Attention Image Shack users

[Hawkmoon]

I think most members know that including photos in posts on this site requires hosting the photos on an external photo hosting site, such as Photobucket. This forum has no affiliation with any photo hosting site and, in general, we don't really care which one you use.

EXCEPT ...

For whatever reason, Image Shack manages to clutter up photo links with a buch of extraneous information that's a lot more than what is needed to display the photo, and ends with a self-promoting link to itself. We don't like this, and I'm getting VERY tired of editing Image Shack containing posts to remove the extraneous material. I don't know if this is absolutely necessary due to the way Image Shack functions, or if users of Image Shack simply need to be more careful in selecting how they copy their links. Whatever and however, PLEASE START CLEANING UP YOUR LINKS ... IMMEDIATELY.

A recent post reminded me of this. With the substitution of "curly" brackets rather than square brackets, here's what was entered into a recent post from Image Shack:


{URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/825/forumut.jpg/}{IMG}http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/5651/forumut.jpg{/IMG}{/URL}

Uploaded with {URL=http://imageshack.us}ImageShack.us{/URL}


The only part of the above that is needed to properly display the photo was this:


{IMG}http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/5651/forumut.jpg{/IMG}


The advertising part, especially, is a violation of this forum's rules. It is the responsibility of members to ensure that their posts are in compliance with forum rules, so if you use Image Shack, it is YOUR responsibility to ensure that those ads are not included in your posts. We haven't figured out what purpose the other extraneous information in the photo links serves, but we would appreciate it if you would also remove that. Or, better yet, find out how to post your links without bringing the extraneous information in at all.

Thank you for you assistance and cooperation.

[MrAnderson]

Frankly, I'm a little bit surprised by this "directive." As you clearly explained, "including photos in posts on this site requires hosting the photos on an external photo hosting site." As such, you would remove the only benefit the hosting site gets from us for using their site on this forum? What if they decided *this forum* can't host pictures on their site because we remove the "ad" link? It seems a very small price to pay for the hosting they are providing and the enhanced experience the forum users get from it.

Regards,
Dave

[Spyros]

First of all... that would be a valid point, except that to my knowledge at least, Image Shack is the only image host who does this. Photobucket, Tiny Pic and Flickr don't. I really don't think these sites need ANY advertising. The huge numbers of visitors they have ensures that they all appear at or near the top of all search engines.

On my PC, if I Google 'Image hosting', Image Shack pops up first.

And the above experiment brings us to my second point: back-links. Google, Yahoo and all the other search engines use 'bots' that browse all web pages, to catalog them. Then the search engines need a system to help them determine the ranking that every page needs to have. Common factors used for this, are the number of visitors the page has, and the number of links it has to and from other websites. It helps if these other sites are also popular, like internet forums.

Got it? Check the code Hawk posts further up. It's a link to the picture host's page. What this means is that the picture host is deemed a more popular destination by the search engines.

Bear in mind that since pictures are hosted outside the forum, ALL picture hosts benefit from directly linked images, since each image opening on your forum page counts as a 'visit' to the picture host. This is fair, since that's where the picture is! Image Shack's trick adds a bonus on top of the simple visit gain.

Finally, another factor in ratings is how many times the page's name is used. I wrote it three times in this post, Hawk did more, and crucially, there's an extra bonus if the name is used in the title of the page... which it is, here.

[MrAnderson]

Cool. Thanks for the explanation, Spyros! I just wonder how m1911.org would work without advertising? ;)

And, like I said, I hope this doesn't come back and bite us! :(

Regards,
Dave

[Hawkmoon]

MrAnderson, I perhaps should have mentioned that a couple or three years back we had a problem with some sort of malware being buried in the extraneous "stuff" in Image Shack links. It has been awhile and I don't remember the specifics, but I was reminded of it a day or two ago when I found a very recent discussion on another firearms forum about the fact that they DO NOT ALLOW links from external photo sites, for the reason that Image Shack crashed their board with some sort of virus in the links.

I'm only a moderator here ... John is the owner, and ultimately how to best protect this site is his call. I am asking Image Shack users to accept responsibility for their links. If that doesn't happen, and we find any more problems with Image Shack junk, we'll be forced to simply not allow Image Shack users to post photos. They would then have to sign on with a different photo host, or forego posting photos entirely. Doesn't matter to me, because I use Photobucket and they don't put anything in the links other than the image.

[John]

Gentlemen, let's please concentrate on the issue we are discussing here.

1. There is a clear rule in this site, that specifies that nobody can use this site as a free advertising space. That means that links which are clearly a promotion of some site, are NOT allowed.

2. Indeed, ImageShack specifies in their rules that: "Changing ImageShack linking codes is prohibited without prior permission." However, ImageShack shows nine (9) different linking codes. Two which are important for our discussions, are the "Direct Link" and the "Forum Code" ones.

In order to better understand what we are talking about, here are the two linking codes, as supplied by IS, for a picture that I uploaded.

Direct Link:

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/2573/elia.gif

and

Forum Code:

{URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/213/elia.gif/}{IMG}http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/2573/elia.gif{/IMG}{/URL}

Uploaded with {URL=http://imageshack.us}ImageShack.us{/URL}

(I have replaced the square brackets with curly ones, so that the code can appear here)

Now, if you check the two linking codes, you will notice that the first one is a direct link to the image, while the second one is the one including the advertising link.

3. Given that per our rules, it is the members responsibility to make sure that their messages comply with our rules, and since IS does provide a linking code without the advertising part, it is the members responsibility to select the proper link to use in here. IS rule is NOT violated (the one which tells you not to change their linking codes), since you are using a linking code that they provide and there is no IS rule telling you that you have to use the linking code with the advertising part. As far as their rules are concerned, you are free to select whichever linking code you wish.

In other words, if you want to use IS as your image hosting company, then it is your obligation to select the proper linking code to use in your messages, according to our Rules here. I do understand that by using that linking code, you need to add the {img} and {/img} tags, before and after the code, while the second code contains the tags automatically. However, the second code is in violation of our rules and you should NOT use it.

It's as simple as that.

I just wonder how m1911.org would work without advertising?

Well, actually, M1911.ORG works without being advertised in any other site. There are a lot of links in other sites to M1911.ORG, but none of them is paid advertising, or sneaky advertising like the one IS is doing.

Yes, we have companies advertising in here, and we get money from this advertising, but that is a fair business practice. We are not forcing anyone to advertise us in another site. So please do not compare apples with oranges.