Photo Storage - Suggestions Please

[The Team]

We have unlimited photo storage, but it must be paid for - the more we use, the more it costs. At present our average income is just above our average outgoings. 

 

However, long term, to store photos we need to either up our income or manage our storage of photos. 

 

If anyone has any suggestions, we would be happy to consider them, unfortunately doing nothing won't be an option in a couple of months. We will explore advertising / sponsorship, but other suggestions would be appreciated. 

[Paul Needham]

personally don't see a problem with some form of adverts, the're all over many other sites I visit without problem I feel

[Gary Witcomb]

By trying to manage photo storage you mean to cap posting of photo or deletion of photos to keep within Budget, which is a backward step for me, as it will put members off posting !!

 

I'm not a fan of advertisements but would accept them if there was no other option !!

 

This is not going to be popular with the general Membership,but its has to be said,  most off you thinks the whole Forum should be free, like other sites, but the Forum has bills that have to be paid  or its bye bye Forum & its time EVERYONE faced up to that FACT (Unless you are one of a few who would love the Forum to fail !!)

 

I would be happy to pay £10 per Year for what I get, in fact i will pay the £10 from my next renewal

 

Frankly the people who moan about the £5, spends more on Costa Coffee& macdonuts a week, than it cost here for a whole year & if more members paid the £5 we would not be in this situation

 

In Hindsight dropping the supporters packages to £5 was a mistake in my opinion and has lead to this issue with income over out goings 

 

Having given this some more thought, i think the Forum is to important to lose,  i will pledge to pay a donation  of £25 at my next renewal in Oct 2018 

 

 

 

 

[J.Buchwald]

I love the photo sections.so as Gary has said I would up my membership cost to keep  all photos .as I think it helps keep this a great forum.

[Peter van der Knaap]

I don't mind advertisements, for as long as they don't "pop up" and scream on my screen, if you understand me.

 

Apart from that, I'm not a technical guy so I have no idea what your options are regarding the storage of the photo's outside of this forum.

[John Carter]

It's not that long since we were told that a change had been made whereby we could post as many photos as we liked. At the same time we had to stop posting photos hosted on Flickr and the like. It seemed like wishful thinking to me at the time and, sadly, it looks as if that was the case.

 

I thought that, at the same time, we adopted a policy of deleting photo posts after a certain length of time which would contain the problem.  Am I wrong about that?

 

Speakiing for myself,  some topics have too many photos, often repetitive, and I simply don't have time to look at them all. I'm well aware, however, that I'm not a typical member.

[Steve Barton]

3 minutes ago, John Carter said:

It's not that long since we were told that a change had been made whereby we could post as many photos as we liked. At the same time we had to stop posting photos hosted on Flickr and the like. It seemed like wishful thinking to me at the time and, sadly, it looks as if that was the case.

 

I thought that, at the same time, we adopted a policy of deleting photo posts after a certain length of time which would contain the problem.  Am I wrong about that?

 

Speakiing for myself,  some topics have too many photos, often repetitive, and I simply don't have time to look at them all. I'm well aware, however, that I'm not a typical member.

 

The problem with Members hosting their photos off Forum like FLICKR was that if Members deleted photos on FLICKR or exceeded their bandwidth or closed their FLICKR account it left Topics on the Forum with dead links (no photos) so we decided to change back so we could have some control over photo posts.

 

We have got a policy of deleting photos after a period of time however we found that we were deleting many excellent photos which we thought needed to be archived rather than losing them for ever. The only problem with archiving them is if the Photo post isn't captioned a search will only find a post from the Topic name but it will not find certain photos that are in that Topic.. So if someone is searching for a certain Waltzer it will only find that Waltzer in posts that are captioned but it will not find it in uncaptioned posts .

 

This is something we are aware about and have informed Members on many occasions of our concerns and have asked Members to think if all photos in their posts are needed and try to keep duplicate photos to a minimum however a number of Members have ignored our concerns and carry on posting large photo posts with large numbers of duplicate posts.

 

I hope this goes some way to answer some of your questions John. 

[John Carter]

Thanks for taking the trouble to reply, Steve. It seems that we have a problem which will never be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. In my case, I wouldn’t be happy about increasing my subscription to resolve it.

[Chris Allen]

There was a thread on here a few years ago, it was a massive photo collection from the 1970s i think the photos were scanned and upload by a previous member, i cannot be sure of the members name but it was something like  Pete/Phil from Leeds, I remember Bill having to delete the collection due to storage space (understandable) but i was gutted because i often browsed through them, does anybody else remember the thread? I dont know if these images are lost forever or still retrievable, personally i would pay a little more in subs to access this giant collection of vintage photography, but it should be on a optional basis.

[Peter van der Knaap]

The way I see this forum is that everyone who uploads a picture, is using storage space. If you than keep storing all pictures, you are slowly getting a problem. You don't want to have people post their pictures using links, because of the fact that posts can lose the pictures.

 

The question one has to ask is this one: are all the pictures stored in here so important that they have to be saved? Or are some more important than others?

 

I would suggest to have a large group of members go through the pictures posted lets say ten years ago to this date and make a selection of what picture has to stay in storage and which should be destroyed. Make a couple of rules for them (such as: vintage fair pictures are never to be deleted and the picture in the ride list and the transport list are not to be deleted. Non funfair pictures are always deleted etc. etc. ). Of the rest, the group of members decide whether or not to delete that particular picture. The majority rules.

 

Now, you are now thinking that this is a lot of work. That depends. If one can use the forum for this, one has only about 10 topics a day at most to check. And if the group of members is large enough not everyone has to vote on that particular day. But I don't know how you all react to this and if such a thing is technically possible to build...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 14, 2018 by Peter van der Knaap

[Marc Burgers]

I make a big selection of my pictures.

Maybe more members need to do that.
That gives you many more storged space and not so much pictures
I mean a fewer stalls and a big selection in photos of big rides

[Simon Barrett]

Earlier this year when the announcement was made that members would need to pay a subscription to keep access to the rides list etc I was happy to pay the £5 minimum price,  I would be happy to pay £10 to renew my subscription when due next year,   I would also accept a small amount of advertisments if that helped but I really would like a way to be found to keep as many photographs as possible!!   I do post a few photos occasionally & would not mind any of those being deleted if they had to be,  there are many folks on here who post excellent photos & I think that they should be kept,  I do feel that all types of amusements photos should be postable & not just big rides,  I do browse on here quite a lot & would be sad if we had to lose content, I have often seen duplicate photos in many places on the forum so perhaps if folks could make sure they only post 1 good piccy of each item etc,  if everyone paid £10 at their next renewal how long would that sustain the photo storage??    

[Ormester101]

On 10/09/2018 at 15:48, Gary Witcomb said:

By trying to manage photo storage you mean to cap posting of photo or deletion of photos to keep within Budget, which is a backward step for me, as it will put members off posting !!

 

I'm not a fan of advertisements but would accept them if there was no other option !!

 

This is not going to be popular with the general Membership,but its has to be said,  most off you thinks the whole Forum should be free, like other sites, but the Forum has bills that have to be paid  or its bye bye Forum & its time EVERYONE faced up to that FACT (Unless you are one of a few who would love the Forum to fail !!)

 

I would be happy to pay £10 per Year for what I get, in fact i will pay the £10 from my next renewal

 

Frankly the people who moan about the £5, spends more on Costa Coffee& macdonuts a week, than it cost here for a whole year & if more members paid the £5 we would not be in this situation

 

In Hindsight dropping the supporters packages to £5 was a mistake in my opinion and has lead to this issue with income over out goings 

 

Having given this some more thought, i think the Forum is to important to lose,  i will pledge to pay a donation  of £25 at my next renewal in Oct 2018 

 

 

  advertising is the way forward  surely  a few banners etc  i have had my say on this before  charging is backward step   

 

 

[Ormester101]

On 14/09/2018 at 17:38, Peter van der Knaap said:

The way I see this forum is that everyone who uploads a picture, is using storage space. If you than keep storing all pictures, you are slowly getting a problem. You don't want to have people post their pictures using links, because of the fact that posts can lose the pictures.

 

The question one has to ask is this one: are all the pictures stored in here so important that they have to be saved? Or are some more important than others?

 

I would suggest to have a large group of members go through the pictures posted lets say ten years ago to this date and make a selection of what picture has to stay in storage and which should be destroyed. Make a couple of rules for them (such as: vintage fair pictures are never to be deleted and the picture in the ride list and the transport list are not to be deleted. Non funfair pictures are always deleted etc. etc. ). Of the rest, the group of members decide whether or not to delete that particular picture. The majority rules.

 

Now, you are now thinking that this is a lot of work. That depends. If one can use the forum for this, one has only about 10 topics a day at most to check. And if the group of members is large enough not everyone has to vote on that particular day. But I don't know how you all react to this and if such a thing is technically possible to build...

 

 

 

surely theres way to archive pictures on say  flickr or facebook  in  secret group for members only i say 5 years is plenty 

 

 

 

[Mike Cowey]

An increase in subscription is fine with me, £10.00 per year is nothing especially when you consider the amount of useful information there is to hand. I imagine that many of the Forum members are also members of FAGB and/or FS both of which have an annual subscription cost of £15.00 and the cost of the Worlds  Fair has just gone up to £1.20 per week. I feel the genuine fairground enthusiasts will be happy to pay. Those that aren't can find plenty of sites on Facebook though you have to filter fact from fiction.

[Octopus]

I will be honest I don't use this forum for anything bar looking at the rides lists, coming events and ride changes ownership's, everything else is widely available on FB these days we have to remember of course this place has overheads and I happily pay to support this.

 

Maybe you should do a poll to see what sections are in use the most and those that aren't popular do away with them just a thought. 

[Gary Witcomb]

5 hours ago, Mike Cowey said:

An increase in subscription is fine with me, £10.00 per year is nothing especially when you consider the amount of useful information there is to hand. I imagine that many of the Forum members are also members of FAGB and/or FS both of which have an annual subscription cost of £15.00 and the cost of the Worlds  Fair has just gone up to £1.20 per week. I feel the genuine fairground enthusiasts will be happy to pay. Those that aren't can find plenty of sites on Facebook though you have to filter fact from fiction.

 

you have hit the nail on the head !!

[Steve Barton]

3 hours ago, Octopus said:

I will be honest I don't use this forum for anything bar looking at the rides lists, coming events and ride changes ownership's, everything else is widely available on FB these days we have to remember of course this place has overheads and I happily pay to support this.

 

Maybe you should do a poll to see what sections are in use the most and those that aren't popular do away with them just a thought. 

I can see where your coming from but it's not as easy as that take the three Forums you say you use as an example if we do away with Coming Events and Ride Changes that would have no affect what so ever on our photo storage costs as both of these Forum don't have any or very few photographs posted in them, however if we removed the Rides List that would have some affect on our storage cost because of the number of photographs posted in that Forum. So to have any impact we would have to remove the Photo Forums, Rides List & Transport Lists as most of the other Forums don't have a significant amount of photographs to make any impact on our storage cost. So I hope that you can see that deleting Forums isn't the answer.

[Steve Barton]

15 hours ago, Ormester101 said:

surely theres way to archive pictures on say  flickr or facebook  in  secret group for members only i say 5 years is plenty 

 

Let me just get this right you think that we should set up either a FLICKR account or a secret Facebook page to store our photos on ?

Do you know just how much work would be involved in moving photos from our storage server to FLICKR or Facebook who is going to do this work let me guess the Team who at present all pay to be Supporters for the privilege of running this Forum in our spare time because you might not realise this but we all have full time jobs.

Have you tried finding certain photos on Facebook two hours after they have been posted because you can't do a photo search on Facebook so how would anybody find anything they were looking for.

FLICKR is free upto a certain point I think it's 1TB after that you have to pay if Members don't use small file sizes when posting photos that 1TB will be used up in no time.

I take it that when you say Members only you mean Members who are happy to Support this Forum.

 

Quote

  advertising is the way forward  surely  a few banners etc  i have had my say on this before  charging is backward step

Backward step or not a few adverts isn't going to bring in the income some people think it will this Forum is "All The Fun of The Fair" the only people who have heard of it are people who are involved in or interested in Fairgrounds so the volume of people who visit this Forum is not something that would be on Saatchi & Saatchi's radar.

The person who first brought up about adverts on the Forum now says they wouldn't "want pop ups or adverts that scream out at you" well if we have to sell out to get adverts then it's anything that pays the bills.

 

Thank you to the Members who have said that they are willing to increase their subscriptions to help with the costs at least there are people who can see the value of keeping this Forum, it's just a pity that there are others who will do anything rather than pay £5 to support the Forum.

 

The sad face button is below.

 

 

 

[Peter van der Knaap]

The Team needs to decide what to do. You have to make a choice between a couple of bad choices:

 

1. Decide which photo's you want to keep in storage and delete others. This is a lot of work which needs the involvement of more members.

2. Make this forum a paid forum which will mean that in about 5 years, this will be a dead forum. I will certainly leave this place and start searching for free British forums. So will others...

3. Allow people to host their pictures outside of this forum and therefore use links in their posting of pictures, with the risk that topics will lose the pictures after a certain amount of time if members don't continue their membership at those sites.

[Steve Barton]

29 minutes ago, Peter van der Knaap said:

The Team needs to decide what to do. You have to make a choice between a couple of bad choices:

 

1. Decide which photo's you want to keep in storage and delete others. This is a lot of work which needs the involvement of more members.

2. Make this forum a paid forum which will mean that in about 5 years, this will be a dead forum. I will certainly leave this place and start searching for free British forums. So will others...

3. Allow people to host their pictures outside of this forum and therefore use links in their posting of pictures, with the risk that topics will lose the pictures after a certain amount of time if members don't continue their membership at those sites.

 

The more I read this list of demands the more option 2 stand out as the best option to me but for some reason I can't just put my finger why at the moment but I'm sure it will come to me.

[harry m]

Let me make a point regarding this matter.

 

If we could make this a totally free forum, we wouldn't hesitate to do so.

If we could have unlimited storage, we'd fill it up and some more.

 

The reality is, we have a fantastic set of pictures that other , younger, enthusiasts may want to see in years to come and indeed current members as well.

We DONT want to lose any of those pictures, but the reality is it costs money and if we don't do something about it now, we wont be in the same situation later in the year.

 

[Gary Witcomb]

7 minutes ago, harry monk said:

Let me make a point regarding this matter.

 

If we could make this a totally free forum, we wouldn't hesitate to do so.

If we could have unlimited storage, we'd fill it up and some more.

 

The reality is, we have a fantastic set of pictures that other , younger, enthusiasts may want to see in years to come and indeed current members as well.

We DONT want to lose any of those pictures, but the reality is it costs money and if we don't do something about it now, we wont be in the same situation later in the year.

 

 

the problem is Harry the want to keep all there photo but don't want to pay !!

[Gary Witcomb]

The Team does not have to decide what to do the Members do its everyone Forum, at the start of this thread the membership were asked for Suggestions on how we could deal with an issue but sadly very few can be bothered to participate / Contribute 

 

I don't want any photos to be deleted or archived and nor do i want them hosted off site

 

I don't really want adverts

 

This leave option 2 for me,

 

Well if there was a poll to the membership i would vote for this in a heart beat and let me tell you why i have been a member of this Forum for over 10 year and have supported financially from the start because i believe this is a very important resource, there is info on this site you will not find else ware "FACT" , you state the Forum would die in 5 years, i don't believe that for 1 min, yes membership numbers would drop and frankly would that be a bad thing, i believe with say a backbone of genuine Enthusiasts who all financially support the Forum they would not allow it to just Die, in fact the Forum might even thrive as we would all be like minded members with one goal to make this forum work and without all the BULL sh*t 

 

i'm sick to the back teeth of all the moaners / dissenters / Free loaders who just take and never give anything back in return, others take pleasure in knocking the Forum at every chance they get, despite this they continue to be members you have to ask why !!

 

Far to many believe this forum should be totally free just like Facebook, well it cant so get over it, if you can find what you are looking for else ware FREE your free to leave but shut the door on your way out 

 

Just for the record i would allow all showmen  who we rely on for our hobby, totally free access after any change to a paid up membership as i also believe they play a big part in the Forum & our Hobby and i would be happy to pay more to allow this service to Showmen only 

 

Finally 

As for the Team there dammed if they do and Dammed if they don't, its about time the Membership got behind the Team who are trying there very best to keep this Forum afloat

 

[Steve Barton]

14 minutes ago, Gary Witcomb said:

The Team does not have to decide what to do the Members do its everyone Forum, at the start of this thread the membership were asked for Suggestions on how we could deal with an issue but sadly very few can be bothered to participate / Contribute 

 

I don't want any photos to be deleted or archived and nor do i want them hosted off site

 

I don't really want adverts

 

This leave option 2 for me,

 

Well if there was a poll to the membership i would vote for this in a heart beat and let me tell you why i have been a member of this Forum for over 10 year and have supported financially from the start because i believe this is a very important resource, there is info on this site you will not find else ware "FACT" , you state the Forum would die in 5 years, i don't believe that for 1 min, yes membership numbers would drop and frankly would that be a bad thing, i believe with say a backbone of genuine Enthusiasts who all financially support the Forum they would not allow it to just Die, in fact the Forum might even thrive as we would all be like minded members with one goal to make this forum work and without all the BULL sh*t 

 

i'm sick to the back teeth of all the moaners / dissenters / Free loaders who just take and never give anything back in return, others take pleasure in knocking the Forum at every chance they get, despite this they continue to be members you have to ask why !!

 

Far to many believe this forum should be totally free just like Facebook, well it cant so get over it, if you can find what you are looking for else ware FREE your free to leave but shut the door on your way out 

 

Just for the record i would allow all showmen  who we rely on for our hobby, totally free access after any change to a paid up membership as i also believe they play a big part in the Forum & our Hobby and i would be happy to pay more to allow this service to Showmen only 

 

Finally 

As for the Team there dammed if they do and Dammed if they don't, its about time the Membership got behind the Team who are trying there very best to keep this Forum afloat

 

Well said Garry Witcomb thank you I 100% agree with everything you have said.