Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

Breaking News.

I propose that the good members of this forum knock their heads together and initiates an image salvage operation to save the very best Photobucket-hosted pictures from inactive members. The works of old masters are in danger of being lost forever, courtesy of Photobucket! See more here for Chaos Dwarf Online's unfolding initiative on the issue:

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We risk an almost complete breakdown of continuity in images

With the recent Photobucket troublewe'll have to ask ourselves what legends of old should be targeted for photo backup? This is a disaster to continuity and it seems we have scarce time to act before the old photos go completely unavailable. As of now, it is possible to right-click pictures under lockdown, choose view image in new tab and copy it from there.

Remember that Imageshack has already robbed us of archive material, and the Photobucket strike is much larger in scope. We risk losing almost everything old which new members have stumbled upon through the years, taking inspiration from old masters.

I know I'll not have much time to contribute with in the coming weeks. I must fix some Golden Hat entries today and maybe tomorrow, but I could help some after that, within limitations. If many of us could help some, it would add up. This is not drudgery which anyone wish to do during the summer, but it is now or never, unless Photobucket come to their senses and change direction completely.

Volunteers?

Can we please gather links to the logs and work of inactive members which we'd particularly like to see saved from the looming disaster? Then we could chew through the threads one at a time and avoid redundant double-work by advancing which thread/member we each pick. An all-out manual trawl of the whole log section could maybe be possible, but it would be true slave labour. Realistically, we should target worthy pictures in particular.

If we can establish a link list, then some volunteers could possibly wade through it to save backup copies on their own computer, to be transferred to some free and currently stable photohosting site such as Imgur. From there, we could re-upload some stuff in big chunks with lots of photos.

Please remember that artwork should be saved along with miniature photos.

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Let's take tjub as an example. His stuff is particularly easy to find and save for backup, since he has both a compilation of picture links in his market thread and moreover an index in his monster of an army log. On the other hand, there is a lot of stuff to wade through! But it can be done.

We might wish to target long-since inactive members first and foremost, but this wrecking ball strikes at everyone's Photobucket album, active or inactive.

Also, I suppose it could be good if we tried to name the image file after its creator (e.g. "Snotling 01" or "Snotling Ballista 02" ), just so it's tagged straight away.

CDO is well into manually salvaging massive amounts of surviving pictures from olden days. Lots more to do, of course. An organized volunteer effort will carry you far.

This is doable if a few members voluntarily sacrifice some days or a week of sparetime. Such a brief but intensive salvage sweep of old worthy pictures can save years and years of accumulated forum content!

Please think of the very best logs you have, and consider saving their images if their owners are inactive at the moment.

Worst of all? This Photobucket mess strikes in the middle of summer! Wanted to spend these hours outside. But long-term it will be worth it.

Newsflash

Salvation?

How to Automatically Download Linked Photobucket Images, by Sven Arild Helleland (The Red Terror)

Stopgap fix to Photobucket images under lockdown (my emboldening), from Warseer's Captain Brown:

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Gentlemen,

As some long term PLOGers and cornerstones of some of the Painting Log areas, the member Ash has come up with a fix.

"With the Photobucket pictures not showing; if you go into edit post and insert ~original between .jpg and [/img] as in .jpg~original[/img] then the original picture will show again..." and it works!

I have asked him to share that in the stickies at the top of each painting forum, but thought I would pass that on to you who had large PLOGs blocked in the meantime.

Cheers,

Phil

Those who have not yet replaced their own Photobucket pictures with identical pictures hosted elsewhere, may want to scour their army blogs and other hobby threads. However,  adding ~original to the address lines will not make the linked images compatible with more advanced solutions!

Note however that we cannot consider this a permanent solution, only a stopgap option. It is possible that Photobucket may come to block this fixture, transform itself beyond recognition or go down altogether as a site.

Update: Photobucket has reverted their pay policy and restored most of their old 3rd party content for free. This means most of the dead threads on hobby sites such as this one can be enjoyed once again, without moderators or users doing anything.


While this is a fortunate boon to hobby forums, it should be remembered that many imagehosting sites have folded or changed beyond recognition (incl. Imageshack), while the once-default choice of Photobucket itself has proved unstable. While the large website of Imgur remains dependable for the moment being, things can change fast, as we saw with Photobucket. Digital storage is insecure and fragile, yet brilliant in its outreach.

As such, do consider these following two steps to backup hobby pictures and artworks for public view:

1. Upload your own hobby pictures into one or more Google Drive folders (or similar), set access to share, and insert a link to this folder in your hobby log(s) and showcase thread(s). That way, even if whatever imagehosting site(s) you are using folds in the future, or play 3rd party hosting rodeo, others may still be able to access your work, admire it and be inspired through this backup folder, even if you yourself have gone inactive.


2. Search out those old treasure threads which you know of, where masterclass work of conversions, sculpting, scenery making, miniature painting or artwork were created by very talented people. Save a selection of these images yourself, upload to both one or more imagehosting sites like Imgur, and to a Google Drive folder. Then you can either pool your and others' backup folders of the best of the best in some common thread, or perhaps commit thread necromancy (if this is not frowned upon on a particular forum) where you share links to these backup albums and folders in the thread in question - or send these links to an active moderator to have inserted into the first post of inactive treasure threads (if threadomancy happens to be frowned upon).


Note that this can be organized as a group endeavour, where a bunch of active members name and link the very best which their hobby site has to offer, and split salvage of these different inactive members' pictures between themselves. If this is done, then it may be advisible to avoid repetitive images, most WIP pictures that lead up to a finished result, pictures of sprues and so on: Salvage selectively, save the very best and don't maximize your voluntary burden.

Other ways of backing up images of others and sharing them publicly are possible - and please talk about them here or elsewhere - but the point to stress here is that inactive members do not save their own pictures for sharing: That is up to the active members to do, if they deem a particular hobby work or artwork worthy to save for future years to inspire themselves and others.

At the moment of writing, a majority of older wargaming hobby pictures online have likely been shared over Photobucket. We have been granted an unexpected reprieve with their reversal of the pay-to-share debacle*, meaning all those dead hobby logs are suddenly up with visible pictures again. A reprieve which we should all consider exploiting while it last: Now is your chance to salvage the true gems of others and help save the very best pictures for the future.

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* Which is why one shouldn't even consider to delete one's Photobucket account unless one have already backed up the images and re-uploaded those one wish to share. Redundancy is key.