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An Important Notice Regarding Imgur

Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara said:
What the **** are you talking about?
Click to expand...
You are speaking of Imgur as if it were some criminal sentenced to die rather than a site changing its policy (presumably to free up server space, if I had to wager). This entire thread you've spoken in extremely severe terms, Crab's just takin' note.
 
Apex_Predator_GX said:
My concerns are about obscure verses. There is a way to know which profiles have imurg scans that need to be replaced and uploaded in the wiki?
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I think Ant is trying to figure out a way to find out which verses and pages use imgur scans so people can methodically go through and replace them on a different host/re-upload. In general, a way to prevent this would be using lots of references so that even if the link goes down people can very easily find where the feat or showing happened to replace it.
 
Mr._Bambu said:
You are speaking of Imgur as if it were some criminal sentenced to die rather than a site changing its policy (presumably to free up server space, if I had to wager). This entire thread you've spoken in extremely severe terms, Crab's just takin' note.
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Basically this, m'yes. I'd recommend calming down a little, as from what is being said from other people it's not even that every scan will be rendered moot, or that Imgur will cease to be completely useable, either. People will just need to make and keep accounts from now on.

I understand the concern, but this is the exact kind of blind panicking we do not need.
 
Gewsbumpz_dude said:
How can they even tell that the image in question is "unused"? Like, are they aware of us or something?

This is just braindead in so many ways.
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They are listening everything like facebook.
It's not that hard for them to see how many times the image was seen since the images are on their servers is no different from youtube counting views
 
Mr._Bambu said:
You are speaking of Imgur as if it were some criminal sentenced to die rather than a site changing its policy (presumably to free up server space, if I had to wager). This entire thread you've spoken in extremely severe terms, Crab's just takin' note.
Click to expand...
Personally, if Imgur does go through with this change and it's as bad as it seems to be, then I hope it leads to the end of the imgur website.

But that's just my own personal views, unrelated to the topic of the thread so I'll drop it.
 
I think we should be more professional when distributing scans by using image hosting sites. We still have less then a month to back everything up.
 
Just popping in here for the time being to say this, ignoring how making an account and having the scans there kind of avoids the hassle of saving all the scans in Imgur all over again, there's this email notification Imgur has sent out in regards to the change of service.
Dear Imgurians, We wanted to reach out to let you know that we are updating our Terms of Service on May 15, 2023. Our goal is to unify our Terms of Service and our Community Rules for better consistency over our entire platform. As we look to the future, our new Terms of Service will better support and define our Service, allow for better safety & security of Users, and enforcement of Community Rules. Some highlights of how the Terms of Service changes may affect you: The Community Rules will now apply to all uploads, both public and hidden. This means the following content is not permitted anywhere on Imgur:
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• Nudity or sexually explicit content.
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o Excludes educational, artistic, and informational content.
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So long as the scans themselves are informative you can make an argument against Imgur to keep the scans intact, assuming they actually do have something beyond just some random pornographic scene, and before anyone says they'll use a bot to get rid of the scans, on their own guidelines on how Moderation works actual humans are running the checkups on the posts, so you can make an argument to keep the scans intact so long as they fit the criteria of being beyond just explicit content.
 
Well, the problem here seems to be that we do not seem to have any good available alternatives, as Fandom likely does not even allow entire comic book segments to be uploaded in the first place, so beyond encouraging our members to primarily use references, and to always be logged in to Imgur when they upload images there, I do not know what we can reasonably do here.

However, even if a large part of our pages will end up needing to have their old Imgur scans replaced by new ones uploaded by actual accounts, or by source references instead, I would still greatly prefer to avoid any further agitated blind panicking here, yes. It may take us 1 to 2 years to gradually recover and replace the old image links, and that is very regrettable, yes, but it is not remotely the end of the world or even our wiki.
 
As for any blatantly sexually explicit images, Fandom does not allow that to be linked to from their wikis in the first place. The problem here for us seems to be that Imgur might remove images with insufficiently high traffic that were uploaded by people who were not logged in to their site, but that was worded rather vaguely in my view.
 
Well, let's go over the basics:

  • We need a good alternative site since Imgur seems to have fallen out of favor. I've said this to other staff already, but I personally have heard very good things about ImgPile- large file uploads, Gif support, unlimited storage. Whatever alternative we recommend, we should also advise people to maintain an account in case a similar thing occurs.
  • Additionally, those continuing to use Imgur should be told to create an account to protect their future scans against the new policy.
  • We need to backup Imgur images made by users who did not create accounts. As has been said, the other images that seem to be getting axed are of considerably lesser concern. I don't know of any bot-assisted method of going through accounts to find now-dead Imgur links, but if that is possible we should definitely look into it. If not, we must rely on basic methods. Users who do not have an Imgur account should go through their pages and fix their scans manually. Content moderators (and all other staff, of course) should also be prepared to take note of profiles with now-dead links if they happen to see them.
  • To assist with the above point, I think it may be wise to create a running wiki management thread that indexes dead Imgur links, and gauge the severity thereof. Such a thread would need to then contact supporters to see if a replicated scan can be produced. Failing that, CRTs may need done if the given scan(s) are extremely important, since without references, these profiles would functionally be evidence-less and unable to be given evidence.
Anything else?
 
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Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara said:
Which is why I suggested Gyazo, as I do not think it uses AI moderation like that, and it seems to have been a reliable site for a long time now. I am obviously open to alternatives, but my point is that Imgur as it is now is not really sustainable.
Click to expand...
Puush is a very similar service, which was as reliable as Gyazo for years, but eventually they had to delete images that weren't getting enough views to save on server space.

AI moderation is not really the death knell; any reason to delete images is, and no site's truly safe from that forever.

If we learn more about imgur's policies then working around it may involve alternatives, or it may involve just creating an account, or creating a bot that can give each scan 10 views immediately, or 1 view a month forever.

If we're acting right now, I do agree with Bambu that going to some alternative would probably be a good idea. I think Gyazo's a reasonable choice for that since they've been around for ages and seem to have a viable business model.
 
Theglassman12 said:
Just popping in here for the time being to say this, ignoring how making an account and having the scans there kind of avoids the hassle of saving all the scans in Imgur all over again, there's this email notification Imgur has sent out in regards to the change of service.



So long as the scans themselves are informative you can make an argument against Imgur to keep the scans intact, assuming they actually do have something beyond just some random pornographic scene, and before anyone says they'll use a bot to get rid of the scans, on their own guidelines on how Moderation works actual humans are running the checkups on the posts, so you can make an argument to keep the scans intact so long as they fit the criteria of being beyond just explicit content.
Click to expand...
That is clearly in regards to explicit content; It is essentially saying that any educational or artistic depictions of nudity - such as medical diagrams or something like Michaelangelo's David - will remain. The clause about deleting old content from people not signed in remains.

Also, you will be hard pressed to argue that manga or comic book scans are "educational".

Mr._Bambu said:
Well, let's go over the basics:

  • We need a good alternative site since Imgur seems to have fallen out of favor. I've said this to other staff already, but I personally have heard very good things about ImgPile- large file uploads, Gif support, unlimited storage. Whatever alternative we recommend, we should also advise people to maintain an account in case a similar thing occurs.
  • We need to backup Imgur images made by users who did not create accounts. As has been said, the other images that seem to be getting axed are of considerably lesser concern. I don't know of any bot-assisted method of going through accounts to find now-dead Imgur links, but if that is possible we should definitely look into it. If not, we must rely on basic methods. Users who do not have an Imgur account should go through their pages and fix their scans manually. Content moderators (and all other staff, of course) should also be prepared to take note of profiles with now-dead links if they happen to see them.
  • To assist with the above point, I think it may be wise to create a running wiki management thread that indexes dead Imgur, and gauge the severity thereof. Such a thread would need to then contact supporters to see if a replicated scan can be produced. Failing that, CRTs may need done if the given scan(s) are extremely important, since without references, these profiles would functionally be evidence-less and unable to be given evidence.
Anything else?
Click to expand...
This seems to be the most reasonable approach by far.
 
Mr._Bambu said:
Well, let's go over the basics:

  • We need a good alternative site since Imgur seems to have fallen out of favor. I've said this to other staff already, but I personally have heard very good things about ImgPile- large file uploads, Gif support, unlimited storage. Whatever alternative we recommend, we should also advise people to maintain an account in case a similar thing occurs.
  • We need to backup Imgur images made by users who did not create accounts. As has been said, the other images that seem to be getting axed are of considerably lesser concern. I don't know of any bot-assisted method of going through accounts to find now-dead Imgur links, but if that is possible we should definitely look into it. If not, we must rely on basic methods. Users who do not have an Imgur account should go through their pages and fix their scans manually. Content moderators (and all other staff, of course) should also be prepared to take note of profiles with now-dead links if they happen to see them.
  • To assist with the above point, I think it may be wise to create a running wiki management thread that indexes dead Imgur, and gauge the severity thereof. Such a thread would need to then contact supporters to see if a replicated scan can be produced. Failing that, CRTs may need done if the given scan(s) are extremely important, since without references, these profiles would functionally be evidence-less and unable to be given evidence.
Anything else?
Click to expand...
All of this makes sense to me
 
@Antvasima It's not the end of the world here Ant, being logged into Imgur constantly is hardly any different than being logged into the wiki.

@Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara It's still informative since you're giving information on characters that people don't really know much about. Hell I can't count how many people I know IRL that uses fictional characters as a source for a research paper to inform others. As for making the accounts it's not that hard to make an account, It barely took me 10 minutes to make an Imgur account.
 
Theglassman12 said:
@Antvasima It's not the end of the world here Ant, being logged into Imgur constantly is hardly any different than being logged into the wiki.

@Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara It's still informative since you're giving information on characters that people don't really know much about. Hell I can't count how many people I know IRL that uses fictional characters as a source for a research paper to inform others. As for making the accounts it's not that hard to make an account, It barely took me 10 minutes to make an Imgur account.
Click to expand...
It's not the account creation that's the issue, the issue is mass reuploading literally thousands of scans and re-applying them to the relevant profiles. That is an incredibly tedious and length process, and some of us have lives to attend to first and foremost.
 
@Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara I've mentioned it to you on discord already but have a discord server dedicated to just copying and pasting all the scans you've collected with your non-account, then once everything is saved there you can make a new account and then reupload the scans. Besides this isn't happening in the span of a week, it's happening in the next Month, meaning we have a lot of time on our hands to save the scans we've uploaded.
 
Mr._Bambu said:
Well, let's go over the basics:

  • We need a good alternative site since Imgur seems to have fallen out of favor. I've said this to other staff already, but I personally have heard very good things about ImgPile- large file uploads, Gif support, unlimited storage. Whatever alternative we recommend, we should also advise people to maintain an account in case a similar thing occurs.
Click to expand...
That may be even more unsafe though, as smaller sites can much more easily be driven out of business.

We should definitely try to get all of our members to be logged in to Imgur when they upload images to that site in the future though.
Mr._Bambu said:
  • We need to backup Imgur images made by users who did not create accounts. As has been said, the other images that seem to be getting axed are of considerably lesser concern. I don't know of any bot-assisted method of going through accounts to find now-dead Imgur links, but if that is possible we should definitely look into it. If not, we must rely on basic methods. Users who do not have an Imgur account should go through their pages and fix their scans manually. Content moderators (and all other staff, of course) should also be prepared to take note of profiles with now-dead links if they happen to see them.
Click to expand...
Yes, and I think that it would likely be a good idea if I give other types of staff members who are willing to help out with this task (and are not administrators) temporary content moderator rights in our wiki.
Mr._Bambu said:
  • To assist with the above point, I think it may be wise to create a running wiki management thread that indexes dead Imgur links, and gauge the severity thereof. Such a thread would need to then contact supporters to see if a replicated scan can be produced. Failing that, CRTs may need done if the given scan(s) are extremely important, since without references, these profiles would functionally be evidence-less and unable to be given evidence.
Anything else?
Click to expand...
This seems like a great idea, yes, but I will be unable to help organise it, given that I have much more to do IRL nowadays, and my daily wiki edit-patrolling also continuously takes a lot of time.
 
Theglassman12 said:
@Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara I've mentioned it to you on discord already but have a discord server dedicated to just copying and pasting all the scans you've collected with your non-account, then once everything is saved there you can make a new account and then reupload the scans. Besides this isn't happening in the span of a week, it's happening in the next Month, meaning we have a lot of time on our hands to save the scans we've uploaded.
Click to expand...
Just a note that Discord images are not allowed to link to in our wiki, as they are too easily removed and seem to automatically disappear after a while.

But I may have misunderstood what you intended.
 
I guess we can just use fandom uploads, references as much as possible, and can create Quote blogs for important statements, Convo's in the franchise, Just Like how Firestorm has did here for ben 10. Obviously there will be instances when we will have to use imgur/alternatives but if we can possibly avoid using it, we should (not must tho).
 
One thing is for certain though. We should definitly stop relying on external sites until they are absolutly necessary. If youre not going to link a entire album, or entire video clips as scans, use the fandom system. It sucks but what can you do. Spam the Fandom developers to upgrade their image system.
 
@Antvasima I never said to use discord scans to upload to the wiki, I'm saying you can save the scans on discord by uploading them there, and after you make an account, you take the scans you save on discord and reupload them to your imgur account, either that or save the scans directly on your PC or whatever place you use to store scans. Discord's the first example I used since practically everyone has one in this site.
 
First_Witch said:
One thing is for certain though. We should definitly stop relying on external sites until they are absolutly necessary. If youre not going to link a entire album, or entire video clips as scans, use the fandom system. It sucks but what can you do. Spam the Fandom developers to upgrade their image system.
Click to expand...
Fandom might get serious copyright strike problems if they allow the uploading of entire comic book pages, but I will ask our wiki manager about this as well.
 
Theglassman12 said:
@Antvasima I never said to use discord scans to upload to the wiki, I'm saying you can save the scans on discord by uploading them there, and after you make an account, you take the scans you save on discord and reupload them to your imgur account, either that or save the scans directly on your PC or whatever place you use to store scans. Discord's the first example I used since practically everyone has one in this site.
Click to expand...
Okay. No problem. It seems easier to just save the images on a computer though, but if that isn't possible for some reason, I suppose they can do what you recommended.
 
If it helps, I don't think imgur is instantly deleting all these images. We probably have a decent window of time to start backing things up on the wiki, so there's no need to panic. For big gifs, there's always something like streamable, but outside websites aren't ideal. Honestly, if the gif is too big to be uploaded to VSB, it's probably better off being referenced with an episode and timestamp.
 
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From what I heard, Gyazo is also a great alternative though I don't have an account there. And I wasn't saying the issue should be ignored, only that it wasn't something worth making a giant panic over. But yeah, I do recommend uploading images as private rather than public, and also ones with mature content; such as a scan for someone ripping out spinal cords being a common feat, then it just needs to be marked as mature on your Imgur album. Which will simply give users an initial warning before they view it.
 
DarkDragonMedeus said:
From what I heard, Gyazo is also a great alternative though I don't have an account there. And I wasn't saying the issue should be ignored, only that it wasn't something worth making a giant panic over. But yeah, I do recommend uploading images as private rather than public, and also ones with mature content; such as a scan for someone ripping out spinal cords being a common feat, then it just needs to be marked as mature on your Imgur album. Which will simply give users an initial warning before they view it.
Click to expand...
These seem like sensible recommendations.
 
Just, gotta remember Imgur, and well, most websites are for profit. Making more money is the priority.
If they can make more money by making clearing storage space, they'll have like to have done it yesterday with no warning.

If web based archival actually matters to you then look at non profits like Internet Archive, or similar non profit groups.
Don't take that as a recommendation to use Internet Archive for uploads on the wiki. They're in hot water at the moment legally.

Make back ups, use file compression where possible, don't get comfy with file hosting websites (Even Fandom), and use references where possible.
 
TBH trying to migrate to other image hosting sites is a bad idea at this point, it feels less of trying to find a better alternative and more like trying to pass stuff hidden from the law, which isn't really sustainable long term.

As much as the Fandom image hosting service sucks, it's the most reliable alternative we have, and I recall stuff directly on the site linked on a page would fall as fair use as it's clearly being used for educational purposes, so I don't think it'd break copyright laws, especially if we aren't uploading an entire book or comic, for example.

If people want to neatly list multiple images from a single link, just make small blog posts or something, maybe we could even adopt what other wikies do and just do subpages for that purpose (for example, "Mario/References")
 
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