Wine: Barbera in a special wine bottle

[Mike Buckley]

[About TinyPic]:nor are they a "partner", so far as I know.

You're factually wrong, Manfred. TinyPic is a partner by Sean's own choosing and the evidence of that is the information provided by CiC's FAQ.

Sean is continuing to display in the FAQ that TinyPic is available for use at this site and it simply hasn't been available for days. That would be understandable if we had heard form Sean directly or through any of his surrogates, the moderators, about attempts to solve the problem but that hasn't happened. Instead, both you and Dave have defended Sean and both of you have stated in your own words that there would be no point in Sean even trying to contact TinyPic. I hold both of you accountable for excusing everything as if Sean isn't responsible for the choices he makes.

Dave explained that Sean "has a lot else on his plate," which I infer to mean that running this site is a relatively low priority. That's his choice and I have my choices to make.

I do know if that I was a moderator, I would be having a serious conversation with Sean about why he is being so silent while at the same time promoting the TinyPic upload capability at the site, which as we all know has not been available for days. You might want to consider having the same conversation with him. Your conversation with me about it is unproductive because I have no control over the situation beyond the choices that I make to participate here or not.

We can only hope that they [TinyPic] resolve their issues.

Not true. We can also hope that Sean finds a more reliable partner or that Sean removes the information from the FAQ that CiC provides an upload facility that works directly from users' computers. Until that happens or until TinyPic resolves its issues, the FAQ is a known lie.

Both you and Dave presumably have the capability to temporarily edit the FAQ to explain to users that the TinyPic facility is not working. Why haven't either one of you done that? Instead, you're both taking the time to battle with me as if there is something that I don't understand.

[Mike Buckley]

Classic image

Thank you, Nandakumar!

[Manfred M]

Both you and Dave presumably have the capability to temporarily edit the FAQ to explain to users that the TinyPic facility is not working. Why haven't either one of you done that? Instead, you're both taking the time to battle with me as if there is something that I don't understand.

We do not have that capability Mike. All the moderators can do is modify, move or delete forum entries by members. We have have very limited (off / on switch) capabilities over use user accounts. That's it. We have no access to the actual site content outside of what I have listed.

Sean does everything related to site content. He has a full-time "day job" as a research scientist and is quite busy, so does the CiC maintenance in his spare time. We do keep him informed of site related issues, but have no control with respect to what he does in the background to resolve these issues.

With respect to TinyPic, there are work arounds (i.e. using other image hosts), but these are not available to everyone. I wish I had a magic solution that resolves this issue, but I don't.

I'm sorry that you are not totally happy with what Dave and I have written, but there really isn't anything else we can do about it. All we can do is pass on what we know.

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks for that information, Manfred. It helps me make informed decisions going forward.

[george013]

The links to the various sizes, i.e.small, medium, large..., will all have a -x suffix. The link to the original has no suffix. Links to the original are always protected.

As far as I understood, the software, in this case Zenfolio, stores the picture physical in different formats. Time is more important than storage space. That was the case with Picasaweb and only the original had the exif. Well, in the early days. Mike's picture here doesn't have an exif. I don't know if this is due to the absence of the exif in the original or to stripping the exif by Zenfolio.

George

[Mike Buckley]

Mike's picture here doesn't have an exif. I don't know if this is due to the absence of the exif in the original or to stripping the exif by Zenfolio.

I didn't realize that, George. The EXIF was in the photo at the time I uploaded it to Zenfolio. That's yet another reason I prefer using the TinyPic method unless I can figure out a way to prevent Zenfolio from stripping the EXIF.

[bje07]

Mike your cardboards are too small, they ended before the neck of the bottle.
They are well placed and have shaped nicely the bottle.

[Mike Buckley]

Mike your cardboards are too small, they ended before the neck of the bottle.

Thanks for noticing that detail, which is deliberately my choice. That's because extending the reflection higher than shown in the photo made that area of the bottle look too busy for my taste.

[bnnrcn]

At last I'm able to see the image. I like it very much Mike . Please , be patient and wait for some more time before moving to another website. I like your images and I don't want to lose you

[Saorsa]

Mike, as long as you are putting these up on zenfolio you can post them directly here.



If there is an image above, all I did was right click on an image above and select 'view image' from the popup menu. That opened the zenfolio image directly. I copied the URL from that and then clicked on the 'insert image' and pasted the URL into the dialog box.

I have done this from any number of sites. It save resizing for site specific requirements and the need for a second upload to another server whether CIC or TinyPic. For another example, this is from a wordpress site.

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks, Binnur!

Mike, as long as you are putting these up on zenfolio you can post them directly here.

Also thank you, Brian, to you for your attempted assistance, but your statement is not correct in all situations. Based on my limited anecdotal experience, if I have placed an image in Zenfolio in a private collection (a collection that prevents the public from viewing it), it seems that copying the URL to a post here at CiC does not display the image for anyone other than myself. For more information about that, see this thread.

[Saorsa]

Thanks, Binnur!



Also thank you, Brian, to you for your attempted assistance, but your statement is not correct in all situations. Based on my limited anecdotal experience, if I have placed an image in Zenfolio in a private collection (a collection that prevents the public from viewing it), it seems that copying the URL to a post here at CiC does not display the image for anyone other than myself. For more information about that, see this thread.

Ah, of course, if an image is in a private collection Zenfolio will secure it. I think that's a feature, not a fault. If you have an image you want to share then a 'posting' collection which is public could contain a copy of the image scaled for display on forums such as this. There is an advantage to this. Should you decide in the future that you no longer want an image on display you can just delete it from the 'posting' collection and it will eventually disappear from caches around the net.

I suspect that the reason you could see an image on your computer but others could not could be one of several different possibilities. You could have been logged in to zenfolio on another window, zenfolio could have recognized you as a legitimate user of the image or it could still be in cache on your own computer so that the link was never accessed over the network.
If (and it certainly appears so) you enjoy CIC you could put your images in a local album on CIC without bothering with tinypic.

[Mike Buckley]

you could put your images in a local album on CIC without bothering with tinypic.

I had actually forgotten about that capability and you are the first to remind me of it. Thank you! However, I am still holding out hope that either TinyPic returns or a different brand of the same capability replaces it, as that type of solution is ideal for me and is one of the three primary reasons that I began participating here five years ago. Unfortunately, the owner of CiC has not seen fit to let anybody know of his plans if indeed he has any plans, which I think is deplorable.

[george013]

I had actually forgotten about that capability and you are the first to remind me of it. Thank you! However, I am still holding out hope that either TinyPic returns or a different brand of the same capability replaces it, as that type of solution is ideal for me and is one of the three primary reasons that I began participating here five years ago. Unfortunately, the owner of CiC has not seen fit to let anybody know of his plans if indeed he has any plans, which I think is deplorable.

I don't know what you want from CiC. In general the website as you see it is generated on your computer. All the server is doing is sending html code to your computer and let your computer and browser generate the website as you see it. That's the reason why people see the pages sometime different. One of the items in that code is a link to the real address of your photo as you gave it. It's my pc that links to the picture you linked to.
I don't know why TinyPic is mentioned explicitly in the FAQ.
Sometime servers are using Flash or something like that. It acts as a layer between you and the directory that holds the picture. Than you can't copy it since there is no direct address to your directory.

George

[Dave Humphries]

For those interested in the realities of life:

In the world of the interweb, most people accept that things don't work 100% of the time, there are temporary outages and technical issues that cause patchy service from time to time. These may last from seconds, to hours - and sometimes days - it happens, we're not directly paying for it, so we have to accept it with good grace.

With respect to TinyPic, many may recall we went through a period a few months back of seeing images links cached around the globe displaying different images to different people, often (but not always) in certain countries or geographic areas - I haven't seen this happen for a while now. It happened, then it stopped, as is the way with the www.

However, in the last few days, TinyPic has obviously had some major issues based on our experience here and also tests conducted by myself and others that were undertaken out side of CiC; even attempting to upload directly to their web site failed. Ergo, it is their problem, not ours and given the lack of business relationship with them, there's nothing we can do that will affect the outcome.

It takes a lot back end technical work to migrate from one integrated image hosting service to another, the last time we did it (probably just over five years ago), we did so because we had to, the service we were using announced it was to be discontinued.

Given the amount of work involved to migrate and with no 'end of service' announcement from TinyPic, nor recent postings on technical forums, it would be premature to even consider starting the process of trying to migrate to another provider after only a few days.

For one thing, there are not many organisations that are willing to serve images direct to third party sites without advertising (for them that is all cost and no revenue), it takes time to find them.
For another, getting their site's technical infrastructure to 'play nicely' with that of the software that CiC forums run on is another, it takes time to code and test.


Sean, the site owner leaves the day-to-day forum member communications entirely to the moderators - and currently, this only qualifies as a day-to-day problem. Remember also that CiC is effectively a hobby for him too; a spare time activity. When the moderators feel a problem has reached a level that it warrants his knowledge, advice, input or intervention, we'll raise it with him directly (I did so on something else recently affecting new members), but I don't believe any moderator feels that way about this TinyPic issue yet - and therefore no moderator (to my knowledge) has escalated this issue to him for action.


Yes, I could have amended the forum FAQ pages and/or image hosting thread, but how many times do regular members go back there to read them again?
So few as to not be worth it because far more will be reading the 3 or so threads on the topic, so; until we know how long some outage may last (e.g. weeks) or that it is permanent, I won't be doing that. The problem hasn't even been permanent; odd people at odd times have successfully uploaded images. I doubt there will be any announcement from TinyPic when the issue is fixed, normal service will just quietly resume. Does that make the FAQ/Help thread at CiC a 'known lie' - as it was attacked it recently? Inaccurate (temporarily) may be, but 'a lie'; really - isn't that a bit melodramatic?


While many are being inconvenienced and frustrated by the current TinyPic issue, most are accepting it with good grace and to those I say 'thank you'. My thanks also to others that have been proactive in trying to help members workaround the issues arising from the TinyPic issue.

Unfortunately, the owner of CiC has not seen fit to let anybody know of his plans if indeed he has any plans, which I think is deplorable.

Mike,

Let's face it, this reply was prompted by your succession of comments in this and a couple of other threads on the topic.

Put yourself in my position, if our roles were reversed, how would you feel reading what you accuse us of? (and perhaps knowing a bit more of how the internet world works)

Now (having read all the above): Do you think your repeated vehemently made comments about Sean and what's on the FAQ are going to help?
Or could the same information have been gained in a more polite manner?

Continually provoking those that voluntarily provide a good service and environment for everyone, will not help anyone - it just causes upset and wastes time, in this case another 3 hours of mine to carefully answer your ill-founded accusations, which I didn't feel comfortable leaving hanging. No doubt you'll say I should have been looking for an alternative image hosting site with those 3 hours, but we'll have to differ on that. Your method and words have not achieved the result you say you desire, there's a lesson there perhaps. Mine may not either, and I hope to learn from that!


If you still personally feel you have been treated 'deplorably' by CiC over this, then I'd say it is time to move on. Nothing we can say is going to change your mind.

Dave

[Mike Buckley]

Dave,

This is the second time in a few days that you have written insulting comments about your view of me purely because you disagree with me. Not good. I feel I've been polite in my disagreement with you, which is not the same that I can say for you.

Two days ago Manfred explicitly said the moderators do not have the ability to edit the FAQ. Today I see that you say that you do indeed have that ability. I count on the moderators to provide accurate information. Clearly, both accounts can not be accurate.

You asked me to put myself in your position. If I was in that position right now I would have already recommended to Sean that he explain his current thinking and that it be communicated directly or indirectly to CiC members. One good method would be the way that was done just a few weeks ago in this post that, if I remember correctly, was brought to CiC members' attention in their email. (Note that the message that was conveyed pertains to a day-to-day situation.) If after considering my recommendation Sean still felt it was best not to come up with a plan and not to communicate it to CiC members, I would resign.

As for deciding when or if I am going to move on, I'll make that decision on my own without taking into account your further insulting advice about when or why that should happen. I have not yet made that decision. If you want to take control over that situation, simply delete my account. To provide some context, your suggestion that I consider moving on is the first time in my decades of participating daily in Internet forums that anyone, much less a moderator, has made such a suggestion.

This is my last post about the specific topic relating to the TinyPic situation. However, if you continue to personally attack me in your posts, I will respond to them.

[Manfred M]

Two days ago Manfred explicitly said the moderators do not have the ability to edit the FAQ. Today I see that you say that you do indeed have that ability. I count on the moderators to provide accurate information. Clearly, both accounts can not be accurate.

Mike - I appears I was wrong.

I thought that all the moderators had the same site permissions, and if Dave has the ability to edit the FAQ's, that is not something I have access to. The things I listed in the previous thread are what all the moderators can do and is the limit of what I can do on this site.

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks for clearing that up, Manfred. I would like to further thank you that none of your posts directed to me or anyone in the five years I have been participating here have been insulting, whether during or before your time as a moderator.

[Dave Humphries]

To clarify, we're gonna have to differentiate between FAQ and Threads.

That's why I referred to them as a joint entity, most people don't notice where one ends and the other starts.

The actual site FAQ doesn't need editing (by design), if you look up the FAQ on image posting, it hyper-links to my thread, which obviously can be edited by any moderator, but since Manfred's never needed to in his time as a moderator, he wouldn't know the background.

Would it help if I added a line or two to this post about it being a completely external service and therefore subject to the vagaries of any internet service provided by a third party - it is beyond our control and may occasionally experience outages. When written, the aim was to keep 'em short and sweet, but over time they have grown a bit, so another sentence or two at the bottom won't hurt, should anyone get to reading that far.

No 'insults' were intended, I'll leave it there as anything else I say will likely be misunderstood.

[Mike Buckley]

Would it help if I added a line or two to this post about it being a completely external service and therefore subject to the vagaries of any internet service provided by a third party - it is beyond our control and may occasionally experience outages.

That would help but only to a limited extent. I already promised not to post anything about the current TinyPic situation, so I'm not going to clarify beyond what I have already written in previous posts why I believe that solution would be only of limited help.