Large format etiquette question

Greetings,

 

I have participated for many years, but recently I have come up with

an etiquette question. I recently put in an answer to a question and

upoloaded a picture to illustrate my point. I really would like to

see postings have more pictures in them when appropriate for

illustrative purposes. This photo.net site makes it so easy to do

this in a question or an answer.

 

My question is this: Does this slow down the loading of a string of

answers and make it difficult/obnoxiuos for other folks who may have

slow connections? I have cable and there seems to be no effect.

Should I not do this? Also howcome more people don't use pictures in

their posts? Wouldn't this be a great way to illustrate our points,

show the equipment in question, illustrate the technique being

discussed, share the beautiful picture referenced etc?

 

Scott

I'm a relative new comer to the group, so I may not be the right person to offer a view (pun intended) on your question, Scott. But, I, too, would like to see more images being used to illustrate the points of discussion.

 

Unfortunately, we may not always have an image that illustrates a point well, and having the image scanned and available online probably reduces the "hit rate" even more. Then, there's the question of whether the posted image needs to be created with a large-format camera to be group-appropriate, or if a digital snap would be OK.

 

In the final analysis, it may come down to how much trouble and effort each individual is inclined to go to in order to make their contributions better understood.

Scott, I frequently experience difficulty entering an answer to someone's question on this forum. Many times, I need to re-type my post, re-enter my password, or my posting becomes lost in cyber space. Photo.net seems to be a busy website almost all hours of the day and night. I don't know of it's my computer or my phone line, but next week, I am installing a DSL line with the hopes of correcting the problem. Yes, having to wait until a complete picture appears on the screen is frustrating, to say the least. Sometimes, I cannot make out what the sender is trying to convey even after the picture appears on my screen . However, I don't believe that it is a matter of ethics, if the picture is being used to illustrate a problem, and it is difficult to describe the problem in words. Sometimes, It does appear that the sender is merely attempting to show off his/her image. That is not un-ethical, but it is annoying.

Scott,

 

I'm glad you brought this one up. Personally I don't have a problem with pics being used to better convey a message. You're right, this site does make it so easy, one should expect a lot more of that feature being used. Eugene has touched upon one problem with it though, some do appear to rather show off (in my view they've not) than support their point.

 

What I have a huge problem with is what I would surely put in the ethics category: all too many times, posters don't even try to address a thread, but rather wander around a subject which turns into a complete waste of time for those of us who open threads because it seemed interesting (I'd like to see all to reply to the question at the top and forget at that moment about the rest they know, or think they do). This of course gets at times much worse: some use this forum to simply attack other ideas, thoughts, and contributions in general. They sure are full of themselves and no one could possibly come up with a sure way to filter all that BS automatically. So we have to live with it, unless we manage to agree one day to sharing our knowladge in its purest sense.

 

As I've said many times before, this site is great and I hope it'll never cease to operate. I just hope that those who can't follow a thread as posted, should at least refrain themselves from throwing garbage at the rest of us.

Just wandering through the forums on a Saturday. If the picture was posted as a link instead of being actually displayed in the answer, that would probably be helpful to people with slow connections. If the poster told the size of the pic then the reader could choose whether or not he has the time to let it download. Just my $.02.

Scott,

 

I've wondered this question myself. I've recently uploaded some examples in response to questions but I seem to be in the minority and am unsure what the general feeling is.

I am relatively new and also wondering if one has to build a cyber presence before being accepted as a contributer. Kind of like stepping on someone's toes who is an authority here. I'm not losing any sleep, however, I'm happy to report.

 

cheers

If the image is small enough to be displayed in the thread there should be no problem even to those, like myself, still on a 56k dialup. No need to wait for the images to load since the text will load first and you can scroll down through the thread, if you are in a hurry, then go back and look at the images.

A picture if needed to illustrate a point will definitely help, but like we all know unless we have some control over the file sizes we may cause problems with those having slow connections. Another point to make is a picture more than 80kb is definitely not required(in most cases), so like one of the local photo sites we have here we should have enforce this...

The below is from offstone.com

 

Remember that the file size limit of each image file is 80kb.

Please try to crop your photos to 500 pixels less, in width or height, whichever is longer.

Pls restrict to one image per thread and refrain from posting too many similars of the same picture.

Eugene - the problem you are having with lost posts is because the site has multiple servers. When it takes a while to compose a response, you might end up on another server that doesn't know that you've already logged in.

 

When that happens, just use the back button to get back to your response entry screen, then you can select and copy the text, move forward, paste and submit it.

 

Sometimes just going back and hitting submit again works, too.

I find the response regarding straying from topic interesting, given the original query in this thread.

Thanks Ralph, it usually takes a long time for me to type my response, since I am a hunt-and-peck typist, and I find that I often need to re-state my sentence in order to make my response more understandable. I am aware that this often necessitates the need to re-sign. So, I go through the sign in procedure all over again. Then, my posting finally appears on the screen, and I hit "submit". Nothing happens, so I hit the back arrow. Now a new screen comes up, and I am un-able to recover the posting that I just spent a half-hour typing. Lost in cyberspace. I did not have this problem with the old Greenspun LF website.

Thanks, I found all of this helpful. What I hope to see and use then is pertinent small fast loading pictures if appropriate. Small size, compressed jpegs...

I quite often inline photos to my response in other forums, but

don't do it here. There was a thread a while back where the

majority of people expressed the opinion that they preferred not

to have images because they read the forum by email or over a

slow connection. I respect that (mostly :-)

 

If you do want to post an image, the best way is to post a plain

text link. That way it is clearest to email readers, and there is

less chance of messing up the URL. If you inline the image,

using width and height tags will minimise disruption to the rest

of the page - i.e. the rest of the page can load, format and be

displayed while your picture fills an empty box.

<p>Well, some of my thoughts about pictures in this forum. (I am the moderator, so ...)</p>

<p>First, keep the picture(s) size down in order to preserve bandwidth. While many of us have fast and fixed-price connections, you cannot take it for granted. Someone mentioned 80 Kb, which should suffice for most matters.<br>

Second, I'm sure that a lot of questions/answers would benefit from some kind of illustration. There are many threads which have lots of "fuzzy" answers due to not using this feature. An illustration of the answer would in many cases make a lot of comments unneccessary.</p>

<p>OK, uploading or linking to pictures does take knowing your html and knowing how to manipulate pictures in your computer. This forum is not the place to learn about these things, but there are numerous other sites where you can learn about html and computer graphics.</p>

<p>Last, this is not a forum for photo critique. I absolutely don't mind nice pictures, but if someone uses this forum as a place to post his pictures without making any real LF photography point with them, apart from being his/her nice work, that post/thread will probably be removed. Besides, given the first "rule" (max. size of say 80 Kb.) it will be very hard to tell if it's LF or 35mm.</p>

<p>Please note that I'm now waving the whip on you here. I just thought that the moderators opinion would make things easier for you all. So, if you can "throw" in a picture of that strange lens or whatever that you are querying about, please go ahead. You will most probably get a much better answer.</p><div></div>

Hey Neil,

 

Ditto