Topic: Poll on solving the imgur issue - page 3. (Read 1962 times)

If they add it as a paid feature, I don't think the forum should go down that road. It would set a precendent for other image hosts to do the same.

Unfortunately, being selective doesn't work to replace all links.

You can look at my data to get an idea.  

I don't mind receiving the images, but at the moment I can't receive 800k all at once. We had to be selective.  

I don't: I don't want to have to deal with possible copyright issues
Maybe theymos can share how much bandwidth the image proxy consumes in total.

And in terms of bandwidth, how do you handle that?

If it were up to me, that would be as easy as replacing "m.imgur.com" by "m.talkimg.com". My filesystem seems to perform just fine with 800k images in one directory.

I think a sensible way to respond to the Imgur issue would be for theymos to ask LoyceV and joker_josue to come up with a CSV file of TalkImg "fallback" links (i.e. old Imgur link -> new TalkImg link)

@LoyceV
I know you made a backup of all the images linked on the site, which made a total of 800k.

But, can you tell me how many images are from imgur?

A CSV file or SQLite database won't do, it's gotta be a dedicated database server which can scale if Bitcointalk and consequentially the image proxy server is hammered with incoming requests.

A CSV file or SQLite database won't do, it's gotta be a dedicated database server which can scale if Bitcointalk and consequentially the image proxy server is hammered with incoming requests.

I think a sensible way to respond to the Imgur issue would be for theymos to ask LoyceV and joker_josue to come up with a CSV file of TalkImg "fallback" links (i.e. old Imgur link -> new TalkImg link), and then modify the image proxy to make use of that file (maybe by importing it into a SQLite database, or loading it into a hash table at startup, or something).

That way, everything (mostly; banning future Imgur links was a good move) stays the same (image proxy still shielding IP addresses, images stay Tor-friendly, etc.) and the problem gets fixed transparently (and Imgur can then set itself on fire, for all we care). Also lays the technical foundation for the next time something like this happens.

Just my 2 sats.

Nope it's not working... it was working for some time but it's down again for last few days.

I start to think they created a bandwidth control system for each site. That is, when a certain site reaches a certain bandwidth, they block the site for a number of days, until the counter is reset. Perhaps they want to implement a system so that sites pay to use their bandwidth.

It's not

Given that imgur seems to be accesible again

Given that imgur seems to be accesible again (for the time being at least) but for the images that now or in future are no longer accessible I think using Option #2 would be a way to simply get it over and done with and let the past be the past.

Given that imgur seems to be accesible again (for the time being at least) but for the images that now or in future are no longer accessible I think using Option #2 would be a way to simply get it over and done with and let the past be the past.

It looks like imgur is no longer blocking the image proxy. I didn't change anything on the forum's end, so imgur must've loosened up their limits. I guess it's not necessary to convert img images into links as long as imgur keeps working. But to prevent this from happening again, you'll get an error if you try to embed imgur images in posts from now on.

Links should absolutely be way better than having broken images that can't be viewed anyways. Although one would have to visit the link to view image, it would be one way to ease the stress right now, until something is done to rectify the imgur issue.

I think the best solution for those broken images is the option no 2, because if the links of those images are available then things will be easy for the posters, and a kind of notification should be sent to all the users whose links are broken and the notification should also take them to the posts where the images are broken. That way the poster will be able to update the image to a new host like TalkImg.com to fix the mess created by imgur.

I think it will also be helpful for other users because even if the original poster fails to update his/her links, the users will still be able to access the images at imgur by clicking on the links. Because of the imgur problem the images are mostly down right now and we are unable to view the URL of the images because they are embedded as images. The availability of the links can be very useful in such times.

Another solution to such problem is to have both options of clickable links and embedded images. The links should be placed below the embedded images so users can easily access the links and view the images on imgur. I think with this solution the users will be happy because they can view the images and even if the images aren't working as embeddings then still they can click the link of the images. The link should be clickable otherwise many users aren't so good at copy/pasting of the links.

It looks like imgur has an api, but it doesn't look like the API can retrieve images currently. Perhaps they may be willing to add such functionality.