I was looking through all my previous image attachments in the 'My Controls' section via the 'Manage Your Attachments' option when I logged in today with the view to deleting some, and therefore save some space on the site server.(I think that's how it works anyway).

One of the columns lists the number of times each image has been downloaded, and one of mine has been downloaded 4686 times, which I thought was amazing.

So that got me thinking,how about at the end of each year awarding a 'prize' for the most downloaded image, anaglyph, pan, colourised image or whatever, maybe incorporate it if possible into the UMSF banner for a day!?

If that's too much then maybe a sticky topic within the 'Chit Chat' section with a rolling 'Top Ten'.

Any thoughts chaps?

It's an interesting thought and perhaps one for the Admin/Mod team to discuss.

As for deleting your old attachments, we'd rather you didn't unless you specifically have decided on some particular copyright issue in relation to them. Even then, please ask us first.

Over the years, there have been images/files hosted on servers located elsewhere that members have linked to, but sadly the server has disappeared for whatever reason.
This leaves the topic where they originally appeared with images blanks and this means that we lose a little bit of UMSF history.

If you are concerned over limited space on our servers, then don't be. We have a pretty good arrangement for data storage and are nowhere near capacity.

If anyone here has concerns over their images, storage issues or anything else, then do not hesitate to contact me or any of the admin/mod team. We are more than happy to assist you.

I didn't know you could peruse your attachments like that. It's an interesting idea, but I'd add one thought. From what I've noticed, images that only stay within UMSF usually only get downloads in the hundreds (or less). When they get into the thousands, it probably means the image has leaked into the public and people outside UMSF are linking to it. That may still be a good thing, that lots of people outside like the image. But the public's tastes may not always align with what most of us would consider a great image.

I totally sympathize with the dead image server problem - browsing through old posts you can find lots of dead links to sites such as "imagehost" and the like. These days there are lots of images being posted to external servers, which is understandable since it's easy to get above the attachment filesize limit with MSL mosaics etc. But I also notice < 1MB images posted to external servers. For the sake of maintaining the historical record of UMSF it would be nice if we could encourage people to use UMSF attachments when they can.

That's why I always attach my images to my posts, even if I have to downsize them or to JPEG-compress them more than I would like. (Besides, I don't have a Flickr, etc., account.)
If storage space isn't a problem, would admins consider upping the limit on attached files? Could we go to 2MB? In our days of fast Internet access, loading a 2MB image takes almost no time.

Can I just say I'm really heartened to read that the value of this place as an archive is now widely appreciated among respected members and admins. I remember arguing this many years back, and voicing concern about disappearing images, to no effect at all at the time. I shrugged and assumed others were content to operate in an ephemeral medium.