Welcome to Fractal Forums

Due to the large number of discourteous members posting far too many images all at once in the gallery, new rules are on the way.

This may entail some heavy handed action, and deleting of images.

We tried to avoid this, and it has been mentioned publicly, and discussed extensively in the moderator's forum.

There has to be a limit to how many images any one person can post in the gallery per day.

My suggestion was no more than 3 per day, and any images beyond the first post in a single day must wait until another person has posted something.

That way no one person can monopolize the recent posts area, which only shows 4 images.

This post is a last chance for member input, and Fair Warning that many recent images are about to disappear.

It's not right for somebody to post one exceptional image, only to see it buried by a flood of 9 images all by one person.

Ideas and input are encouraged, or this will become a Tyrannical Repression of any images posted in excess of some number which hasn't even been decided yet!  That number will surely be 3 or less, so those recent posts are about to get "The Axe" with no warning.

This is the Warning to all future posters - Limit yourselves and be Courteous.  Or we will have to limit you in a discourteous manner.

Ahah!
So thats how one of my pix got disappeared?
One moment its there the next gone.
Would have been nice to have received an email or even a message to my account here to let me know what was going on.

Okay just received an email now (1:39 your time).

For the record I uploaded my 4 pics at 21:39 and your note here was posted at 23:18 over an hour and a half after my unknowing transgression.

Hear hear! Seems a good system to me. I hope you will be able to automate it, or the job of moderator will be a lot busier ;-)

Yup.

This has been discussed extensively in various threads.

The guidelines have been in place for a while, but only Christian  (our Administrator) can make them visible in the Gallery itself.

I've just been trying to find ways to automate it for a while now, but it seems we may have to turn off gallery posting for all, then add members to a group with the permission on a case by case basis - but only after they make clear that they agree to the limits.

It's a touchy situation.  I finally got permission to start "unapproving images" above 3 by any one member in a single day, but we are still deciding if even 3 is too many!

We recently had one member make 68 gallery posts in a single day, and that really started the Tyrannical Approach to handling things.

I'm sorry I didn't send a message more promptly.

I guess I should PM the other two members who had images removed in the last few hours  :gum:

Well you've just deleted my picture again.
Two can play that game, I've now deleted all my pictures.
Hopefully I can delete my account too.

Yes.

That would have been 4 in one day.

If 3 in a day is not enough for you, then I can only say that the idea is to limit everyone to 3 in a day, not everyone except you.

I hope you don't leave over a 3 gallery post per day limit, but we need to establish things and it would be wrong to start a 3 per day limit and then make an exception immediately on the first day  :police:

Please don't react like this. This is childish. (oops, maybe you're a child, panzer....boy?)

"any images beyond the first post in a single day must wait until another person has posted something"
I had waited until someone had posted something then re-uploaded my missing pic, it got deleted again.
If you want to treat your content providers in this arbitrary and opaque manner, expect them to withdraw their content.
I could care less about someone uploading 68 pics in a day, good on them for efficient use of their upload window.

I deleted one and left 3 posted, and you re-posted the 4th.

So I unapproved it.

In deleting all your images, there is now nothing to point to and say "Count these" - but I assure you it was purely the fact that it was 4 images and not the waiting between posting  (that part is still under review, and may be removed from the guidelines)  In fact, you are still welcome to help shape the guidelines.

I would welcome the views of people who disagree more than those who agree completely!  We are trying to find the best way to deal with a growing problem and we knew there would be some resentment, but this is going to happen, one way or another.  If you have ideas to improve upon a limit of 3 posts per day, or our ways of dealing with it, please post them!

Hello. I posted yesterday 4 images. In my gallery there are, but have the label "Picture not Approved". I am reading now that only 3 images are allowed to post per day. If I delete one of them the other 3 will be approved?

Hi,

I just had a peek at the gallery and saw zero images awaiting approval.

We assigned a couple people specifically to deal with the gallery and they have been doing a fine job, so far  (I do not handle that part of the site's admin activities).

Hopefully one of them will know what is going on and reply here soon.  Sorry for the inconvenience and the confusion...

Thank you very much  for replying. I have delete them all 4 and I posted again only one, but again has the label not  approved. I leave it in my gallery to see yourself. Thanks again.

OK, that one worked.  If you want to post the others I can get them taken care of as well.

Sorry for the confusion, I really don't know what could have happened.  I don't think my cat had anything to do with it - she was getting in trouble elsewhere at the time!

Now it's OK. Thank you Sockratease and buy  your cat a toy mouse, to make sure she 'll  not mesh with "Chaos"!  ;D

Hello everyone as i am a new member of this forum i found this forum very interesting .Thanks...

Oh hey folks, just new.. er, posted more then 3 images just now without having read this thread, sorry for that, I think i posted 6, I can delete 3 or if you wish you can do it.
Is it an issue of bandwidth? or simply folks posting too much, for too much sake?

anyhow, I do apologise again

Hi Pangaea and welcome to the forums! Hope you enjoy your stay here. I've approved three of your images and deleted the other three, more or less in random order. The reason for the three image posting limit is very well described by sockratease in the first post in this topic. Main reason is to prevent "image spamming" which has happened a couple of times recently. Hope you understand

oops. just like Pangea I have spent some time upping most of my images from last year. Just delete all but three and I will up more later. :S
I do fully agree with the originally posted idea, that of flooding. Might I even suggest the recent images to be expanded to say 10 or 20? Just throwing it out there I have no idea of any technical limitations.

To me the 3 or any other (reasonable )number is fine  but  is needed to make evident and clear the limit

I mean reading this post on this board become evident but there is so much else to read on the Fractal  forum

and for who (as often myself) make often series of image the solution seems simple :
chose 1 (or even 2) and in the comment field explain that are part of a series visible on HERE LINK

There are so much places were upload unlimited quantity of images even without limit for image or file size
(i.e fickr with a pro  account allow batch uploading and give unlimited storage space,or for free on Deviantart you may upload how much you want )

BUT and this for the mod, is badly needed a clear advice, visible when uploading about the limit because if obviously upload 68 imagine is obviously is a abuse ( or at best a misunderstanding of the scope of the gallery)  4 or 5 may seems reasonable as 3 or 2

sorry for the double post but is for a message i prefer separate

i would consider differently images with parameters included in the comment field and that without

in the first case who post is also sharing also the HOW TO and i will avoid to put a limit to that

What you have to keep in mind is that this site began as a discussion only forum.

Images crept in, but were always externally hosted.  Our bandwidth is limited, as is the database size.

The sites you mention have revenue streams and investors / advertisers.  If you can find us some good investors or advertisers, I'm sure we could oblige your idea!

As for image series, I'd suggest uploading the first in the series to the gallery, and externally hosting and linking to the rest of the series as replies or comments.  That way the whole series is in one place, you have as many as you want in the thread, and stayed within our limited resources.


Nice thought, but there are many who have good reasons for not posting their parameters  (they plan Commercial activities, they have been discourteously plagiarized, etc.).

That is, and always has been, and always will be, up to the Artist to decide.  I can't see giving one special treatment for that reason alone.

I am really, really glad these measures are being put into place- thanks guys, it's been so crazy lately!


PS. Can't believe some people have the audacity to whine that they can't overwhelm a forum with zillions of (uninteresting!) images everyday..

This doesn't concern me much as I didn't upload more than two or three images here (if at all? - maybe all of them were external links)

But my input to this, despite that, would be:

- 3 image limit sounds good
- though also make more than the most recent 4 images viewable. Rather do 10-20 or something.
- instead of having to go through all those images and delete them, it would be more convenient for BOTH the mods AND the uploaders if this was checked on before uploading. Then, when ever somebody TRIES to upload a fourth image, they just get an error message, before wasting their own bandwidth (or that of the forum), that they have to wait a day until uploading again.

i see what i can do about an informative message when uploading, it has to be somewhere in the templates ;)

you all know ? we are hosting more than 10.000 images right now !!!! and the growth as stated in an earlier post ist exponential, more people upload more, soon there will be the day when i have to randomly remove 1gig or more of images, because my server cant bare it, or i cant finance it, i have to talk with the provider about extending webspace, right now we have 10gigs, which seems huge, but 100gigs would make me more comfortable ( and this would still not allow of posting full-hd images )

my plans of creating a living out of this is forming in my head, and it certainly includes high quality image hosting, and merchandise production, but do not calculate this in before 5 years (!!!)

it is a thriving forum, and it is great, but it may happen that we even have to close down registrations of new users, or make the forum hidden for guests, because many rude people show up, and i see it all getting out of hands

and please consider that all of the work ( approving users, approving images, managing posts... ) is done by a relatively huge admin team, and they do it in their spare time, so we are dependent  on a simple self organisation of this forum, otherwise we couldnt bare it ....

sure, new users think, what ? limitations ? i dont know this, youtube allows hosting of everything, and facebook allows me to upload my hole crappy digicam folders without complaining, but THIS FORUM IS GENERATING A REVENUE OF EXACTLY 15€ a month! (by now ) since aproximately one year, and i did spent at least 5 years of hosting for 30€ a month without any income!!!!  :police:

and do not even think about clicking as hell on the banners ....

fully agree!

mostly the more images someone posts, the less interesting each of it is (very subjective observation)

Here we are talking about images locally hosted here and posted in the Galleries

But what about posting images hosted elsewhere ?

If someone want show his images at better resolution or bigger size can't just do it ?

There are limitation or rules about ?

PS
 i hope i did not give to some troll the idea to post in the same topic a few hundreds png at 8000x6000
Obviously also for images hosted elsewhere should be some reasonable limit of size and quantity

..just asking i am new to this forum that is fascinating but also a labyrinth

I think the problem is the sheer number of images, not the data traffic. Many of us catch up with FF via the "most recent posts" and pretty much since last year it's been page after page of same-y Mandelbulb images.

There are two benefits to limiting to 1 per day or 3 per week or something: not only will be feed become manageable again, but more importantly the average quality will go up!! If you've only got one image to submit today, it'll probably be your best one rather than the 14 other ones which look similar...

@photocomix
you are always allowed to put standard links to the high quality images in the description of your gallery posting, using single-externally hosted images would lead to a destroyed gallery when those externally hosted images are gone ( due to whatever reason)... you can use standard BBCODE in the description of your image!

@cKleinhuis

Thank , i was no thinking much to the galleries ,posting variations of the same image in the gallery usually will not do much sense , but may be different for a more technical discussion

Anyway in case  post just the links without displaying images in that case is fine for me

OK, my 5 cents...

I don't see the need to post more than one image per day.
If you generate more images you have put too little effort into them and failed to "kill your darlings".
...and the quality suffers...

Of course I talk about "artistic" images here, images to illustrate new ideas and theories might need many at one time, but in those cases there is always the possibility to attach the images to the post (?)

That's why I suggested posting your externally hosted images as comments in the gallery.

If they are posted as comments in the gallery itself, and not the threads created in the forum by the gallery, they will not clutter the recent posts section, and you can have all you want posted, at almost any resolution you want.

This plan would work especially well for those "series" you mentioned.

Just upload one image within the normal size limits, then "comment" on the image with your externally hosted images using the [img] tag to display them.

Hope that helps.

Cool !

just use the description of the image

But wouldn't that would clog the recent posts area and defeat the purpose   :hmh:

That's why I prefer the gallery comments for multiple image posts, especially high resolution images. High resolution images distort the whole recent posts page   :police:

why should it? linked images in the description are part of one gallery entry! or did i get something wrong here?  :hmh:

The description gets posted in the recent posts page, while comments do not.

So posting huge amounts of images in the comments wont inhibit reading recent posts  (lots of images take a long time to load, and large images distort the tables on the page they appear).

So if we want to both allow mass image posting, or high resolution image posting, that would be the only way I can see which would not "pollute" the recent posts page.

i use http://www.fractalforums.com/index.php?action=unread for checking the news, and that would be fine, but recent posts show the bodies ... hmm :(

ahhh, now i get it! like christian i use the list, so i didn't get your point Sockratease.
in this case a comment would be the better choice...  ;D

To be honest i am only too  happy to be limited to one a day..sure I could spam away endlessly (fragmentarium pumps out huge images in about 15 seconds flat)  and fill up all this virtual space but unless you guys find more money and more online storage space the continued growth and popularity of this site is only going to lead to even greater space problems in the future.. I guess the image limitation runs into difficulty when someone is using images to describe a process or similar but there must be a simple way around that..

what is da rush ??...why is it so Necessary to post more den 3 images a day ??..what's so important dat it can't wait a day or two ???...so many other site are available ??...what is so compellin ??....I'm grateful ta be a member of a forum dat has da worlds most knowable coders n fractal artist...so much info contained here!!....most valuable resource fer fractals...RIGHT??
  Thanks ta all who makes dis all possible...yer efforts are so appreciated !!!****  YEA FRACTAL FORUM
 :o
maybe a new topic for compulsive obsessive display disorder..hee ;D

Just to be clear, the 3-picture limit doesn't apply to the images showcase forum, just the gallery, right? I didn't even notice the gallery existed until just now. Am I right to assume that the gallery is for posting your best works, and quickie pictures should go in the showcase forum?

That is sort of correct.  Quality is irrelevant though.  The Images Showcase is actually a mirror for most sections of the gallery, but images can be posted there directly too.  If posting images in the forum directly, it's best to use an external image host.  The only limit on externally hosted images is that of common sense and courtesy.  You don't want to go posting a dozen images back to back just because it dominates our recent posts page and is rude.  And you don't want to use the forum itself to host images as attachments because of the size limitations  (attachments are limited to small size and are meant to be used only for low resolution examples to accompany a discussion or perhaps for parameter files and the like).

Hope that clarifies things.

Thanks for asking and I look forward to seeing your stuff   O0

Ah, so if I post in the gallery, it will automatically go into the forum as well? Cool.

In most sections, yes.

I believe the exceptions are user galleries and a few of the ones that we never noticed don't mirror   :embarrass:

oops  :-\ as a nube I have to apologize, I didn't realize this was such an issue, I posted a few images immediately without realizing 4 images at once might be considered a flood or that I may bump someone elses pic before they've had any exposure, I also didn't quite get how the catagories work, I thought they would be in my gallery but now I see that none of the images I posted are in my gallery, again, oops.

If the admin/moderator had the ability - it would be nice if they could allow one per day to a general category and perhaps 4 or 5 to a personal gallery or maybe cue them so they don't all come online at once, a round robin affair or delay pending review? Anyways, I feel a bit silly for breaking what is a now an obvious rule, I do hope that the images I did post are worthy. If you must delete them then so be it, no hard feelings.

Maybe the initial posting of all images should be in users personal galleries only, then categorized from there :beer:

the posting limit was set aside during the annual competition, you just remindet me to reset it to one image a day ;)
no harm done, hello and welcome to the forums!

tnx  :D I guess I sneaked a few in just at the right time, can I reassign those images to my gallery or would I have to remove them and upload again to the right place ?

images can not be moved between public gallery and personals, you would have to remove em and reupload, consider that private galleries are not get posted to the forums

Weird, a posting limit ! hahaha ... now mad poster will have to choose their best mad pic ! ^^
2,5 pics by day seems good to me, a 0,5 pic will put some suspens! hahaha  :hurt:

"You have exceeded your maximum upload per day. Upload limit per day is 1" it's toooo smallllllllll ... i've made a lot of funny stuff  :'(
i am even not be able to post an half pic  :D

Obviously you were not here during the days when this policy was initiated.  Trust me - it is NEEDED!

One a day is plenty.

This is not Deviant Art or some other such site.  The gallery here is a side show, meant only for people's best works.

We have limited bandwidth and storage space, so this is the best solution.

You can always host the images elsewhere and hotlink them in a thread of your images like Pauldelbrot does in his Mandelbrot Safari type threads.

There are plenty of discussion threads you can contribute to if you feel the need to post here so strongly   :-*

I understand completly ! ... i don't want to spam with all my pics.
as i never put any of my creations on the web, here seemed to be the best place to start.  :embarrass:

@ kea248

The gallery posting limit is one per day. If that was the info you wanted.

Cheers  :)

I haven't been posting here in a while and forgot all about the posting limits.
Just recently I posted 3 images at once, then another instance I posted 2 images at once to the gallery

Just to say sorry about that, feel free to delete any images you want, and I will make sure to only post one image max per day.

No problem, in normal cases you would have seen a message that you were posting more than allowed. We set the maximum amount to 9 due to the contest. Today we noticed and set it back to one. So it should be like normal again.

This was spam back in 2015.  It would appear that the user is still on the forum.

 :hmh: :'(

Wow...I just now read over this thread.
I'm still new and didn't know just how limited
your resources are.

I'm grateful you allowed many images at once to be posted when I started.

There are a LOT more I can post
that show improvements way beyond previous efforts,
so would 5 images/day be OK?

This thread is about uploading images to the forum.

It does not refer to linking images from an outside server.

I like this post very much. I will definitely be back. Hope that I can read more insightful posts then. Will be sharing your knowledge with all of my associates!