Back when images were allowed, someone posted a giant pic of feces eating. You can’t unsee that. I’ve tried.
Thanks for reminding me. :mad:
Words aren’t as viscerally disgusting as images.
I’m not saying you can ever make things bulletproof, but in my experience it’s fairly easy to put enough of a hurdle in front of goatse-bombers that they just don’t bother. We’ve had images enabled in several forums for a couple years now and have had no real problems. (Even with a “known element of malcontents” out there, lurking in the shadows.) And if we did, it would be simple enough to tweak the settings so that you needed e.g. 50 posts and a week of membership before you could post an image: between that and IP bans, it would be far more hassle than it’s worth to sign up an account just to post goatse for the ten minutes it takes for someone to report it and a mod to delete it.
There are perfectly good reasons to leave images off, including the most straightforward: the owners of the site don’t want them on. But if that ever changed, it might be useful to know that they can in fact be implemented non-disruptively, despite the bad experiences of ten years ago.
We occasionally get porn spammers who include images to tease the customer into clicking. Since the spam posts are usually blocked by our software, and images are disabled in all forums but one, most posters will never even see the failed spams. However, the Moderation forum DOES have images enabled, and if we move a spam post without disabling the image, any unwary mod could be treated to the image of a barely legal teen receiving double penetration. Now, some people might want to see that…but certainly not on a work computer.
If we enabled images in all forums, I’m sure the spammers would redouble their efforts to slip their posts past our software.
There are lots of places on the internet which offer plenty of pics. It happens that the SDMB is not really one of them. We CAN’T be all things to all people, all the time.
Eating what?
Goats eating baskets, I imagine.
Not with that attitude, you can’t!
-D/a
I like avatars. They let you know a little about a person who might not ever offer that information outright. And of course members have the option to not view them.
Not concerned about images.
It might not be a strain on the SDMB end, but a few of us Dopers might be reading the SDMB via Internet connections that are primitive enough so that a thread all full of images would take a nontrivial amount of time to load.
Thudlow, what part of, “there’s an option to turn images off” did you not understand?
It’s never going to happen, sadly. Too many luddites around here, claiming it will “ruin the atmosphere”.
I like the really clean look of the boards, since I mostly browse at work and my boss can see my PC from her desk. I do think it’s weird that images aren’t allowed here, since every forum I’ve belonged to for the last 10 years has allowed them, hotlinked to them or allowed avatars.
Unless everyone who includes images in their posts keeps in mind that not everyone’s going to be seeing them, having images turned off is going to mean you’re missing part of the conversation.
and…? If they need images to get their message across, you’re probably not missing much anyway. I turn all images off on boards I am a member of and the option to do so is there (not all boards have the option due to different software), and I ain’t missing nothing [sic].
I don’t understand the problem. Perhaps it’s because I like the image-free appearance of the SDMB, and perhaps it’s because it’s very easy to link to a nice picture, which anyone can get to in just one click.
As everyone else has said, there’s a million websites that have pictures. Why do we have to be like them?
But I will also add, I have my work settings to sign me out of everything after I close IE, and to forget my settings. Which means that every time i go to the Dope or Giraffe boards I sign back in…so every time I go to Giraffe Boards, all of the pictures are still up, before I sign back in. So it’s still easier for me to go to the Dope, which is quiet and serious and somber from the beginning.
I thought post #18 was even funnier.
I don’t care much about porn being posted (I don’t think many users here would do such a thing, and it would be cleaned and the poster dealt with quickly).
The link you posted is the reason why I don’t want pictures.
Also, since the board has a pretty firm stance about copyright, it would be a permanent problem. Even though as I said I’m not much worried about innapropriate pictures, I’m pretty sure posters would post interesting/illustrative pictures that aren’t copyright-free.
Finally, I doubt moderators would be enthralled by the concept of doubling their workload by having to check pictures too.
ETA : after reading Lynn Bodoni and Tubadiva posts, I retract my statements about dopers being presumably well-behaved re pictures.
nevermind
The difference between the SDMB and something like that board is like the difference between a regular novel/book and a graphic novel/comic book. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the latter, but they’re two different media, and when I want to read a regular book, I don’t want a comic book.
To expand:
Am I a Luddite if I read books that have no illustrations?
Am I a Luddite if I prefer music over music videos?
Am I a Luddite if I sometimes prefer the radio over the television?
I was attempting not to be graphic.