Topic: Poll on solving the imgur issue - page 6. (Read 2150 times)

I came here to write this but since Loycev already wrote, I support his idea. This is the best option out there because @LoyceV already managed to get all the images, @joker_josue has already created TalkImg and is more than happy to host images and make his service popular, has proven past experience, is one of the oldest member, isn't going to abandon his service and overall, I personally believe in him.

@theymos this is the best option!

In as much as all the options appear to me as a temporary measure, I went for option 2. Although I am skeptical in clicking any link that will take me out of the forum, especially if the profile behind the link isn't a reputable member of the forum.
For future purposes, the geeks in the forum, is there no way to link the forum images in imgur server to talkImg by Joker_josue. I don't know if this sounds silly or unachievable, but I know imgur is an open source project. Anything is possible.

I understand what you mean.

But whatever you're saying, you're in exactly the same situation. How is this forum, being in the hands of @theymos.


Regarding the current service, I have already explained in more detail what is involved and my commitment to the project. Of course, not everyone has to believe me. But, I believe that I am very committed to the project. If it wasn't, that wouldn't have scaled the project 6 months earlier than anticipated, and at a 3x cost increase, like I did.

And if it gets to the point where I can't take it anymore, I'm totally available to transfer the project to someone else. But believe me, I will always make the effort to keep it going. And if the costs become unbearable, I will only let the project fall if the community gives zero support.




Thanks for the donation. It can take up to a year to confirm, no problem. 

I voted for option 2, I believe that among the options, this would be the best
The images of old topics would still be accessible, especially tutorials and more important things, easily accessible to any user. And any thread would be included in this fix, since if the user needs to do some action, there are many threads that are good but wouldn't be updated by the users in case they need to do something.


It's a good idea too, combined with Talkimg from user joker_josue.
I just don't know what would be the impact on the server of having to host these 801,550 images like that quickly and the costs in the long run  

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Maybe option 2 would be the simplest and most effective in order not to generate problems for anyone in the future.

Kind of strange someone turning down help after the hard yards have been done getting the replacement service up and running.

My donation hasn't been confirmed but I hope it helps cover your expenses if only in a small way @joker_jouse

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Any one know where @theymos got to?

Unfortunately not, I trust you and thank you for your great effort, but at some point hosting these images will be expensive and therefore you will not be able to pay them out of your own pocket, in addition to that you must be held accountable in case of misuse (such as IP addresses), which is something we cannot do for you.

We need an unofficial party, but it is from the forum and the forum pays for it to be able to do that.

See tmp.loyce.club/imagebackup/sorted_by_date.txt. I don't see how this helps though: images could be posted/quoted years after they were uploaded.

Maybe they can still get the "click to expand" feature.

A checksum makes this quick: create a checksum for each file, and add it to a long list (or database). For each new upload, see if the checksum already exists. If it does, hard link the new file to the old file instead of creating a new one.
Out of curiosity, I'm now checking how many duplicates there are in the 800k imgur images I have. Results are surprising: there's one image uploaded 32752 times, which turns out to be a removed image: "The image you are requesting does not exist or is no longer available". In total, 10124 images are uploaded once or more, and in total 55932 times. Hard linking those files could save a few GB of data.

Nice to see my suggestion of checksums and duplicate files is starting to gain traction. 

In any event, it looks like option #2 is remaining out in front.  Its not the best option and other users suggestions are probably going to fall on deaf ears until IMGUR pulls the plug then this will start again.  As a couple of users have pointed out, none of this will make a difference to users who are not logged into the Forum and will just see a whole lot of broken links.

Doing this is not exactly easy. It would take a system that compares the image posted with the image on the server. This would require constant scraping to see if the image link is the one in today's post or not.

When I created my image service, I thought of doing something so that if an image was not posted on the forum, it would be deleted. But, I quickly realized that this was not going to work. Because there was no minimally viable way to monitor this. The image could be posted once and never viewed again; it could be posted days after it was uploaded... in short, many possibilities. Best solution: uploaded image, cannot be deleted.

None of the options deal with deleted images very well, might depend on how big of an issue that actually is. For these, option #2 would create broken links all over the forum, which isn't good for SEO.

Right now, technically the image proxy at least displays a legit image showing the words "invalid image", so it's not really a broken link when seen from a spider/search bot. Again, I don't really know how many of the images have been deleted vs. how many are still hosted under imgur accounts, so I'm not sure how much of an impact it would be.

What about users who aren't logged in?

I had mentioned (privately) the thought of the forum itself hosting/archiving sets of images from particular domains through the image proxy, potentially for future situations like this. Hosting sets of images on the forum itself is probably the best case scenario for historical preservation purposes, but based on the options presented in the OP, I don't think this is really something theymos is willing to entertain, probably for good reasons.

I'm not excited about the idea of redirecting everything to any particular image host though, as it feels like that could build up to be a larger problem when that image host has even temporary issues or needs to shut things down entirely for whatever reason.

Good point on the quoted images.

I think that's fabulous. I believe we don't need to load repeated images.
This would help a lot in managing files on the server.

One thing you can't do is order from oldest to newest, can you? This could be very useful.

Imho this is a non-problem. An image-website owner would notice in less than a month he can optimize his space by checking the images (maybe their checksums at first) and not store the duplicates while providing same or different (by his choice) links to them. And before the question arises, where deletion is possible, the actual file will be removed only when reference count goes to 0.

I think this option is the most viable at the moment, with a quick implementation.
It gives time for users to migrate their images, while they continue to "work" (via click) in the forum.



I think this should be implemented to avoid future situations. Because eventually one or another image may become available when they are posted, and days later they stop working.



@LoyceV also launched an interesting idea, how do you think it's viable?


EDIT:

Does the TalkImg service fit this idea!?

I chose the number 2 because it's pretty annoying that some images with a huge error cannot that project the image. The links are still alive because they are uploaded to Imgur. As long as the links are active, the members can see those once they open or use the TalkImg with joker_josue proposes.

Poll - vote 2.
I see number 2 being the choice of many people because maybe this is one of the best solutions where imgur becomes a link instead of making it easier for us.

This is the best option and I voted for it, and so far it's winning the vote, it will fix all old threads with broken images because option number 1 will leave the majority of the threads with broken images,   I'm sure it can easily be done because you have it as one of the options and we can move forward from using other tools.

I've ended up voting "do nothing" as the third and fourth suggestions are impractical as they don't address the long term problem of any third party service either pulling the plug, or going dark without warning.

Why stick a band-aid on a problem when an amputation is required and a brand new prosthetic inserted in its place?

Option two "might" work as long as the plug isn't pulled by said third party provider. How can you be sure in the medium to long term?

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Joker's talkimg.com is the solution and ninja's code is the painfree method of porting all legacy images.

I will prefer you leave it the way it is now, because we all cannot be going back to begin to trace all our old post and begin to edit them, but we can prevent the future occurrence of this kind by avoiding the use of such image hosting site, since there's an alternative to the use of another site in posting images, those that cares about any particular post they made in the past should go and edit them out and place the new one, henceforth we can be using the new sites for hosting images than the one we've been used with and stop using it.

Although this poll does not make any sense. There will be only a small percentage of users suffering from the Imgur issue. I think the second option looks more viable then all the other options. No one needs to do anything with this second option