Attachment Limit

[taylortbb]

There's been discussions of this before in various threads, but I wanted to revive the discussion in a dedicated thread.

I'd like to suggest we eliminate the total attachment size limit for all users. The per-attachment limit is reasonable, so people don't upload videos.

Right now unlimited attachments is a perk of being a paid user, but as a paid user I don't think it's good for the forum overall. New users may not upload photos that would otherwise be valuable contributions to the forum. 
Making free users dependent on external image hosting also results in old threads full of dead photos.

I'd honestly be okay with the only perk of membership being no ads, that's what I'm really paying for, but for now attachment limits are my main issue.

[Acitta]

There's been discussions of this before in various threads, but I wanted to revive the discussion in a dedicated thread.

I'd like to suggest we eliminate the total attachment size limit for all users. The per-attachment limit is reasonable, so people don't upload videos.

Right now unlimited attachments is a perk of being a paid user, but as a paid user I don't think it's good for the forum overall. New users may not upload photos that would otherwise be valuable contributions to the forum. 
Making free users dependent on external image hosting also results in old threads full of dead photos.

I'd honestly be okay with the only perk of membership being no ads, that's what I'm really paying for, but for now attachment limits are my main issue.

Paying users help to pay for the resources used. Hardware and hosting is not free. This is a good service not filled with all the cruft of free social media services.

[jeffster]

There's been discussions of this before in various threads, but I wanted to revive the discussion in a dedicated thread.

I'd like to suggest we eliminate the total attachment size limit for all users. The per-attachment limit is reasonable, so people don't upload videos.

Right now unlimited attachments is a perk of being a paid user, but as a paid user I don't think it's good for the forum overall. New users may not upload photos that would otherwise be valuable contributions to the forum. 
Making free users dependent on external image hosting also results in old threads full of dead photos.

I'd honestly be okay with the only perk of membership being no ads, that's what I'm really paying for, but for now attachment limits are my main issue.

It might be a combination of things: paid premium users + ads for none none premium members + limit attachments for some = a working business model.

Now, I have no clue how much it costs to run this site, especially in terms of data storage. I'm guessing it's not cheap -- nor the time needed to keep it running properly. Maybe we can extend it to non premium members, but obviously not my call.

[taylortbb]

Paying users help to pay for the resources used. Hardware and hosting is not free. This is a good service not filled with all the cruft of free social media services.

Storage isn't very expensive (under $0.03/GB/month for S3, which is a premium priced storage service), and most of the people that upload lots of photos are premium members anyways. I'd be happy to pay more for my premium membership if it made a difference, but spread across all premium members it's a pretty small cost. I suspect this policy would result in less than a gigabyte of additional uploads per year, because most of the regulars (that upload most of the photos) are already premium users.

[jeffster]

Paying users help to pay for the resources used. Hardware and hosting is not free. This is a good service not filled with all the cruft of free social media services.

Storage isn't very expensive (under $0.03/GB/month for S3, which is a premium priced storage service), and most of the people that upload lots of photos are premium members anyways.

I think Gary's point was that if you have unlimited storage for everyone, the quality of posts might go down.

[taylortbb]

Storage isn't very expensive (under $0.03/GB/month for S3, which is a premium priced storage service), and most of the people that upload lots of photos are premium members anyways.

I think Gary's point was that if you have unlimited storage for everyone, the quality of posts might go down.

That's fair. I think in a moderated community like this we could address that if it became an issue.

Also, most non-paying users do post their photos, just via Imgur, so we're already getting the posts. It's more about ensuring the photos stay around. Many early posts, like https://www.waterlooregionconnected.com/...php?tid=16 , have photos that are now either watermarked by PhotoBucket or deleted entirely. Imgur is good for now, but hosting images for hot linking for free isn't a great business model, and I doubt they'll keep doing it as-is forever.

[plam]

I don't actually know how much storage costs with this webhost but there's no particular reason to stay with it either. I would prefer that we host as many of our pictures locally as possible (says the guy who usually doesn't post pictures and when he does he links to his own webspace). Though the attachment limit does help point out to people that they shouldn't post extremely huge photos. That is probably not enough of a benefit.

[Acitta]

I don't actually know how much storage costs with this webhost but there's no particular reason to stay with it either. I would prefer that we host as many of our pictures locally as possible (says the guy who usually doesn't post pictures and when he does he links to his own webspace). Though the attachment limit does help point out to people that they shouldn't post extremely huge photos. That is probably not enough of a benefit.

I always crop and resize the pictures I post, though I also pay for membership.

[tomh009]

I don't actually know how much storage costs with this webhost but there's no particular reason to stay with it either. I would prefer that we host as many of our pictures locally as possible (says the guy who usually doesn't post pictures and when he does he links to his own webspace). Though the attachment limit does help point out to people that they shouldn't post extremely huge photos. That is probably not enough of a benefit.

I always crop and resize the pictures I post, though I also pay for membership.

Same for me. I crop to avoid slow loading of photos, but it also keeps the attachment total down. And I do pay, too.

[taylortbb]

Though the attachment limit does help point out to people that they shouldn't post extremely huge photos. That is probably not enough of a benefit.

There's two limits currently in place, per-attachment and per-user. I think per-attachment makes sense to keep for exactly that reason, maybe cap attachments at 1-2MB.

Maybe there's a MyBB plugin for more intelligence, e.g. auto-resizing over a certain size, but finding and installing a plugin seems like a much bigger ask.

[Spokes]

I'm following this discussion to see where it goes

[taylortbb]

And right on time, Imgur has been sold to MediaLab https://blog.imgur.com/2021/09/27/celebr...t-chapter/ . You may have heard of them from their acquisition of Kik.

They seem to mostly be about monetizing brands that aren't doing so well, so I expect within a couple years we're gonna start seeing problems with all our images that are linked from Imgur.

[taylortbb]

I expect within a couple years we're gonna start seeing problems with all our images that are linked from Imgur.

~18 months later... https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/04/...ext-month/ . Imgur is beginning to purge unprofitable content.

The restriction on adult content won't affect WRC, but the deletion of anonymous uploads likely will. Years ago anonymous was the default way to upload to Imgur, so many of the older images from the early days of WRC are likely to get deleted soon.

I really think that relying on external image hosts isn't good for the health of this website. We should encourage everyone to use the attachment feature, and I'm even willing to help pay for it if that's an issue (though I believe the costs would be minimal).

[danbrotherston]

I expect within a couple years we're gonna start seeing problems with all our images that are linked from Imgur.

~18 months later... https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/04/...ext-month/ . Imgur is beginning to purge unprofitable content.

The restriction on adult content won't affect WRC, but the deletion of anonymous uploads likely will. Years ago anonymous was the default way to upload to Imgur, so many of the older images from the early days of WRC are likely to get deleted soon.

I really think that relying on external image hosts isn't good for the health of this website. We should encourage everyone to use the attachment feature, and I'm even willing to help pay for it if that's an issue (though I believe the costs would be minimal).

Frankly, this is kind of an intractable problem. The internet archive is like...a partial solution. I wonder if they'll scrape imgur...

Of course the US publishing industry is trying to end IA as well...so...even they are not a solution.

That does remind me though...I should de-twit-linkify my twitter archive...

Edit: Thanks for the link. Honestly...their press release is pathetic. Reducing costs is obviously a key part of the purpose here. I could buy bullshit corporate censorship as the reason for removing the adult content (it could obviously also simply be flagged and age-restricted instead). But removing old content from anon accounts...that's exclusively for cost. And why wouldn't they...it's a private company, it makes sense for them to reduce costs, even at the detriment of society, but I wish they'd at least be honest about it. Of course they're a private company otherwise I'd suggest looking at their shareholder filings for some honesty...but I think the truth is plenty clear...why bother lying?

Anyone else thinking that capitalism might not actually be the magical saviour of all of humanity that certain Davos attendees seem intent on convincing us it is.

[dtkvictim]

old, unused, and inactive content that is not tied to a user account

If this can be read as "old and unused and inactive", then it might not be too much of a worry yet. As long as threads/pages embedding imgur photos get the occasional request, hopefully that is enough to keep them marked as active and in use.