And you all wonder why I have to make the restrictions I do...

Rich, after your last post, it's quite obvious that rationale is rarely your motive for your decisions. I try to offer up some valid points for consideration and somehow you want to paint a picture that I implied that there are no respectable members left. I have a significant amount of respect for a lot of the members here. I also have a lot of disdain for several of the members here. Disdain that is shared by most with you being the obvious exception.

As for my analogy, I figured it would be lost on you. Heck, most of what anyone says is lost on you and ends up being wasted energy. You can attempt to continue to paint a rosy picture all you want about how Fauna is going but I don't buy it. No doom and gloom here. Fauna will always have it's place. However, Fauna will not always have it's importance. It's not what it was and it continues, under your direction and approval I might add, to stumble down that path. Your "experimentation" as to what will work is certainly not helping you obtain any sort of real credibility with people. Not that that was ever your goal but certainly one most people would want to obtain so it would be reasonable to assume.

As for my description of the GGC.....you're going to have to do better than that. Once again, a far cry from what most people would consider to be rational. I simply stated that you need to earn a GGC. I still hold true to that statement. While you may hand out a GGC initially, it is still something that must be earned through hard work and satisfied customers. I guess I should be surprised that I would have to explain that portion of my prior analogy, then again maybe I shouldn't be.

Rich, continue to solicit the funds of the Ed Clark's of the world. What is that saying regarding the company you keep? It's probably going to hold true. I've done my best to offer up a critique to you in a nice way. I have also been more direct. But, I reckon you said it best Rich.....

Originally Posted by Webslave

It's a complete waste of time. Sorry your analogy was wasted....

Griz

Rich, You started this thread by asking for ideas about what to do to prevent people from deleting/editing pictures.

What do you think of my suggestion to create a dedicated, BOI only, Fauna hosted gallery with no editing or deleting possible? As I said, pictures get deleted for any number of reasons when hosted on outside servers. But given the significance of attachments posted on BOI threads, having them hosted on an internal server would be a real benefit to the community as a whole.

Originally Posted by monkeywrench133

Rich, You started this thread by asking for ideas about what to do to prevent people from deleting/editing pictures.

What do you think of my suggestion to create a dedicated, BOI only, Fauna hosted gallery with no editing or deleting possible? As I said, pictures get deleted for any number of reasons when hosted on outside servers. But given the significance of attachments posted on BOI threads, having them hosted on an internal server would be a real benefit to the community as a whole.

I could actually set up a section of the photo gallery for that purpose, I think, but I'd have to check on it.

The problem with this, however, will be the "leading a horse to water" syndrome. Someone is going to have to enforce such a rule, and then have to figure out what to do with the expected violations when people post linked images from photo host sites, their own site, or some other source. Which means editing or deleting those posts, which is really not a good idea considering that volatile legal nature that can take place within the BOI.

The BOI is protected against editing by members, which means attachment files cannot be edited or deleted neither. That would realistically be the most efficient method to deal with the problem, but again, we run into the enforcement issue. Many people, out of just not knowing the procedure, will not do it that way.

The situation I brought up, though, was not actually concerning the BOI. It was those situations where members will spitefully delete their text and images (yeah, I know, they OWN their images, but still, the intent is what counts), from posts thereby making those posts useless.

Unfortunately, it puts me in the position of just ignoring the problem, or reducing the permissions to a lowest common denominator status. In other words, setting the permissions to a worst case scenario.

I probably could get my programmer involved to set it up so that each individual forum has it's own permission set for editing and deleting, but this version we are now on is rather old and needs to be upgraded sometime in the near future. So any changes along those lines would have to wait until after the upgrade, otherwise I have to pay for that hack twice.

Originally Posted by Griz

Rich, after your last post, it's quite obvious that rationale is rarely your motive for your decisions. I try to offer up some valid points for consideration and somehow you want to paint a picture that I implied that there are no respectable members left. I have a significant amount of respect for a lot of the members here. I also have a lot of disdain for several of the members here. Disdain that is shared by most with you being the obvious exception.

As for my analogy, I figured it would be lost on you. Heck, most of what anyone says is lost on you and ends up being wasted energy. You can attempt to continue to paint a rosy picture all you want about how Fauna is going but I don't buy it. No doom and gloom here. Fauna will always have it's place. However, Fauna will not always have it's importance. It's not what it was and it continues, under your direction and approval I might add, to stumble down that path. Your "experimentation" as to what will work is certainly not helping you obtain any sort of real credibility with people. Not that that was ever your goal but certainly one most people would want to obtain so it would be reasonable to assume.

As for my description of the GGC.....you're going to have to do better than that. Once again, a far cry from what most people would consider to be rational. I simply stated that you need to earn a GGC. I still hold true to that statement. While you may hand out a GGC initially, it is still something that must be earned through hard work and satisfied customers. I guess I should be surprised that I would have to explain that portion of my prior analogy, then again maybe I shouldn't be.

Rich, continue to solicit the funds of the Ed Clark's of the world. What is that saying regarding the company you keep? It's probably going to hold true. I've done my best to offer up a critique to you in a nice way. I have also been more direct. But, I reckon you said it best Rich.....

Griz

Well gee, Bob, now you are bordering on antagonism.... Watch your step, please....

Rich, I'm not up on programing, but would it be possible to set it up so that when someone tried to attach an image to a post in the BOI, it would only allow it if the image was linked from Fauna's server? Is that what you were talking about with the "permission set" stuff?

As far as threads outside of the BOI, my point was this: pictures get deleted, intentionally or not, its going to happen. In most cases, no one is going to know, or care why the image isn't there. So, while it may have been done in spite, that message will be lost. And I don't know that every time a image is deleted from a thread, that the thread is then rendered useless. There is usually enough content to make up for the lack of the image. Simply put, I think its something you can spend a lot of time and energy on with little or nothing to show for it.

Originally Posted by WebSlave

It was those situations where members will spitefully delete their text and images (yeah, I know, they OWN their images, but still, the intent is what counts), from posts thereby making those posts useless.

This raises an interesting point, which was brought up indirectly earlier. Is the deletion of IMAGES (attached or hosted) a problem in and of itself...or only if spiteful and intended to reduce the value of the post? I, and others, have already admitted to removing images for various reasons that did not include spite or disruption.

Originally Posted by monkeywrench133

Rich, I'm not up on programing, but would it be possible to set it up so that when someone tried to attach an image to a post in the BOI, it would only allow it if the image was linked from Fauna's server? Is that what you were talking about with the "permission set" stuff?

Attached images cannot be removed from the BOI..the potential problem is hosted images that can be deleted from the host site (ie photobucket account). These images are entered in the body of the post as [IMG]xxxxxxxxx[/IMG], so there is no step necessary to "attach" them. Once removed from the source, the code becomes invalid and the pic disappears from anywhere it is posted (or, if a different pic in that account is given the same ID, it will replace the original). I don't know if there is a way to restrict IMG images in the BOI without impacting the rest of the site.

Originally Posted by hhmoore

This raises an interesting point, which was brought up indirectly earlier. Is the deletion of IMAGES (attached or hosted) a problem in and of itself...or only if spiteful and intended to reduce the value of the post? I, and others, have already admitted to removing images for various reasons that did not include spite or disruption.

Well, it depends, I guess. Intent would play a big part in making that determination. Probably the age of the post itself would play a big part in how it would be interpreted. Older posts would likely be considered as cleanup maintenance, and brand new ones, in a less complimentary view.

Yeah, I can see the point about it being a small issue to worry over, concerning photos, but how about the text being taken out such as happened with Sara Gatto's (sp?) posts? Certainly that leaves little to the imagination to figure out what is going on there. The problem is that the permissions to allow attachments or photos to be removed from a post is tied in with the permission to edit the entire post, text and all.

I guess spitefullness displayed in such a manner just rubs me the wrong way. It is done with the intent to harm this site, and I guess sometimes I just feel overly protective of it. But if no one else is concerned, then heck, why should I be? If you all think no harm, no foul, then so be it. I can live with that....

Thanks for hashing this out with me.

Originally Posted by hhmoore

Attached images cannot be removed from the BOI..the potential problem is hosted images that can be deleted from the host site (ie photobucket account). These images are entered in the body of the post as [IMG]xxxxxxxxx[/IMG], so there is no step necessary to "attach" them. Once removed from the source, the code becomes invalid and the pic disappears from anywhere it is posted (or, if a different pic in that account is given the same ID, it will replace the original). I don't know if there is a way to restrict IMG images in the BOI without impacting the rest of the site.

Just about anything is possible with programming, but the problem is going to be educating the public about the difference, and possibly fielding the "why can't I" types of messages that will result. I would suspect that anyone going back to BOI threads at least two years old that had images hosted on another server will no longer be able to be displayed. Especially when a link is for some sort of incriminating evidence on the OP's website. That evidence won't remain there for long.

Not really sure what the answer is to this problem.

If you were to restrict editing to prevent the deletion of photos then you would end up with two conflicting policies. You have the attachment storage limit at differing levels depending on membership. Once the limit is reached, then one either has to upgrade their membership or delete photos. If editing is disabled, then the attachment limit would be reached and the poster would in effect be prohibited from posting pictures at all if they did not elect to upgrade.
The point is you can't have it both ways.

The way I see it is it's a minor annoyance that happens very rarely. Not nearly often enough to warrant a permission change to the entire membership.
Should an individual like Sara decide to delete the text from their posts, then in the end it will just reflect badly on that person to anyone seeing a string of posts by that individual that have all been cleared.

This type of behavior is by far the exception rather than the rule. I wouldn't sweat it at the level it has occurred thus far.