Re-revisited: photos per thread limit?

1-picture is worth a 1000 words!
pin'- (X-Gen. visual word-smith)

Perhaps, but one word can tell how it feels. How does a picture show "sublime" or "regret"? I still like the site the way it is.

Lots of good discussion here. Though it probably goes without saying, I'd be satisfied to keep the guidelines just as they are (3 photos per thread, up to 800 pix each). However, I understand that Charles would like to be responsive to the TAY community and perhaps ease his own burden as "photo sheriff." So, I'm trying to think of guidelines that might help and that I could learn to like even better than the current ones.

After reading the ideas posted here, I'm concerned that whatever we come up with, it has to be simple. The idea of splitting trip reports and condition reports (with perhaps different rules for each) fails the test for me. That's too much to keep straight.

I also have doubts about a guideline that allows X large pictures and Y small pictures, if Y is not infinity. What's the likelihood of newcomers learning these guidelines?

I'm influenced by Jim Oker's comments about NWHikers.com. I've looked at some of the trip reports there, and they do look nice. An important aspect of the way NWHikers is designed is that you have multiple thumbnails side-by-side. In fact, the forum software dynamically determines how many thumbnails it can place side-by-side based on your browser width. That really improves the appearance of the page--more like a magazine. Really nice.

Where I'm heading is this: How about keeping the current guideline for large photos--three per thread--and adding to it the ability to post as many thumbnails as you want. Infinite number per thread. No need to remember the limit. That would give you the ability to have trip reports that look just like what NWHikers has, but also the ability to post a few, select large images.

This is sort of what I did in my "Skiing the Cascade Crest" series. For example, this page about Skiing the Picket Range .

I just started posting here for what its worth and like the atmosphere. I didn't even clue in to the photos limit criteria till Tim Place kindly reminded me about the guidelines. Basically I like the guidelines. They force me to find the most representative shots of a trip and only post those up.

My trip reports are photo-heavy and include a bunch of data that not every one might be interested in reviewing (ie route descriptions, maps, potential future trips etc). I put up a summary of the trip and representative shots. If anyone needs more information or has the inclination to pull up my more verbose shots then they can go to my personal site. I also shoot a lot of panoramics and they are big pictures. It would be a little clumsy and possibly intrusive to embed those pictures in trip reports.



Not every one has a personal site but perhaps people who want to put up more shots or bigger shots can use another medium such as biglines.com or telemarktips.com to put up shots where there are no picture limits?

I've been kind of busy but thinking about this when I can, so I'm working on it even though it may sometimes not appear to be so...

OK, this is getting a bit complicated. There are questions about how many photos to allow to be displayed, and what size(s). Then there are the technical issues of where the photo files actually reside and if it would be possible to automatically create thumbnails (if we want some display allowance for those).

Here's one of the basic dilemmas concerning photos: for them to be displayed in posts, the photo files have to reside on a web-accessible server. If they are just sitting on your local hard drive, they can't be made to display in a post here (without some other action, like uploading). To get photos to some web-accessible place so they can be displayed here, some people upload to their own web site, some upload to space that comes with their internet service, some upload to photo sharing services (Flickr etc), some upload to other sites' photo storage sites (eg ttips, biglines) and some upload to the TAY server via the TR posting page.

I think one of the problems with uploading to TAY server is that it is difficult to do anything with uploaded images other than have them sit at the bottom of the report in a bunch. The photo files are uploaded as part of the posting process and this cannot be done ahead of time. It seems like this could be a problem for an automatic thumbnail tag, at least if we're hoping to keep it a simple process.

The TAY web hosting plan has about 250 GB (yes, 250,000 MB) of disk space, and less than 1% of that is being used. The bandwidth allowance is similarly large, 3 TB (yes, 3000 GB) per month, and less than 1% of that is being used. Both allowances grow every week. So here's an idea I had: create photo storage space on the TAY server, using available software that is independent of the forum's uploading ability. Depending on the features we wanted, the software might be free or there might be a licensing fee.

Using "TAY Photos" would generally work the same way as other photo storage services, where people upload their files to the storage space in "albums", then can use the generated URLs for linking. The software generally can generate several different sizes of photos from the originals, and we would want it to be able to create thumbnail-sized photos (size to be determined) as well as standard 800x600 photos. With their photos uploaded to "TAY Photos", people would have the needed URLs to insert into their TR, and they could make the photos appear just where they wanted and not have them all sit at the bottom of their post. Doing this would use the standard IMG tag that is insertible with the click of the button, and wouldn't require any scripts to be integrated into the forum software. If we had limits on the number of 800x600 photos allowed to be displayed in a thread (which I still think is a good idea) but also allowed thumbnails, people would have to choose the correct URLs (thumb or 800x600) to use in their post.

This procedure may sound complicated but it is what everyone who has their photos stored somewhere other than the TAY server has to do now. When I want to display photos in a TR, I first process the photos and resize down to 800x600, save as jpegs, upload the jpegs to the TAY server, and then insert the URLs for each photo into my post where I want the photos to display. The above idea would have the benefit, for those who do not process their own photos, of automatically generating the reduced sizes needed for posting in their TR.

There are some potential complications to this idea. If the photo storage software was not designed to integrate with this forum's software, then there would be separate registrations, usernames, and passwords required for "TAY Photos". Policy decisions would have to be made about how the stored photos were allowed to be used (ie. only in the Trip Reports forum, or also in external web sites, which is what ttips and biglines seem to allow), how much space each user would be allowed, etc. I would have to more closely monitor TAY disk and bandwidth usage. Would people be allowed to store photos larger than 800x600 on "TAY Photos" (which would mean that the photos were destined for uses other than posting in TRs)?

I'm sure there are some opinions out there...

I would be cautious about using TAY for, what I call, photo dumping. Photo dumping websites, such as Biglines, are great. However, people tend to abuse these sites and it sounds like it would be just another thing to eat up a moderator's energy. Personally, I don't mind having to dump my photos on Biglines before posting them on TAY. It sounds like it will be easier for people to post photos on TAY by creating a photo dump section. But at what cost?

I think a respectful limit of 5 --> 800x600 photos is enough for most people. Any more than that and things get cumbersome. You are better off posting 5 great photos and linking the rest to your own personal website...or linking to your own personal Flickr photo dumping site.

Link to as many photos as you want. As for thumbnails, I don't really have an opinion...