Picture Threads
From Barbelith
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Being polite
Some threads, notably in the Conversation, have recently become picture-heavy: they contain more pictures than text. This could be for one of a number of reasons: the threads could be pictures of Barbelith members, or a series of thematically linked images taking the place of text.
In any case, it is generally considered polite to write (PICS) in your topic title when starting a thread you intend mainly to contain pictures. This is to tell people with slow connections that they may not want to access this thread unless they have some spare time, and also presumably to advertise that it is a picture-heavy thread for those who enjoy them. If a thread becomes dominated by pictures, it may also have the title changed by moderators to include the word (PICS).
Bandwidth theft
Users of Barbelith are often concerned that large pictures in picture threads will kick up the bandwidth costs of Barbelith, and drive Tom into a debtors' prison. In fact, bandwidth costs come from whoever is hosting the images; that is, whoever's page the image is displayed on and linked to. Of course, they may be less than happy to find that their image has been linked to and is now running up their usage bill, especially if they are not asked or credited. A common action of people who notice this is happening is to change the image path, or put up a rude note about bandwidth theft where the image used to be.
Image size
Links to overlarge images may lead to the frame borders of the page breaking. This forces people to scroll horizontally, which affects usability, and makes text far harder to read. If the image you are linking to is large, it is often a good idea to resize it, by inserting (for example) width="250" into the HTML of the link to the image.
Cookies
Cookies are delicious and nutritious. However, they are also often automatically downloaded by browsers when a site is accessed, for example to look at an image. Adjusting the security settings on your browser will alert you to the presence of cookies. It is considered dubious form to link to an image that will attempt to download a cookie onto the hard drive of anyone who views it, as cookies can do various undesirable things. Best check the site you are linking to. Of course, most cookies are harmless little things, but it is still the insertion onto somebody's hard drive of something they are not expecting or planning for.
In a perfect world, the process for posting an image on Barbelith would probably be:
1) Gain permission from content owner. 2) Establish cookie situation. 3) Resize image if necessary in HTML, or (even better) download image, resize and upload to own web site, then link there while acknowledging content owner, thus also solving cookie issues at a stroke.
This is not a perfect world, but nevertheless checking the provenance, size and cookie-downloading potential of an image before linking to it will make life more pleasant for other users of Barbelith and reduce work for the moderators.
