quoting of pictures

[nautilus]

I found no feedback forum. Therefore I post it at this place.

There is one disturbing issue - at least for me - with the picture threads.
Often people quote one ore many pictures just for giving a short answer or congratulation for beautiful pictures.
This doubles the amount of pictures in the threads and is responsible for a real disturbing long loading of the site.
I don't know how others see this but I would like to see a picture only once on a page. I'm already avoiding clicking on the 'have fun' threads.

It should be possible that pictures in quotes are not displayed as pictures. Maybe as a hyperlink or just a text.

 

[jlm]

amen, brother. I'm with you.

if one simply "new reply's", instead of "quote's", problem solved

 

[MikeScecina]

Thank you for raising the issue, nautilus. I agree completely.

 

[Jack]

amen, brother. I'm with you.

if one simply "new reply's", instead of "quote's", problem solved

Absolutely. And if one quotes, they can edit out the image by deleting the {img} strings.

However, sometimes a person is responding to an image posted several threads before, and they want folks to understand which image they are referring to, and quoting the image is easier than typing "image 3" or whatever. Maybe we can begin using numbers as convention?

 

[Ranger 9]

Most browsers give you the option of turning off the display of images when the page loads. You could do that, and then you wouldn't have to depend on other users changing their behavior.

 

[Dave_Anderson]

If you've already seen the image, it should be in your cache already and should not affect page load times.

That said, I agree that it would make the threads easier to read if people would avoid quoting pics needlessly.

 

[nautilus]

Absolutely. And if one quotes, they can edit out the image by deleting the {img} strings.

However, sometimes a person is responding to an image posted several threads before, and they want folks to understand which image they are referring to, and quoting the image is easier than typing "image 3" or whatever. Maybe we can begin using numbers as convention?

Numbering of pictures by the person who loads them up would help referring to certain pictures. That's certainly a good idea.

I'm not sure if the behaviour could be changed by a policy. It's more like an automatism to quote if you answer to someone. People with fast broadband connections probably aren't aware of other's problems with download times.
What I often see as well is that an attractive picture is quoted by many people so that it fills nearly one whole page by itself.

I'm not sure if I was understood correctly. I didn't say to disable quoting at all. The website should be as intelligent to identify the picture within the quote and just display it's file name as a text string or link to the picture.
That could help in other cases to identify to what pictures the answer refers to. User behaviour could be unchanged.

@Dave
I don't know why, but in the last case -many quotes of one single picture - the picture is downloaded many times and the site needs a lot of time to load.
Other situation: I clear my cache on a daily basis. Everyone should do this.
Some sites of threats are very long. To see one new picture at the end of this web page makes it necessary to load everything again. One webpage could be shorter.

@ranger 9
Very funny to open a website, e.g. a picture thread, after disabling the picture display in the browser. Very helpful posting from you. thanks.

 

[Ranger 9]

@ranger 9
Very funny to open a website, e.g. a picture thread, after disabling the picture display in the browser. Very helpful posting from you. thanks.

Your sarcasm key seems to be stuck... if someone is complaining of slow load times from a picture-heavy page, then disabling auto-loading (NOT display) is one logical remedy. The pictures still can be displayed (by clicking) after the page has loaded, allowing the user to view them selectively and avoid viewing those which are simply "quotes."

As Dave A. pointed out, there shouldn't be a speed penalty once the images are cached... but if your cache is small and/or full, you need another alternative.

 

[Dave_Anderson]

Nautilus, what browser are you running? Browser cache is designed to avoid the problem you describe and I'd be happy to help you tweak it to avoid having problems like you describe. do you have a really slow computer?

Also, the images that you see quoted, do you see the text "Attached Thumbnails" near the quoted pictures? Could be something wonky with the way the forum software handles attachments. If you could post a link to the thread that's giving you problems it would help us to help you.

 

[Guy Mancuso]

Okay follow these screen grabs . I quoted a post from a member with 2 images . Than I selected just the image attachments and deleted them . Make sure you don't delete the word

than make your replay and the images will not show up on the reply

Watch the screen grabs in order. But it is up to the member to do this and we have no control over it. Also when quoting someone it is sometimes related to the image so images need to be shown

 

[nautilus]

Dave, yes I can see the text 'attached thumbnails' in the frame around the small pictures - not above the large pictures that are no thumbnails.
I use the newest fastest Browser of the world - Opera!
Computer is not a lame machine either.
It's the internet connection in combination with a lot of pictures, independend of any specific thread, I can go to any picture thread. If there are many pictures it takes a while until they are loaded. I've to wait until they are loaded because the site rolls up and down if I scroll before loading is completed. That's a bit annoying.

I opened this thread because I thought that there are many people surfing with lower or medium bandwith and have the same problem.

There are at least 50% I think but I see that there are maybe valid reasons not to implement an automatism that disables picture quoting.

I didn't want to initiate a heated discussion and think that the already made suggestion by Jack and Guy to leave the decision to quote or not with the people is a fine solution.

 

[Dave_Anderson]

I certainly did not want to turn this into a heated discussion... just trying to help.

The page jumping around is a common problem with picture-heavy threads. You can go to the "User CP" link near the top of the page, then under "Settings and Options" click "Edit Options". Here you can set "Number of posts per page" to suit your preferences. I prefer to max it out and just wait for it to load fully, setting a low number here would limit the jumping around while loading because there would be fewer pictures per page, on average.

 

[Guy Mancuso]

Honestly these debates are good , we can never improve the forum if we don't discuss these kinds of things. BTW i judge the speed of this forum by my Iphone. I figure if 3g does a okay job than maybe everything is okay but always room for improvement obviously. Also we and many forums are stuck with the same software packages

 

[Corlan F.]

Quoting an image is just part of the experience in a photography forum -this one in particular.

Referring to photos with numbers as imposed as a rule (enforced by Village Authority er, an army of moderators) in some forums is utterly impersonal and in many ways defeats the very purpose of sharing in a convivial athmosphere.

Moreover, the idea that it'd help the browsing process is a mirage: not only one has to deal with posts like "love your #126" "i'd rather 75 your 37" (true one) or "[a very long statement on something that you're not sure is of any interest to you in the first place]", but if one wants to follow a discussion he has to actually load and reload tons of pages all the time -often several times for a single thread page- just to know what the comment or discussion is about. Then the next one. Etc.

Very disrupting, and awkward -not to mention easy to lose track of what one's what looking after in the first place.

Of course it's better to quote "responsibly" (i readily admit having incidentally perharps needlessly quoted a long string of photos) but otherwise photo quoting is merely a matter of keeping the exchange as seamless as possible therefore lively, informal and overall friendly.

"I'm not a number, I'm a photo" :angel:

My 2c

 

[Stuart Richardson]

I must agree, I really don't like the whole quoting of pictures thing, especially if it is just "great shots!" and they quote 8 images. Another issue is that it uses more bandwidth for the host too. Instead of just hitting the quote button, why not just write, "Hey, X, I really enjoy your photo of the cat being rescued by fireman/landscape photo of a lone tree in a field/of that model with her hand under her chin etc etc." If you just describe it in words, the comment will probably be more meaningful and it will take up less bandwidth...not everyone is lucky enough to have the free, unlimited bandwidth that they have in the US. My internet connection is good, but it is only DSL, and we only get a certain amount of GB's of downloads per month here. It is also a real issue for mobile users who want to access the forum from the iPhone or similar devices.

 

[Vivek]

Out of respect for the fellow photog, I never "quote" (ie, copy) a picture.

Deleting the image while "quoting" is an easy thing to do.

 

[Oxide Blu]

...not everyone is lucky enough to have the free, unlimited bandwidth that they have in the US. My internet connection is good, but it is only DSL, and we only get a certain amount of GB's of downloads per month here. It is also a real issue for mobile users who want to access the forum from the iPhone or similar devices.

Wow, that is a very good point. As mobile phone web surfing gains in popularity it will start to impact how websites are designed.

Now, in Japan, websites are designed specifically for mobile phone web surfing -- kind of a lite version of the regular website. No idea of the technology used to create the 'lite' web sites.

 

[Corlan F.]

On the other hand, the concept of sharing quality pictures threads via mobile phone displays, well...

 

[TRSmith]

I agree that endless re-posts of the same images make the thread bulky and in some cases, dilutes the impact of posted photos. It is even possible to miss a very nice single-image post when it become sandwiched between repeats of another post containing multiple images.

For instance, when I give my mouse's scroll wheel a spin, the images scroll down until I see something new. When the same post is repeated, it's easy to fly right by something that might be interesting.

So I vote for deleting the [IMAGE][/IMAGE] from quoted posts whenever practical.

Tim

 

[Dale Allyn]

So I vote for deleting the [IMAGE][/IMAGE] from quoted posts whenever practical.

That's my vote (and practice) as well. Certainly, there may be exceptions for clarity, etc. but for many (most?) replies a text response is sufficient and preferable to navigate IMO.