Not seeing some jpg's or gif's

[brewer]

Like a dirty old prev I was going thru the A69 member photo thread and noticed that I couldn't view some (maybe all) jpg's or gif's. And it's not just from that thread. An example is in Sejanus profile in the signature:

http://atheistforums.org/user-5164.html

All I see is the code. Do I have something set up incorrectly?

[Image: thfrog.gif]

[Jackalope]

This happens when someone links to external content and then at some point later, the content is removed.

Nothing we can do about it from this end.

[vorlon13]

Back in the day message board software actually saved the pictures instead of just an internet address linky thing.

I've never considered that an improvement, but with the necro thing here, it's not much of an issue. Some of the science boards I'm on, having the pictures evaporate is actually devastating. A space mission thread is revived, for instance, several years after launch when the craft reaches it's target, and you go look for launch pictures, and they are all gone. It REALLY sucks.

[Jackalope]

Back in the day message board software actually saved the pictures instead of just an internet address linky thing.

We have that capability here, but it's turned of - deliberately, I expect, but I suspect only Tiberius and Moros could say exactly why.

[vorlon13]

Well, with the necro thing, and the large amount of data in pictures, I'd reluctantly concede it doesn't matter much here.

Still, even with the necro thing, the old threads are archived, that their value and integrity is deteriorating with time is distressing.

[brewer]

This happens when someone links to external content and then at some point later, the content is removed.

Nothing we can do about it from this end.

OK, thanks.

[Autumnlicious]

The question of self-hosting images is a good one. I cannot speak for Tiberius nor am I the final word on this.

Hosting images here invites the following issues - one of legality and one of avoiding undesirable behavior.

Legality:

- we may be liable for infringement by providing a media hosting platform
- we may inadvertently host an image that the linked source removes for personal, legal or business reasons (privacy comes to mind)

Undesirable behavior:

- some people will get the idea to use our bandwidth to serve data for other sites.
- blocking that means we'll have to invest time/effort into keeping a "good enough" system which saps time
- we would have to impose many, many quality of service limits: size, content, encodings, rates of posting, fairness in bandwidth usage, etc, to deal with all edge cases resulting from offering a "free product"

Given Tiberius runs this site as more of a hobby than a business, he would be forced to give up more of his time to properly diligence any legal or technical abuse. Delegating that authority to others would be an imperfect solution given to the unofficial way that moderators are "hired" (responsibility and culpability come to mind) and effectively eat more of his time.

Finally, costs would probably go up with implementation of a simple image hosting feature. Sending HTML is cheap and easy - it compresses well and lends itself to statistical optimizations (various caching approaches). Images, on the other hand, aren't nearly as simple or cheap.

[Tiberius]

Moros hit the nail on the head with his explanation. This is a discussion forum, not an image hosting service. Discussions we can easily moderate, images, not so much.

[vorlon13]

appreciate the detailed explain