First, I want to commend all hands for the significant improvement in speed some many months ago. There was a time when logging on, posting, or clicking on threads often took forever, but now it is wonderful how fast everything is.
As the policy of not posting pictures directly was based on the fact that it would slow down things, is this still really the case? Many other forums let readers do that. It is really a pain and time consuming to go to a photo host, upload a picture, copy the link, go back to SDMB, start a thread and go through the process of putting in the link.
Just a suggestion in the hopes that it might be made easier.
With respect to KlondikeGeoff, I would like to request that we maintain the status quo. I like the text-only aesthetic of the SDMB - it’s less “busy” than most other boards. More important, it guarantees a high level of SFW-ness. I never need to worry that I’ll run into an obectionable pic on the Board proper. None of regulars would post such a thing, but one of the idiots that stumbles across this place at regular intervals might.
There is a compromise—post pictures as attachments rather than in post. Or Thumbnails. I have seen other vBulletin boards that do both. Personally, I wouldn’t want to see the pictures but know that other people might.
There is an incident I remember back before the rule was instituted where someone posted a scat picture, i.e. (spoilered because even the text description is kinda nasty)
a girl with shit smeared on her face and eating shit
into the thread. You can’t unsee that. (I’ve tried!)
Another vote for keeping things the way they are. When I’m reading The Dope at work, I don’t have an option to block images, and some people’s idea of “SFW pictures” don’t fall within my company’s guidelines.
We could have an images-allowed forum, so people who prefer the text-only aesthetic, can avoid that forum.
Or, we could allow images in all forums but have a tag like “[images]” in the title, so people who prefer the text-only aesthetic can avoid them (similar to polls having the "Poll: " tag in their title)
I remember before polls were introduced, people were predicting the end of the world, since they would totally change the SDMB/Overwork the mods/Overstress the server/whatever. They have now been implemented and life on the SDMB goes on as usual.
If images were allowed, with the above recommendation of having a tag in the title, people who hate pictures can simply avoid them, and life would go on as usual.
I dont see how polls even equate here. If I had a problem with polls, I can avoid all the clearly marked poll threads.
Random images however could pop up anywhere at any time.
This would be a terrible idea, and would at a stroke wipe out what I see as one of this places core benefits. Clear, uncluttered pages.
If people have an interest in seeing the kitty picture, they will click the link to it. Everybody else, well, they just dont want to see it. Sad but true.
And you can avoid all the clearly marked images threads.
Movie spoilers can also pop up anywhere and at any time. However, it is SDMB etiquette to add [OPEN SPOILERS] to all threads with open spoilers in them, and people don’t just post open spoilers in threads that don’t explicitly allow them.
Similarly, we can make it SDMB etiquette to add [IMAGES] to all threads with images in them and people won’t post inline images in posts without that tag.
If people currently violate the spoilers etiquette and post an open spoiler in a thread that has not allowed it, do the mods issue a warning? If yes, the same can be done for images.
A better solution would be if vBulletin can control whether specific threads can have inline images or not. That way, we don’t have to rely on etiquette. If vBulletin doesn’t have that fine of a control, maybe it can control whether specific forums can have inline images or not. [Though TPTB hate to start new forums]
Look at the first post for the reason that is not good:
Not everyone has/wants to have access to a website where they can store photos. Yes, the SDMB shouldn’t become a file host, but I don’t think that would happen. It hasn’t happened on other message boards that allow it.
I’ve been on plenty of forums, and some are each way.
Personally, with the nature of SDMB, there’s no significant advantage to allowing pictures to be posted.
It’s simple to install something like the imageshack toolbar, or using multi-tab browsing, to make uploading pictures faster and easier. As for allowing pictures to be uploaded directly to the forum itself – I’ve always thought that was a bad idea, except in the most extreme of circumstances (small, small community hosting).
