The14thDr
Sr Member
This is something I have been noticing more and more frequently, particularly when scrolling through old threads (I say old, but sometimes even posts less than a year old have been affected): images disappearing, broken attachment links, etc. etc. For a forum based around discussing movie and TV props, dissecting how they were made and building our own replicas; this is a pretty big issue. Threads that were once filled with valuable research have been stripped of all their worth.
Okay, so I understand that some members may have willingly pulled links or removed their images for one reason or another but only accounts for a portion of the missing images I've come across. Another reason stems from image-hosting sites themselves are continually changing the way their URLs and embed code works which means images from before the changes no longer work. They also increase their prices or else begin to charge users to host images (if they didn't already) and when people stop paying these prices, their images stop working. Even when not displaying the broken image symbol, a lot of posts instead have hyperlinks such as "Attachment XYZ" that just take you to another page on the forum, only to be told "invalid attachment specified".
All of this begs the question: why not just post photos directly onto the forum itself? A lot of other forums do it all the time and it means that images are not lost even after 5, 10 or 20 years. Surely there's got to be a solution to this? I remember reading about something being put in place to solve the issue, but that was late last year and since then things seem to be getting worse and worse.
Okay, so I understand that some members may have willingly pulled links or removed their images for one reason or another but only accounts for a portion of the missing images I've come across. Another reason stems from image-hosting sites themselves are continually changing the way their URLs and embed code works which means images from before the changes no longer work. They also increase their prices or else begin to charge users to host images (if they didn't already) and when people stop paying these prices, their images stop working. Even when not displaying the broken image symbol, a lot of posts instead have hyperlinks such as "Attachment XYZ" that just take you to another page on the forum, only to be told "invalid attachment specified".
All of this begs the question: why not just post photos directly onto the forum itself? A lot of other forums do it all the time and it means that images are not lost even after 5, 10 or 20 years. Surely there's got to be a solution to this? I remember reading about something being put in place to solve the issue, but that was late last year and since then things seem to be getting worse and worse.
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