• This forum is strictly intended to be used by members of the VS Battles wiki. Please only register if you have an autoconfirmed account there, as otherwise your registration will be rejected. If you have already registered once, do not do so again, and contact Antvasima if you encounter any problems.

    For instructions regarding the exact procedure to sign up to this forum, please click here.
  • We need Patreon donations for this forum to have all of its running costs financially secured.

    Community members who help us out will receive badges that give them several different benefits, including the removal of all advertisements in this forum, but donations from non-members are also extremely appreciated.

    Please click here for further information, or here to directly visit our Patreon donations page.
  • Please click here for information about a large petition to help children in need.

An Important Notice Regarding Imgur

Lads. For the time being, just make an account, upload the images there and keep using your imgur account once in a while. In the meantime, let us see if we can't pressure FANDOM to increase image size and implement an album feature.
 
I feel encouraging back ups should be encouraged. Don't keep all your eggs in one basket, kinda thing. not saying this exclusively with regards to hosting, moreso saving the files in general. Can't exactly speak for how others will want to handle doing that individually.
 
JohnConquest1 said:
I feel encouraging back ups should be encouraged. Don't keep all your eggs in one basket, kinda thing. not saying this exclusively with regards to hosting, moreso saving the files in general. Can't exactly speak for how others will want to handle doing that individually.
Click to expand...
Hence the idea to pressure Fandom to increase its file size limits and implement better image-handling features to increase and maximize ease of use and pull in more users and in turn generate more profit.
 
Our wiki manager got back to me regarding image-hosting within our wiki itself:

"Lder got back to me. He said

"Rule of thumb on this is to remove the dialogue from the pages before uploading them to the wiki, unless text on a specific comic page is used to source wiki content. Basically, we just want to make sure people aren't visiting the wiki to read a comic instead of paying for it."

Essentially, only put up as much as you need to. It is okay to put some stuff up, but try to only put up what is important, and blank out any dialogue that does not relate to it."

The dialogue recurrently describes the referenced feats for character statistics and abilities, or gives relevant context to them, so that does not seem like a realistic solution in general.
 
KLOL506 said:
What about novel pages, in-game screenshots, movie screenshots and what have you?

And what about the size limitation? Surely they must realize how much of a hassle that is, right? They seriously need to overhaul their size limits and increase it to at least 25 MB or so to keep up with the times.
Click to expand...
I will ask again.
 
Size limit is universal, I don't think they will give us an exception unless we pay or something obviously.
 
Antvasima said:
Our wiki manager got back to me regarding image-hosting within our wiki itself:

"Lder got back to me. He said

"Rule of thumb on this is to remove the dialogue from the pages before uploading them to the wiki, unless text on a specific comic page is used to source wiki content. Basically, we just want to make sure people aren't visiting the wiki to read a comic instead of paying for it."

Essentially, only put up as much as you need to. It is okay to put some stuff up, but try to only put up what is important, and blank out any dialogue that does not relate to it."

The dialogue recurrently describes the referenced feats for character statistics and abilities, or gives relevant context to them, so that does not seem like a realistic solution in general.
Click to expand...
Yeah... that's not a realistic solution to take, at all. To remove the dialogue would be to axe majority of the context behind the feat before and after, and it can get rife with taking feats out of context even in the case of having references on.
 
KLOL506 said:
Yeah... that's not a realistic solution to take, at all. To remove the dialogue would be to axe majority of the context behind the feat before and after, and it can get rife with taking feats out of context even in the case of having references on.
Click to expand...
Ya but you need to understand their perspective as well. They also don't need their fandom be a place where you read comics for free.
 
Reminder that there's the Spongebob Wiki allowing stuff like this, and while Fandom has actually forced them to tone it down, it leaves some precedent quite above what we actually do with scans, so I don't think this should be a major concern.
 
ImmortalDread said:
Ya but you need to understand their perspective as well. They also don't need their fandom be a place where you read comics for free.
Click to expand...
Not like you need to add all the scans now, do you?

It's also the same case with Calc blogs where multiple images frame-by-frame are often needed but the entire movie isn't shown simply because that's a shitton of images.
 
I believe people are misunderstanding the wiki manager's comment. To quote:

"Rule of thumb on this is to remove the dialogue from the pages before uploading them to the wiki, unless text on a specific comic page is used to source wiki content."

We've clearly acknowledged the first part, but not the second part. This statement by the wiki manager tells us that, if the text on the page in question is actually relevant to understanding the feat being sourced, it's okay to leave the text in. We just need to redact text that isn't necessary for proper sourcing - in other words, if we could get rid of the text and the feat would be just as well-sourced, we need to.

Taking the wiki manager's statement at face value, we shouldn't run into issues with sourcing dialogue in pages where it is necessary.
 
While that could be fine, there's two potential issues. One of people misrepresenting evidence by cropping out text and claiming it's irrelevant, whether by being actually malicious, or not realising that some of the text is important. A second one of casual viewers worrying about us doing that.

It may be the best option we have, but it ain't perfect.
 
I got an Email from Imgur, they basically mentioned both public and private images will not be including
  • Nudity or Sexually Explicit Content
    • This does NOT include ones meant to be Educational, Artistic, or Informational Content
What that basically means it's mostly nudity/sexual content that might get nuked with exceptions being ones used for those three following things. The only Album I have that contains that stuff IIRC was a one I used as evidence for reporting some user who was permabanned years ago, so I got little to nothing to worry about. The older announcement.

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:

  • Nudity or sexually explicit content.
    • Excludes educational, artistic, and informational content.

The new terms can be found here. For more information, or to contact our Support Team with any questions, please refer to this help article.
Click to expand...
They did mention that some exceptions might end up getting flagged automatically was what they meant by "Older unused images" but their primary focus is basically just albums containing nudity or sexual content. So thought I would let that be known.
 
So, given the latest information that Medeus kindly provided, do we still have major reasons for significant concerns and taking action?
DarkGrath said:
I believe people are misunderstanding the wiki manager's comment. To quote:

"Rule of thumb on this is to remove the dialogue from the pages before uploading them to the wiki, unless text on a specific comic page is used to source wiki content."

We've clearly acknowledged the first part, but not the second part. This statement by the wiki manager tells us that, if the text on the page in question is actually relevant to understanding the feat being sourced, it's okay to leave the text in. We just need to redact text that isn't necessary for proper sourcing - in other words, if we could get rid of the text and the feat would be just as well-sourced, we need to.

Taking the wiki manager's statement at face value, we shouldn't run into issues with sourcing dialogue in pages where it is necessary.
Click to expand...
Also, I have asked our wiki manager for clarifications regarding this.
 
Last edited:
So, did we reach a consensus here? Because it's better that we inform people as fast as possible about this so that we don't get many broken links.
 
I am not sure beyond the following:
Antvasima said:
So, given the latest information that Medeus kindly provided, do we still have major reasons for significant concerns and taking action?
Click to expand...
ImmortalDread said:
Not that significant but a little notice that people slowly need to create account when linking scans
Click to expand...
Antvasima said:
Yes, I think that it is safest that way at least. I do not know what else we can do, other than also encourage our members to gradually update image links to ones hosted via actual Imgur accounts.
Click to expand...
Sensible staff evaluations and suggestions would be very appreciated.
 
I think the basics that I laid out previously would still apply. As has been pointed out, we cannot be sure of what exactly will and will not be deleted- while I don't think many issues will arise from those of us with an account, the fact is that we are still likely to lose some fraction of our scans hosted on Imgur, and it is more or less impossible to determine which will be removed. Advising people to create an Imgur account if they continue to use it is necessary, as is creating an account on whatever other image hosting source they intend to move to, should they choose it. A thread to handle what damage does get noticed is still an option.
 
@Antvasima by any chance, i have suggestion, there is an option in fandom where you host announcements (i remember one is already there to notify users about external forum), we could create a similar announcement for imgur issue one.
 
I'm gonna again harp that if you're working with a large number of files you should probably look at having multiple storage options, offline, online, whatever.
 
Mr._Bambu said:
I think the basics that I laid out previously would still apply. As has been pointed out, we cannot be sure of what exactly will and will not be deleted- while I don't think many issues will arise from those of us with an account, the fact is that we are still likely to lose some fraction of our scans hosted on Imgur, and it is more or less impossible to determine which will be removed. Advising people to create an Imgur account if they continue to use it is necessary, as is creating an account on whatever other image hosting source they intend to move to, should they choose it. A thread to handle what damage does get noticed is still an option.
Click to expand...
Well, I would greatly appreciate if somebody is willing to write a draft text for a new official rule in that regard, so I can improve on it, and we can publish it afterwards. I am unfortunately extremely distracted by other work and important real life events right now.
ImmortalDread said:
@Antvasima by any chance, i have suggestion, there is an option in fandom where you host announcements (i remember one is already there to notify users about external forum), we could create a similar announcement for imgur issue one.
Click to expand...
Well, as you mentioned, we already use our single available pop-up message there to provide information about our external forum, which is even more important for us, but I think that our old additional option for logged-in members only may still remain for us to use to highlight an information blog post. I will check.

Edit: I found it, and think that we can still use that option.

Is somebody willing to write a draft text for a public information thread in our forum that contains instructions in its first post, so we can highlight a link to that, both via our wiki and forum?
 
Last edited:
DarkGrath said:
I believe people are misunderstanding the wiki manager's comment. To quote:

"Rule of thumb on this is to remove the dialogue from the pages before uploading them to the wiki, unless text on a specific comic page is used to source wiki content."

We've clearly acknowledged the first part, but not the second part. This statement by the wiki manager tells us that, if the text on the page in question is actually relevant to understanding the feat being sourced, it's okay to leave the text in. We just need to redact text that isn't necessary for proper sourcing - in other words, if we could get rid of the text and the feat would be just as well-sourced, we need to.

Taking the wiki manager's statement at face value, we shouldn't run into issues with sourcing dialogue in pages where it is necessary.
Click to expand...
I received a reply from our wiki manager regarding the above post.

"To my understanding, the question is about "Movie Screenshots", "Novel Pages" and "Context within" (The content in regards to comics, novel pages and movie screenshots).

To my understanding, I personally would agree with what DarkGrath said in the following post.

https://vsbattles.com/threads/an-important-notice-regarding-imgur.152549/post-5677372

I personally believe that if some context is used for the feat, it should be okay, just so long as it's not overboard. Now, this is just "Kai's Opinion" so don't take it as an absolute truth. I still will need to ask my boss about it again for further clarification, but here is what I would say. I would think if the context is required to understand the feat, it should be allowed.

I will ask for further clarification to ensure what I said was correct."
 
Antvasima said:
I received a reply from our wiki manager regarding the above post.

"To my understanding, the question is about "Movie Screenshots", "Novel Pages" and "Context within" (The content in regards to comics, novel pages and movie screenshots).

To my understanding, I personally would agree with what DarkGrath said in the following post.

https://vsbattles.com/threads/an-important-notice-regarding-imgur.152549/post-5677372

I personally believe that if some context is used for the feat, it should be okay, just so long as it's not overboard. Now, this is just "Kai's Opinion" so don't take it as an absolute truth. I still will need to ask my boss about it again for further clarification, but here is what I would say. I would think if the context is required to understand the feat, it should be allowed.

I will ask for further clarification to ensure what I said was correct."
Click to expand...
And Video games?
 
I do not know, sorry, but I don't see why they would work differently.
 
Antvasima said:
Well, I would greatly appreciate if somebody is willing to write a draft text for a new official rule in that regard, so I can improve on it, and we can publish it afterwards. I am unfortunately extremely distracted by other work and important real life events right now.

Is somebody willing to write a draft text for a public information thread in our forum that contains instructions in its first post, so we can highlight a link to that, both via our wiki and forum?
Click to expand...
So about this...
 
Okay. Thank you very much for helping out, and I apologise for being too busy and distracted to properly handle it on my own currently. 🙏
 
So about the guidelines, I will add it in editing rules page --> images under this rule
Due to problems with Gfycat automatically moving lots of scans to a site with **** advertisements, we recommend that our members instead upload images & gifs to Imgur (link), or other reliable image hosting services, and then use the URL of the uploaded media in the needed profile or blog or thread. You can also upload the images & gifs to this wiki (link), and then use the URL of the uploaded media in the page or blog that you are making or editing.
Click to expand...

We add a sub list and add this line
We strongly advise creating an account on Imgur before uploading images and gifs to ensure that your work is securely saved and has a lower risk of being deleted from the website, which could result in broken links.
Click to expand...

And as for instructions, here is the sandbox.
 
@ImmortalDread The change to the Editing Rules page looks good. It's clear, concise, and communicates the intended message well.

As for the information page sandbox:

"As y'all noticed, the imgur has updated their Terms and services which may impact our work and profile creation in general."

Preferably, the page should be polished to be a bit more professionally worded than this. The page as a whole has somewhat amateurish phrasing and formatting, at odds with most of our important articles, but this can easily be patched up with basic editing. For the most part, the page looks good.
 
Yes, after improving on the wording somewhat, I also think that the new page looks very good. Thanks a lot for your help. 🙏🙂

https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/U...ions?type=revision&diff=7970596&oldid=7970002

I tried to improve slightly on the structure of your suggested rule text as well:

"We strongly advise creating an account on Imgur before uploading images and gifs. This should be done in order to ensure that your work is securely saved and has a lower risk of being deleted from the website, which can potentially result in broken links."

So is it fine if I publish the contents of ImmortalDread's blog as a regular official instruction page in our wiki, embed a "For further instructions please click here." link to it in the rule text listed above, and inform our community members via highlighted messages in our forum and wiki then? Or do we still have anything left to decide here?

Also, what should we call that page? "Image Uploading Instructions" or "Image Uploading Policies" in order to allow for further relevant instructions regarding such topics to more easily potentially be added later?

In addition, should we add instructions of how to bypass the Imgur ban in certain countries via the most reliable and least dangerous free or paid VPNs, or would that cause potential legal problems or encourage our members to take great personal risks (for Chinese citizens for example)?

And it is very important that all members with Imgur accounts stay publicly anonymous despite hosting our images with them. Should we investigate how this can be accomplished? Signing up with one's personal Facebook or Google accounts sounds dangerous in that regard, for example.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Antvasima
  • Sticky
Extremely important announcements for our community
Replies
31
Views
5K
Agnaa
Agnaa
Mr. Bambu
  • Sticky
Impersonation of VSBW Staff and the Importance of Confirmation
Replies
19
Views
7K
Lordhesperus
Lordhesperus
AKM sama
Super Moderator Promotions and New Staff Promotions
2
Replies
50
Views
5K
Greenshifter
Greenshifter
Ednaxel2
Krillin profile split + new keys
Replies
18
Views
1K
Damage3245
Damage3245
Lloydblitzed
Comics Wonder Woman and Superman One Million Update
Replies
6
Views
1K
Antvasima
Antvasima
Back
Top