I don’t see the big deal. Other sites, even ones with volunteer staff, manage fine.
And when people are saying “we used to have images” it must have been for about 2 days because the only thing I can find announcing their disabling is from back in 2000 with Duck Duck Goose saying they were disabled “a while ago”.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=27472&highlight=images
I don’t know how much goatse spam was a problem as all she mentions is: