revisited: photos per thread limit

Hey everyone, thanks for all of the opinions and great discussion about this topic. I'm taking it all in and pondering it. There are clearly multiple camps on this issue and it won't be possible to satisfy all. Most likely no one will be completely satisfied by what seems like a good course, a compromise somewhere in the middle. I'm thinking that we should give a somewhat more relaxed photo policy a try, but have a probationary period. Everyone would know that if photo posting got out of hand during this period, we would revert back to the one photo per thread rule, and hopefully this would encourage posters of multiple photos to do an extra good job, thus setting a new standard. When I have a little more time I will review all that has been written in this thread and come up with a specific proposal for new guidelines.<br><br>Jeff, getting back to an earlier comment you made about avatars: I personally dislike those things and that is why they are turned off here. In general I haven't really seen that they convey much information that is relevant to the forum in which they are used. In addition, they represent yet more images that have to be loaded, they are often visually distracting, and I suspect that often the images are being used in violation of copyright. The TGR thread you linked above is a typical example - look at the avatars chosen by "verbier61" and "hayduke" in particular. I am, however, probably an old-schooler in this regard (as in many others), so if everyone else wants avatars, then I would reconsider when setting up the new forum software.

Hmmm, just wondering. Would it be possible to automatically generate thumbnails of x by y size and post them on the same page as the text submitted in the location desired by the author? Clicking on the thumbnail would bring up the full size picture in a separate window. Perhaps allow one picture per post to be shown full size; no thumbnail first. <br>

<br>Have a look at what nwhikers does. They encourage that photos be hosted on flickr, for several reasons. First is that they have a URL filter scheme that allows links to the thumbnails to click thru to the full res exactly as you describe. The other reason I think is because flickr itself has an inherent photos-per-month hosting limit so that can cut on bloat.<br>Restricting photos to one host is a little inconvenient though especially for people that maintain personal sites and send digests as TAY reports.<br>My vote would be for more than one photo per thread. Many TAY regulars who post on other sites have shown me that their reports free of the one photo constraint are a more immersive read and that the additional photos are quite useful for reporting conditions, which to me is the numero uno reason to be posting ski reports at all. As others have stated, the reasons I like and use TAY are because of temperament not technology.

Phil made his post while I was posting, and I find this comment interesting because I have felt that, of all the people who post here, Amar is the one who has most perfected the art of writing an excellent trip report within the current guidelines for photo posting. Several follow up posts in that thread seem to concur. Amar does a great job of integrating the photo links into his writing (and uses the "URL=" tag so that the viewer sees his choice of text and not a meaningless URL). If I want visual confirmation of what he has written, I can click the link, and if not, I don't have to. He wants to provide access to a lot of photos, but his way of doing so is fair to everyone no matter their access speed. Kind of like a thumbnail gallery, except that the thumbnails are text descriptions instead of tiny photos. Mice are cheap!

Lowell<br>I think I understand what you're trying to say with the Tolkien quote. The context struck me as odd at first glance: Tolkien has been deceased since 1973; he never saw the internet. I did a search and the quote led me to interesting debates about fantasy, realism, blah blah blah... so thanks. <br><br>As for not disabling images in the browser, I think all browsers have the option to 'Block images from xxx.com'. It shouldn't take long under a new policy to see who uses photos in a manner you appreciate.<br><br>It seems like we mostly agree that clicking on text to see a photo provides a very different experience than having the photos and text together. When I put trip reports on my own webpage, I like to have photos and text beside each other. That's what I like best and I can't do it on forums. (Well, I could make an image by putting text and an image together but I think an internet intervention would be necessary at that stage...)<br><br>Regardless of what happens in its wake, good discussion.

Mice are cheap!

<br><br>But my time isn't <br>...and so I don't get to see all of Amar's photos (not picking on him - just anyone who posts a lot of links), because I just can't be bothered. Of course, I wouldn't want 30 pictures embedded in a TR anyway... but hopefully folks would be able to "self edit" themselves to just a handful of the best shots.<br>

??? Your mouse would wear out? <br><br>I can view linked photos as fast as hotlinked photos. Just use ctrl-w with your left hand to close the new window, instead of closing photo windows with your mouse. <br><br>If we really wanted to geek out, Charles should hack the code to accommodate this really spiffy javascript photo window script. Is closes the pop-up windows automatically when you click on a new photo or close your browser. For example: here . Just hack the board code to write the javascript upon some easy BBcode prompt. <br><br>Ok, so that's unrealistic. Whatever.