Image Policy Change

zoraster · Post Post #14 (isolation #0) » Sat Jul 14, 2012 5:02 am

yeah. I don't even think chamber is talking about sites like xkcd or theoatmeal or penny arcade or whatever. I think he's talking about if you google "scary ass spider," find it on a random site called "megapicsupload" and directly link it.

zoraster · Post Post #22 (isolation #1) » Mon Jul 16, 2012 6:23 am

no. this is a much better solution than removing hotlinking altogether.

zoraster · Post Post #24 (isolation #2) » Mon Jul 16, 2012 6:24 am

it's a BIG deal to remove hotlinking, quadz.

zoraster · Post Post #27 (isolation #3) » Mon Jul 16, 2012 6:31 am

We're saying you're accountable for what you post. And to my knowledge, chamber hasn't said they're going to ban you instantly if you do it or anything. I think that's fair.

And removing hotlinking is a TERRIBLE, terrible, terrible idea that will hurt the community until and unless we have some sort of image hosting on site. So yeah. If the options are (a) implement this change to minimize hotlinking from malware sites and (b) shut down hotlinking altogether, I'll pick b every time.

zoraster · Post Post #29 (isolation #4) » Mon Jul 16, 2012 6:45 am

Or you warn the newbie that they hotlinked to a site that had malware and describe how to avoid it. They're now on notice. If they continue to do it, remove hotlinking privileges.

Eliminating the source of the problem also removes the ability to embed photos onto the forum unless I'm mistaken. And that's not a good thing.

zoraster · Post Post #33 (isolation #5) » Mon Jul 16, 2012 6:55 am

What quadz said.

Harm of banning hotlinks altogether is HIGH. Benefit is LOW.

zoraster · Post Post #35 (isolation #6) » Mon Jul 16, 2012 6:58 am

zoraster · Post Post #40 (isolation #7) » Mon Jul 16, 2012 7:32 am

Yes, it is. Plus, general mafia posts for fun. Plus, things like picture mafia are possible with it.

Also, I think it makes GD/F62 stronger.

zoraster · Post Post #47 (isolation #8) » Mon Jul 16, 2012 7:46 am

Well, you edited your post to insert it, so don't be surprised people missed it.

Anyway I'm pretty sure on this other BB board I browse that it's possible to upload images when you post them onto a forum rather than hotlink. So it doesn't seem to me that it would be impossible to implement that as a feature to replace hotlinking.

In post 5, chamber wrote:
In post 4, Om of the Nom wrote:I came from a forum that was able to have images implemented in the posts as attachments. Is that possible to do on here?

Software side, yes. I don't know if the server could handle the extra load though.

zoraster · Post Post #50 (isolation #9) » Mon Jul 16, 2012 8:02 am

Yes?

The problem is that Chrome will block pages with malware links. Since many people use chrome, that's an issue.

zoraster · Post Post #52 (isolation #10) » Mon Jul 16, 2012 8:08 am

It's not about punishing. It's about stopping the problem.

zoraster · Post Post #57 (isolation #11) » Mon Jul 16, 2012 8:16 am

Be that as it may, we don't have control over how Chrome treats things.

zoraster · Post Post #59 (isolation #12) » Mon Jul 16, 2012 8:18 am

Yeah i use chrome at home and have never had a problem

zoraster · Post Post #68 (isolation #13) » Mon Jul 16, 2012 9:00 am

It's not someone's computer that's compromised from what I can tell. It's the site itself you hotlink from. Maybe that's why you're having such a severe disconnect from everyone, zach?

The way it works is that someone searches somewhere for a comic or something. They find it on a less than reputable site. They take a link of the jpg or whatever from that site, and then they slap on a couple of [img] tags. Then it trips it.

It's nothing about their computer being infected or not.

zoraster · Post Post #71 (isolation #14) » Mon Jul 16, 2012 9:07 am

Meh. Sometimes. Chrome is kind of aggressive about it. If you get it from a site that has a bad reputation for dodgy downloads (DOWNLOAD NOW!) then it might be marked even if the actual image and site you accessed the image through was fine. Regardless, the fact your computer is infected is actually irrelevant for the hotlink's goodness or badness.

Anyway, If you're being honest I will too: it's neither MS's job nor is it the administration's job to care about what diseases your computer picks up unless it's from MS itself. The goal is to preserve MS as a clean site.

zoraster · Post Post #72 (isolation #15) » Mon Jul 16, 2012 9:08 am

In post 70, Zachrulez wrote:Anyway, again. I'm going to put the emphasis on the fact that you can't expect the user to know what isn't reputable. The filter chrome uses along with any other anti-malware browser of anti-virus changes frequently.

Well I think that's why chamber suggested using imgur or photobucket or whatever. You know that you can use those and either (a) be safe or (b) if something WERE to go wrong, you'd be held harmless.

zoraster · Post Post #74 (isolation #16) » Mon Jul 16, 2012 9:21 am

Chrome is a very popular browser. It kind of depends on how you count, but by some metrics, it's the number 1 browser.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_shar ... b_browsers

zoraster · Post Post #78 (isolation #17) » Mon Jul 16, 2012 10:30 am

firefox too, i'm sure.

zoraster · Post Post #85 (isolation #18) » Mon Jul 16, 2012 10:52 am

I imagine many people using IE are doing so from their work.

zoraster · Post Post #91 (isolation #19) » Mon Jul 16, 2012 2:22 pm

it may be page accesses or something.

zoraster · Post Post #99 (isolation #20) » Tue Jul 17, 2012 4:41 am

I don't think it's a joke. That was my understanding as well. Or at least that was the concern that chamber had with allowing images to be hosted on site.

zoraster · Post Post #101 (isolation #21) » Tue Jul 17, 2012 4:48 am

In post 100, chamber wrote:
In post 99, zoraster wrote:I don't think it's a joke. That was my understanding as well. Or at least that was the concern that chamber had with allowing images to be hosted on site.

I said I didn't know. Hohum is the person that would given that he owns the server MS is hosted on.

Right. that's why I said it was your concern.

zoraster · Post Post #103 (isolation #22) » Tue Jul 17, 2012 4:53 am

well hohum hasn't even said that we don't have enough BW, UN.

zoraster · Post Post #109 (isolation #23) » Tue Jul 17, 2012 5:05 am

Out of interest, hohum, what's the cause for somewhat slow loading of pages with lots of photos? Is that just on my end, the site that the photos are being hosted at, some sort of server-side stuff?

zoraster · Post Post #112 (isolation #24) » Tue Jul 17, 2012 5:11 am

cool. Sounds good to me. Keeping in mind I have no idea what goes on behind the scenes and whether this is a "duh" statement, you might ask mith before implementing it. Although there's not really a practical difference, mith may not feel good about actually hosting some of the images that get posted here... and potentially having those photos get hotlinked to from other sites.