revisited: photos per thread limit

Pictures transcend hyperbole, critiques of style and safety that rely heavily on interpretation, and inadequacies in the author's vocabulary.  They can also immediately ameliorate gaps in the audience's knowledge of an area's geography in ways that words simply cannot.

<br><br>let me clarify for skye. pictures are good. <br><br>i like the current format of TAY because it's not annoying to read/view. but, i think Lowell's proposal would be great. restrictions on resolution and number of photos. i think no more than three photos in a trip report is a good idea. do you really need to post more than that...probably not...this site is not your photo album. just make a link to any additional pics like Jeff Huber does...its not that hard...I use biglines.com to link photos. i think more than three photos in a trip report is cumbersome. keep it simple.

Sky you make a sound argument. After reading that I feel a bit less convinced on the benefits of the status-quo. Consider this though, you've stated one could continue to post just one photo and thoughtful text even if the photo limit was upped. This is true, but the one photo limit I personally find an incentive to write more thoughtfully. If people can get away with just dumping their memory card's ski porn, what incentives are there to encourage one to write thoughtfully about a trip? <br><br>Hmm or maybe, as you're saying, a users desire to create high-quality discourse is a sufficient incentive to encourage thoughtful writing. I suppose if the limit was changed it could always be revised if it didn't workout. And it would be an interesting (albeit crude) experiment for the reason Lowell cited in his first post. My hypothesis is that taking away the rule wouldn't change the tone of the site. I think the site's tone can be attributed to the past behavior on the site (civility is the convention), a lot of us know each other (the PNW backcountry ski community seems pretty small) and that the focus of the site isn't about a piece of gear. <br><br>PS: I am curious,<br>

As someone who posts elsewhere (partially) because of the photo rule, I'll tell you why.

<br>where are you posting?

<br>Lowell said:<br> "The one lies in the freedom of the reader, while the other in the purposeful domination of the author." --J.R.R. Tolkien<br><br>Care to provide context, or expand?  I don't get it.  How do photos dominate the reader?

<br><br>The quote was in response to Charles's question: Why does a limit on displayed pictures deter you from posting if you can post as many links to pictures as you want? The Tolkien quote popped into my head because one approach says "Here are some pictures that illustrate my story; look at them if you want" while the other approach says "You WILL look at my pictures, whether you care to or not."<br><br>I don't want to disable all pictures in my browser settings. But on the other hand, I don't want a huge number of pictures either. When I'm on dialup, I typically don't look at most of the pictures that are provided via links in TAY posts. To me, that's freedom.<br><br>===<br><br>As an aside, I think 800x800 pixels is a little too big. But 640x640 may be too small. How about splitting the difference: 720x720 pixels?<br>

I will be happy whichever way this turns out. It's a great site now, and I believe it will continue to be a great site, and folks will defend it from turning into rec.arguments. <br><br>But for the sake of argument, regarding links versus inline photos, why don't magazines put all the photos at the end of the magazine? They could save money by printing less four color pages if the grouped the photos tightly on less pages. Same with photo/text books. I just tried to dig up an old report, I think it was JasonH's (no longer seeing cascadeclassics.org out there...), of a trip down the Lyman Glacier on Adams, which interspersed text and photos in a way that I still can picture in my head. It was a compelling read, and hopping off to view pictures via links would have broken the flow he created by weaving visuals and verbiage together. Not everyone lays photos and text out as well as he did in that instance, but then again, not everyone writes pure text posts artfully either. <br><br>I realize there are other tradeoffs such as dialup experience that may be the trump cards, but I continue to question the notion that less photos = more artful postings.

Jim, I just went to TGR and clicked on the first thread with the letters TR in the subject that was "safe for work". Here it is:<br> www.tetongravity.com/forums/showthread.php?t=46711

What do you think of this TR? I think it's fairly typical TGR TR. One AMAZING photo, then a ton of redundancy (it ends with 6 photos which are almost identical) and not many words. Just that one photo and thoughtful text would have made a much more compelling TR IMO.

PS: I am curious,<br>where are you posting?

<br>Okay to answer my own question - I just went to one of the other boards, searched by Sky's name and ...<br> www.cascadeclimbers.com/threadz/showflat.../page/0/fpart/1/vc/1

That's a great report and a good use of photos and text, but I think it's in a tiny minority. Most boards with photo free-for-alls don't have that high quality of reports. I think TGR epitomizes the trend.

That's my 2cents.