Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

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Karak Norn Clansman
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Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#1 Post by Karak Norn Clansman »

Breaking News.

I propose that the good members of Ulthuan.net knock their pointy-eared lordly heads together and initiates an image salvage operation to save the very best Photobucket-hosted pictures from inactive members. The works of old masters are in danger of being lost forever, courtesy of Photobucket! See more here for Chaos Dwarf Online's unfolding initiative on the issue:
Image

We risk an almost complete breakdown of continuity in images

With the recent Photobucket trouble we'll have to ask ourselves what legends of old should be targeted for photo backup? This is a disaster to continuity and it seems we have scarce time to act before the old photos go completely unavailable. As of now, it is possible to right-click pictures under lockdown, choose view image in new tab and copy it from there.

Remember that Imageshack has already robbed us of archive material, and the Photobucket strike is much larger in scope. We risk losing almost everything old which new members have stumbled upon through the years, taking inspiration from old masters.

I know I'll not have much time to contribute with in the coming weeks. I must fix some Golden Hat entries today and maybe tomorrow, but I could help some after that, within limitations. If many of us could help some, it would add up. This is not drudgery which anyone wish to do during the summer, but it is now or never, unless Photobucket come to their senses and change direction completely.

Volunteers?

Can we please gather links to the logs and work of inactive members which we'd particularly like to see saved from the looming disaster? Then we could chew through the threads one at a time and avoid redundant double-work by advancing which thread/member we each pick. An all-out manual trawl of the whole log section could maybe be possible, but it would be true slave labour. Realistically, we should target worthy pictures in particular.

If we can establish a link list, then some volunteers could possibly wade through it to save backup copies on their own computer, to be transferred to some free and currently stable photohosting site such as Imgur. From there, we could re-upload some stuff in big chunks with lots of photos.

Please remember that artwork should be saved along with miniature photos.

_____________________________

Let's take tjub as an example. His stuff is particularly easy to find and save for backup, since he has both a compilation of picture links in his market thread and moreover an index in his monster of an army log. On the other hand, there is a lot of stuff to wade through! But it can be done.

We might wish to target long-since inactive members first and foremost, but this wrecking ball strikes at everyone's Photobucket album, active or inactive.

Also, I suppose it could be good if we tried to name the image file after its creator (e.g. "Snotling 01" or "Snotling Ballista 02"), just so it's tagged straight away.
Last edited by Karak Norn Clansman on Sat Jul 01, 2017 9:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
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RE.Lee
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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#2 Post by RE.Lee »

This sucks so bad. Don't see anybody but the most desperate using photobucket from now on. I've moved to Imgur and I've already started changing links in my blog. This will take some time and I understand how most less active users won't be doing the same. Luckily I have a habit of downloading any pictures I like anyway - things like Grey's Elves and Chaos but this is another blow to the warhammer forums community :(
cheers, Lee

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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#3 Post by Shannar, Sealord »

How did I not know about this? Also, crap.
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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#4 Post by SpellArcher »

Thanks for the heads-up KNC. Some of the Photobucket-fuelled threads I've checked are showing the warning image but most not (yet?) and I'm not sure why (it should be said that I'm largely tech-illiterate). While this is bad news for us I can see that it's even worse for CDO with it's huge legacy of P&M.

Personally, I just don't have the time required now to go through the affected threads (even my own, mostly) and attempt to fix them.
RE.Lee wrote: I've moved to Imgur
Suspect I'll be doing this in due course.
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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#5 Post by Karak Norn Clansman »

There is one saving grace before Photobucket goes utterly dark. You can apparently download others' albums, if their privacy lets you see the album:

Image

So some speed is won that way.

I just realized that I for a long time saved links to outstanding works of various kinds much more often than actual pictures. This might turn into a headache...
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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#6 Post by Karak Norn Clansman »

CDO is well into manually salvaging massive amounts of surviving pictures from olden days. Lots more to do, of course. An organized volunteer effort will carry you far.

This is doable if a few members voluntarily sacrifice some days or a week of sparetime. Such a brief but intensive salvage sweep of old worthy pictures can save years and years of accumulated forum content!

Please think of the very best logs you have, and consider saving their images if their owners are inactive at the moment.

Worst of all? This Photobucket mess strikes in the middle of summer! Wanted to spend these hours outside. But long-term it will be worth it. You don't want to be bested by... Dwarfs, do you? :|

PS. Tech-savvy admins of this forum might wish to contact The Red Devil on Lustria Online right away. He might have found a loop-hole to automatically download Photobucket images and transform them into attachments. DS.
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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#7 Post by Shannar, Sealord »

Karak Norn Clansman wrote:|

PS. Tech-savvy admins of this forum might wish to contact The Red Devil on Lustria Online right away. He might have found a loop-hole to automatically download Photobucket images and transform them into attachments. DS.
Now this sounds better. And if there is a way I can help I'd be glad to. I suspect we'll need dark elf help now.

As to doing it manually- I really wish. But it's flat out impossible for me to dedicate more than a few mins a day to that right now.
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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#8 Post by Prince of Spires »

Man, that's awful. I don't really have time to go through all the old blog and collect pictures and re-upload and re-link them. Even doing so for my own plog will be a chore that's going to take some time.
Karak Norn Clansman wrote:|

PS. Tech-savvy admins of this forum might wish to contact The Red Devil on Lustria Online right away. He might have found a loop-hole to automatically download Photobucket images and transform them into attachments. DS.
If this works then that would be amazing. I've tried registrering on lustria so I could contact The Red Devil. But somehow it won't let me... I do have the space online to put the attachments (at least up to a very decent number of them). So that's no issue. As for a technical guy to help out, we indeed need some Dark Elf help I suspect. Or I could see if I can prod Ricold from retirement again for a brief period to help out.

Can anyone contact Red Devil on lustria online to see if we can use his solution on here as well? Or ask him to contact me?

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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#9 Post by SpellArcher »

Prince of Spires wrote:I've tried registrering on lustria so I could contact The Red Devil. But somehow it won't let me...
Yep, just had the same problem Rod.
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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#10 Post by Karak Norn Clansman »

Nicodemus, one of our tech-admins on CDO, was neither able to register. He thought it was because Lustria had moved domains recently.

I PM:ed The Red Devil before going to sleep yesterday, asking him for an E-mail to share with admins of various hobby forums. As soon as I get that info (if I do), I'll try and get this out there on various sites including this one.
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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#11 Post by SpellArcher »

Thanks dude.
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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#12 Post by Prince of Spires »

Thanks for taking the trouble to follow up on this.
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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#13 Post by Karak Norn Clansman »

I've got a response from him, but have not received contact information for you to get in touch with him. It would seem (most understandably!) that he has his hands full at Lustria. He told me he'd E-mail Nicodemus over on CDO. I've asked him again for E-mail or suchlike so that you, and other Warhammer forum admins, can get in touch with him. And most importantly that he writes a tutorial for lots of tech-savvy admins to refer to, because he's bound to get to repeat himself over and over... Will update here ASAP when and if he gives something for you to contact him through. These are hectic times.
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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#15 Post by Daeron »

I'll try to look for a less labour intensive solution. Automatically turning photobucket images into attachments seems like a nice solution, if I can get the code to work, but I think it still requires you to repost every post that has them. I'll try something easier tomorrow.
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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#16 Post by Karak Norn Clansman »

Best of luck! Please tell us how it goes. I can spread the word to other forums if you find a better solution.

The Warhammer's community's online treasures of artwork and hobby inspiration are at stake, and a few tech-savvy lads who happen upon automatic solutions can save vast swathes of golden pictures (and other images as well).
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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#17 Post by SpellArcher »

Bravo Daeron!
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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#18 Post by Daeron »

These are all the posts I could find with a photobucket URL in them. If you know of ANY other URL and linked photobucket image, let me know. It means my scan was incomplete (which might be important to save the images).

Don't fix the images just yet. I'll do a similar assessment over at Druchii and Asrai. If the combined number of images is rather low, then a coded solution might prove slower than fixing the posts by hand. But if it reaches a higher number, I might as well seek a solution for all 3 domains at once.

http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic. ... 84#p157484
http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic. ... 38#p167038
http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic. ... 64#p183364
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Oops
Daeron
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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#19 Post by Daeron »

Scratch that. A new test showed I have at least 8000 posts with a linked image. Whether it is hotlinked is another matter though.
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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#20 Post by Prince of Spires »

@Daeron: any updates here?
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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#21 Post by Daeron »

Sorry for the slow update. I was on a vacation. I have a way to extract all the links to photobucket from our forum, but the list is pretty big.
So I started writing a script that, given a photobucket image link, stores the image locally. If I can get that to work, then at least the images themselves can be saved and uploaded locally (we should have enough space). Then begins the process of changing all posts to link to their new location. It's all a bit of ducktape, but since it's only a 1-time change it should be good enough.
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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#22 Post by Prince of Spires »

No problem. I was mainly thinking if I should start manually updating my painting thread (and host the pictures in a new location) or if I should wait a bit longer. I'll go for option 2 then :)
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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#23 Post by Karak Norn Clansman »

Stopgap fix to Photobucket images under lockdown (my emboldening), from Warseer's Captain Brown:
Gentlemen,

As some long term PLOGers and cornerstones of some of the Painting Log areas, the member Ash has come up with a fix.

"With the Photobucket pictures not showing; if you go into edit post and insert ~original between .jpg and [/img] as in .jpg~original[/img] then the original picture will show again..." and it works!

I have asked him to share that in the stickies at the top of each painting forum, but thought I would pass that on to you who had large PLOGs blocked in the meantime.

Cheers,

Phil
Those who have not yet replaced their own Photobucket pictures with identical pictures hosted elsewhere, may want to scour their army blogs and other hobby threads. However,  adding ~original to the address lines will not make the linked images compatible with more advanced solutions!

Note however that we cannot consider this a permanent solution, only a stopgap option. It is possible that Photobucket may come to block this fixture, transform itself beyond recognition or go down altogether as a site.
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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#24 Post by Daeron »

The first test runs of my programs seem to work. I should be able to automatically scan the entire history of the forum and attempt to download the pictures from photobucket.... provided they still exist (which isn't always the case). The second step will be to reintegrate them in the post with a new url from a new host.

The actual download itself didn't prove too difficult, but considering the quantity there is to process, I'm adding detailed step-by-step analysis and logging.

I hope to find the time and energy to complete this in October.
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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#26 Post by RE.Lee »

Cheers Daeron, that would be great! [-o<
cheers, Lee

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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#27 Post by SpellArcher »

Yes, thanks very much Daeron. My pics are still showing, probably due to the odd way I posted them. For example, here:

http://ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php? ... &start=150

Are there many others posted the same way and if so will you re-do them or not do you think?
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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#28 Post by Karak Norn Clansman »

Update: Photobucket has reverted their pay policy and restored most of their old 3rd party content for free. This means most of the dead threads on hobby sites such as this one can be enjoyed once again, without moderators or users doing anything.

Image

While this is a fortunate boon to hobby forums, it should be remembered that many imagehosting sites have folded or changed beyond recognition (incl. Imageshack), while the once-default choice of Photobucket itself has proved unstable. While the large website of Imgur remains dependable for the moment being, things can change fast, as we saw with Photobucket. Digital storage is insecure and fragile, yet brilliant in its outreach.

As such, do consider these following two steps to backup hobby pictures and artworks for public view:

1. Upload your own hobby pictures into one or more Google Drive folders (or similar), set access to share, and insert a link to this folder in your hobby log(s) and showcase thread(s). That way, even if whatever imagehosting site(s) you are using folds in the future, or play 3rd party hosting rodeo, others may still be able to access your work, admire it and be inspired through this backup folder, even if you yourself have gone inactive.


2. Search out those old treasure threads which you know of, where masterclass work of conversions, sculpting, scenery making, miniature painting or artwork were created by very talented people. Save a selection of these images yourself, upload to both one or more imagehosting sites like Imgur, and to a Google Drive folder. Then you can either pool your and others' backup folders of the best of the best in some common thread, or perhaps commit thread necromancy (if this is not frowned upon on a particular forum) where you share links to these backup albums and folders in the thread in question - or send these links to an active moderator to have inserted into the first post of inactive treasure threads (if threadomancy happens to be frowned upon).


Note that this can be organized as a group endeavour, where a bunch of active members name and link the very best which their hobby site has to offer, and split salvage of these different inactive members' pictures between themselves. If this is done, then it may be advisible to avoid repetitive images, most WIP pictures that lead up to a finished result, pictures of sprues and so on: Salvage selectively, save the very best and don't maximize your voluntary burden.

Other ways of backing up images of others and sharing them publicly are possible - and please talk about them here or elsewhere - but the point to stress here is that inactive members do not save their own pictures for sharing: That is up to the active members to do, if they deem a particular hobby work or artwork worthy to save for future years to inspire themselves and others.

At the moment of writing, a majority of older wargaming hobby pictures online have likely been shared over Photobucket. We have been granted an unexpected reprieve with their reversal of the pay-to-share debacle*, meaning all those dead hobby logs are suddenly up with visible pictures again. A reprieve which we should all consider exploiting while it last: Now is your chance to salvage the true gems of others and help save the very best pictures for the future.

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* Which is why one shouldn't even consider to delete one's Photobucket account unless one have already backed up the images and re-uploaded those one wish to share. Redundancy is key.
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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#29 Post by Prince of Spires »

That's some pretty good news. I'm guessing they discovered that people who weren't paying for accounts previously also weren't willing to share photo's and instead simply went to other free alternatives. Which actually decreased the possibility of people paying for an account, since fewer new people would come in and fewer people used the platform, meaning that fewer people would feel an incentive to at some point upgrade their account.
Karak Norn Clansman wrote:1. Upload your own hobby pictures into one or more Google Drive folders (or similar),
This is the direction I've taken. I use Microsoft one drive, which gives me easy sharing of individual images. Very similar to google drive. I can easily get a share link which works on forums, which also includes easy downsizing of the image. So no more endlessly waiting for photobucket to load the edit image options...

It's also free, and a lot faster and with less anoying adds then the average image sharing site. Though I must say I use a paid version, but that's mainly because it also backs up all my other photo's and files. Which take up a lot of space.

Rod
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Check my writing blog for stories on the Prince of Spires and other pieces of fiction.
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Re: Photobucket Third Party woes as described by Nicodemus

#30 Post by Karak Norn Clansman »

Not to speak of lost advertisement revenue. Microsoft One Drive? Good tip! Will need to check it out.
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