broken image links We need to do something about old topics with broken image links

[TPB 563]

Hello guys, lately I've started using the forum and needless to say, it is awesome and I have learned SO much from the community.-

 

Having said that, I came across a MASSIVE amount of topics that had pretty much all the images not working... so I'm writing this to see if there is a way we can get together and work out a solution, since having tutorials with no images is kinda useless..

 

So let's hear your ideas about how to best address this issue?

 

I propose sending a message to users letting them know they have a determined amount of time to fix their posts or they will be deleted, or something along these lines....

 

Anyway, I felt this needed to be addressed, and as a quick search for "broken image links" returned no results, I took the liberty to start this thread.

 

Thoughts?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Images are often casualties of upgrades of the site program.  In addition, some image sites run cleanup campaigns for images that haven't been accessed recently.  Quite often, images in old threads are not only gone, but the poster is gone as well.  I think the present archiving system does the best it can on this, but don't expect to read historical threads.  The amount of server space required gets out of hand.

[TPB 563]

Images are often casualties of upgrades of the site program.  In addition, some image sites run cleanup campaigns for images that haven't been accessed recently.  Quite often, images in old threads are not only gone, but the poster is gone as well.  I think the present archiving system does the best it can on this, but don't expect to read historical threads.  The amount of server space required gets out of hand.

 

 

I see, fair enough... but when a thread is being referenced across a wide range of other topics across the site, then there is a little problem... anyway.. I guess there is nothing we can do then from what I gathered.

[Duke87 1,070]

If something is getting pointed to as a reference then there is good reason to keep it all in working order.

 

But it's unavoidable that as image links age they will often expire for one reason or another. Waay back in 2003-04, you were able to upload images to the Simtropolis server itself - these were all purged years ago, though, and very few posts containing them remain intact as most threads that old are gone entirely.

 

More recently (up until a couple years ago) a lot of people used ImageShack to host their images. Ever since ImageShack went pay-only, all links to images uploaded without a subscription have been broken.

 

Ultimately it's too much to be worth doing something about all of it.

[Hamish 1,370]

Depending on the tutorials you're looking for the omnibus might be of assistance.

Take a browse through and see if there is anything that fulfills your needs, all (or at least most) of the old tutorials, dating back to around the beginning of the site, should still have all of their images intact as they were uploaded to simtropolis rather than just image hosting websites.

I know that this isn't the best answer, but it's far too hard, or almost impossible, to find or create new images for old tutorials in the forums. Hope you find what you need there.