Site Topics - Part II

[mm84321]

Originally Posted by deadly7

Another issue I thought of while pondering the idea is that many of those images are now dead -- imageshack or the original uploader pulled them. I don't know how imageshack would deal with thousands of failed HTTP requests.

My original idea was to use a Perl script to connect to the database, run an SQL query on the posts field and then go every imageshack URL and wget them onto the SF server. As for saving them, I would [hope] vB lays its database out in a useful manner (eg: board, thread, post), which would make the naming/renaming schema easy.

It's rather unfortunate. Browsing through some old threads last night, it's a pity not being able to see the images that were originally posted.

 

[Baron]

Originally Posted by Master-Classter

Suits - Kiton (48) Brioni (50), Zegna (52), Edward Green 8.5/9, Charvet ties, & Dingman belt (36)... or so


I understand your frustration, but I think it would be ridiculous to make this a "rule." Nobody wants to police that, or worse, people don't want to hang out in the forums that are moderated by the people that do want to police things like that.

 

[LA Guy]

Originally Posted by Baron

I understand your frustration, but I think it would be ridiculous to make this a "rule." Nobody wants to police that, or worse, people don't want to hang out in the forums that are moderated by the people that do want to police things like that.

I agree completely. The only way to make this happen is to use a different system that makes this easy to do. We've never been about heavy-handed moderation. And... we will actually have such a B&S system soon. Posters will be able to enter a number of fieilds easily, be able to upload images directly from their harddrive, and which will make listing easier, and make the information immediately accessible to the buyer - no fees at all for listing, and small fees for things like bumps, bolded listings, etc.... Also, you'll be able to search by tags, sizes, prices. etc...

Essentially, the best features of (a stripped down) Ebay, without the onerous listing and final value fees. We hope that you guys will like all the work we've put into this.

 

[LA Guy]

Originally Posted by deadly7

Another issue I thought of while pondering the idea is that many of those images are now dead -- imageshack or the original uploader pulled them. I don't know how imageshack would deal with thousands of failed HTTP requests.

My original idea was to use a Perl script to connect to the database, run an SQL query on the posts field and then go every imageshack URL and wget them onto the SF server. As for saving them, I would [hope] vB lays its database out in a useful manner (eg: board, thread, post), which would make the naming/renaming schema easy.

Anyone who is interested in writing this script for us, please feel free to email us at [email protected]

Cheers,

Fok.

 

[j]

Originally Posted by deadly7

Your FF probably has cached versions of those images. I think imageshack was hitting major bandwidth issues and is cutting down on big sites. Depending on what posts look like in the database it could be trivial, or else it could be extremely complicated. If you PM me a post (as it shows up in the database) that has an imageshack image in it, I could take a look at it.
The field (which is called 'pagetext' in the 'post' table) pretty much looks just like what you see when you quote a post, with BB codes etc.

Originally Posted by Archivist

j, if I view an image at imageshack first, then I can then see it here. Your images for example, I went and looked at the big bad wolf, now it loads here, the others do not. So you'll probably see images you upload yourself. You will not see images you personally have not viewed at imageshack. I've tried registering for an imageshack account, and being logged in there, it does not help. I've tried fragging any cookies set by imageshack (they set quite a few) and coming in clean, both authenticated at imageshack and not, and that does not help. Seems inevitable, I've never understood the business model of hosting images for free. Shame about all the old stuff posted here that is hosted there.
I hadn't looked at those images before, they were just random recent ones from the 'how to post an image' thread.

Originally Posted by Master-Classter

J am I on your ignore list

No. Not ignoring you. But we can't make rules that we can't afford to police, see below.

Originally Posted by Redwoood

Writing the script is only half the problem. It should be relatively easy to dump all a URLswith imageshack.us and then retrieve those URLs, store/rename the files according to some schema and then alter the URLs in the database according to the same schema. Running such a script basically amounts to a full-text search of the entire database and then an update query on quite a lot of data sets, which could be expensive. Also, the problem is that there are tens of thousands of these images on SF, and if imageshack detects you are leeching this many images, they are possibly going to block your IP. So you have to distribute the task and slow it down sufficiently for them not to notice.

Originally Posted by dah328

I don't think that would be so bad if you just ran the script in batches of sufficiently small numbers that it wouldn't attract attention. It would also cut down on the server load if it were not done all at once. And it would be easy to resume the process from a different IP if Imageshack were to notice and block the first IP.
Exactly, I would do it descending from newest, with a limit of 30 or 60 at a time or something. Not sure if the wget will work, I will try it from shell. Edit: just tried doing a wget of an imageshack image from a recent post and it worked to pull it to the server.

Originally Posted by mm84321

It's rather unfortunate. Browsing through some old threads last night, it's a pity not being able to see the images that were originally posted.
This problem, though we cannot fix it for the old pics, will not be a problem in the future after the conversion. Posted photos will be preserved in the new system, so we will never be at the mercy of imageshack or photobucket etc. again.

Originally Posted by Baron

I understand your frustration, but I think it would be ridiculous to make this a "rule." Nobody wants to police that, or worse, people don't want to hang out in the forums that are moderated by the people that do want to police things like that.
Exactly. We have enough trouble policing the current rules which are about fairness - no time to police ones about convenience, even at the expense of bandwidth or wasted user time. The new system will address this and should pretty much eliminate it.

 

[kwilkinson]

Originally Posted by j

This problem, though we cannot fix it for the old pics, will not be a problem in the future after the conversion. Posted photos will be preserved in the new system, so we will never be at the mercy of imageshack or photobucket etc. again.
This is pretty awesome. The new system will basically have a database that we upload pics to? Or do we still tag image codes from photobucket into the post and the forum saves the image on its own?

 

[NorCal]

nvm, murkered . . .

 

[j]

The system will take the pics posted in a post, from whatever source, and save them in the database on the forum server. I'm not sure to what extent that specific feature will integrate with the gallery, but the gallery will also be a much easier to use part of the forum.

 

[mm84321]

Originally Posted by j

The system will take the pics posted in a post, from whatever source, and save them in the database on the forum server. I'm not sure to what extent that specific feature will integrate with the gallery, but the gallery will also be a much easier to use part of the forum.

Sounds great, j. When can we expect the transfer over to the new system?

 

[APK]

So basically, the SW&D WAYWT thread looks like this for me:

This message is hidden because Woodyear is on your ignore list.

Mods, feel free to jump in so I can resume my regularly-scheduled face-palming over the usual bickering that happen in that thread instead of this Woodyear ****.

 

[CDFS]

Originally Posted by j

Are these not showing up for other people?

They show up as Kyle shows below. Thank you for looking into it.

Originally Posted by kwilkinson

 

[NOBD]

I do hope this ImageShack problem gets solved, preferably not by the forum rehosting the pics, since I'd like to remain the boss of my own images, as far as possible (which might not be very far, but still).

Is the reason why they blocked this forum clear yet?

 

[LA Guy]

Originally Posted by NOBD

I do hope this ImageShack problem gets solved, preferably not by the forum rehosting the pics, since I'd like to remain the boss of my own images, as far as possible (which might not be very far, but still).

Is the reason why they blocked this forum clear yet?

Just to clarify, unless you are hosting your own images on your own server, you are not the boss of your images. Although, legally (and I've discussed this with our very capable IP lawyer) images, etc... are all copyrighted by the original user, the terms of use of pretty much every hosting service are that you agree to give them full rights to use of those images in any way they wish. Just fyi.

 

[NOBD]

Originally Posted by LA Guy

Just to clarify, unless you are hosting your own images on your own server, you are not the boss of your images. Although, legally (and I've discussed this with our very capable IP lawyer) images, etc... are all copyrighted by the original user, the terms of use of pretty much every hosting service are that you agree to give them full rights to use of those images in any way they wish. Just fyi.

Thanks. I didn't know that and it's bad news, afaic.

But I can take images down, right? I mean delete them from, in my case, ImageShack. Will I be able to do that when the forum hosts the images? I don't have any plans to remove images, but I would like to be able to do so, for whatever reason.

 

[kwilkinson]

Would the database also immediately save pictures that someone might send another someone via PM?