ydooby

Is this a new "feature"? I just made a post about the new 86 concept and embedded an external image with the IMG tag as usual:
https://www.clublexus.com/forums/7683373-post14.html

And to my surprise the forum automatically includes that image in my post as an attachment. It's totally redundant and unnecessary IMHO. Would the site admins please tell me the reasoning behind this new "feature"? Thanks!

GiantsFan

iTrader: (9)

yeah, it makes it seem like people are double posting all their pics lol.

I was about to make a thread on it but seems like this is the problem.

ydooby

After pondering for a minute I came up with a fairly reasonable motive behind this new "feature"--to avoid external images becoming broken due to external site downtime, traffic limitations, image removal, hot-linking restrictions, etc.

If so I applaud the effort but since the end result looks really ugly in normal conditions I think it can be made a whole lot better by adopting one of my two following proposed implementations instead:

1. Alter the data model of these "attachments" with a special column containing the originating URL so that posts embedding these URLs will automatically be embedding images hosted on CL instead when they're rendered. These attachments will be shared site-wide, meaning that any posts embedding the same URLs will be sharing the same local image resource.

2. Simply attach all the images that a post embeds in the same order that they appear in the post (which is already done), and embed the local versions in the same order when actually rendering the post (i.e. when seeing an IMG tag, render the attached image from its respective position in the attachments), without showing these images again as attachments in a separate attachment region below. If a post includes "real" attachments, attach them after these embedded images.

Prop #1 requires data model change but will waste a lot less resource in the end because images will be shared across posts (most commonly posts quoting posts with embedded images). Prop #2 requires no data model change so it should be easier to implement, but will waste some resources in duplicated images as a result. What's important is to make the transition absolutely transparent to the end users, which the current implementation fails to do.

Thoughts? (Can I earn the most constructive post of the year award? )

ydooby

Bump.

I just noticed that the current implementation actually replaces the external URL enclosed by the IMG tag with a URL pointing to the local CL attachment. This is a very bad practice, as it removes the trace of an image's origin. And image origins are important because they give credit to the sites hosting the images, and even more so when a poster does not explicitly give credit/link to the site providing the images in a post, and yet the site actually has way more good and relevant images than what the poster chooses to embed in the post, which happens too often from what I've seen.

If any of my above proposals is to be implemented, it must not alter the post's original content, and only replaces the external URL with a local image URL at rendering time.

Thanks again in advance for the admins' considerations.

DaveGS4

iTrader: (2)

Your 'motive' I think is probably more accurately termed a theory, you can climb down off that grassy knoll now . Please edit your posts to remove your 'campaign'...

Don't know why this is happening, but suspect it is in error. Had a PM about it earlier today but thought it was just a post done by accident with both attachment and links, not happening to everyone. I've inquired about it.

ydooby

Thanks for the response Dave. I've noticed that things were reverted back to how they were and I've gone and removed my "campaign" in the other post.

I'm pretty sure it was done intentionally though, as the feature actually altered the content of my post by replacing my embedded external image URL with a URL pointing directly to the attached image, which had to be purposedly and programmatically fetched to the CL server in the first place.

Despite your characterizing it as an "error", I actually think it's a good feature since it does protect the post against broken images, but just needs some more thoughts for its implementation to make it look good. Please keep my suggestions in considerations as a possible future enhancement. Thanks!

DaveGS4

iTrader: (2)

I did get some clarification from IB and they were working on rolling back the update (which should have been done on Friday but doesn't look like it was). The logic they are implementing is intended to make sure members have ongoing access to DIYs, etc posted after image links are broken, but didn't work quite as expected and they're tweaking it a bit more before rolling out.