the whole UK. Doesn't matter that it's just Gromit, they don't want to have to comply, and I can't really blame them given the requirements are crazy with enormous fines for non-compliance.

4chan on the other hand is playing chicken with Ofcom, simply ignoring their emails and refusing to comply, Ofcom does not want to sue them because they will find out pretty quickly that UK law cannot be enforced in US courts (duh), but that would set a precedent they don't want.

I suggest getting a VPN and then you can go anywhere and pretend you are American one moment and Swedish another. 

Of course it's still an issue that forums host external images because these can get deleted, but that will resolve some concerns at least in the short term...

[nctnico]

. . .Can't anything be done about the scourge of "remotely hosted Images" on this Forum?

. . .The Forum Threads are full of tens of thousands of images, snapshots of circuits, waveforms, etc., etc., that well–meaning posters intend to illustrate their poster but 95 % of them now say "content no longer viewable in your region" or "upgrade to paid premium" or "the image associated with this thumbnail is no longer available!".

. . .It means posts become useless and impossible to follow by others who would like to help the OP, and the UK Vintage Radio Restoration Forum specifically bans the use of "remotely hosted Images" for this very reason!

The problem is that uploading images and adding them to posts is atrociously difficult and cumbersome. Using an external image hosting service is far less work. And these services typically allow to set a sensible image size (and link to the original, full size image).

[EEVblog]

The way you attach images here needs work, to be honest.
I know i have been yapping about Xenforo here before, but it's image upload is so easy to use, especially for more throwaway images.
Just snap a picture for example with the snipping tool, and just paste it into the forum. Instant upload and embed. No need to faff around with saving the file locally to attach it. Which of course is still possible anyway.

If you have a SMF plugin that does this, I can install it.

[Analog Kid]

. . .Can't anything be done about the scourge of "remotely hosted Images" on this Forum?

. . .The Forum Threads are full of tens of thousands of images, snapshots of circuits, waveforms, etc., etc., that well–meaning posters intend to illustrate their poster but 95 % of them now say "content no longer viewable in your region" or "upgrade to paid premium" or "the image associated with this thumbnail is no longer available!".

. . .It means posts become useless and impossible to follow by others who would like to help the OP, and the UK Vintage Radio Restoration Forum specifically bans the use of "remotely hosted Images" for this very reason!

The problem is that uploading images and adding them to posts is atrociously difficult and cumbersome. Using an external image hosting service is far less work. And these services typically allow to set a sensible image size (and link to the original, full size image).

You're talking about using this forum's image attachment facilities?
Then you're just plain wrong: it's not difficult at all. And it has been explained in detail, somewhere on this site.

It is true that a lot of the Simple Machines code that handles image attachment is badly broken--I've described it myself here--but there are workarounds, and the process isn't rocket surgery.

[EEVblog]

. . .Can't anything be done about the scourge of "remotely hosted Images" on this Forum?

. . .The Forum Threads are full of tens of thousands of images, snapshots of circuits, waveforms, etc., etc., that well–meaning posters intend to illustrate their poster but 95 % of them now say "content no longer viewable in your region" or "upgrade to paid premium" or "the image associated with this thumbnail is no longer available!".

. . .It means posts become useless and impossible to follow by others who would like to help the OP, and the UK Vintage Radio Restoration Forum specifically bans the use of "remotely hosted Images" for this very reason!

The problem is that uploading images and adding them to posts is atrociously difficult and cumbersome. Using an external image hosting service is far less work. And these services typically allow to set a sensible image size (and link to the original, full size image).

You're talking about using this forum's image attachment facilities?
Then you're just plain wrong: it's not difficult at all. And it has been explained in detail, somewhere on this site.

It is true that a lot of the Simple Machines code that handles image attachment is badly broken--I've described it myself here--but there are workarounds, and the process isn't rocket surgery.

The ones like ZenForo offer the ability to just paste the image into the post.
With SMF you have the save locally and then drag and drop to attach and then manually insert were needed.

[Analog Kid]

The ones like ZenForo offer the ability to just paste the image into the post.

So how does one get ZenForo?