Membership Vote Needed: Photo Gallery

As many of you know we have a gallery for members photos. Often these photos are used by the foundation to promote SFG in many different ways.

The foundation is a not-for-profit organization that goes around the world to under developed countries and helps to teach people how to SFG and feed themselves.

The forum is a cost to the foundation in that each time we exceed the allotted disk space with pictures, the foundation must put money into the website to buy more disk space. The foundation also pays to keep the forum ad free.

The foundation has asked me to come up with a solution to alleviate the financial burden this is on the foundation. They have asked that we decide between to things.

The options will be to not have gallery photos, so that we can upload photos to posts and such without worry, or to ask the membership to make donations to keep the forum running. The latter would be a place on the forum home page you would go into and make a donation.

So I am asking you all to vote and decide which you would rather do. If we choose to do away with the gallery then you as members will have the option of emailing your gallery photos to Alan at the foundation to continue to allow them to be used in promoting SFG.

I will leave this poll open until November 15th or so and then will announce the verdict.

Thank you in advance for your time to read this and weigh in!

Jennie
Forum Admin

I voted to delete the gallery BUT really only if we could somehow archive all those gr8 pics onto perhaps a "flickr" account or some other FREE web picture hosting site. I guess they all have limits too though. I don't know if that is feasible but just my two cents. I would personally donate also but worry about the can of worms that might open once the forum relies on donations to stay afloat.

darn if it isn't ALWAYS about money. The "real world" sucks. I miss college.

Do I understand correctly that we could still post photos straight from our own computers to our posts even if we do delete the gallery? If so, I vote to delete the gallery.

I think most of us would probably be flattered if our gardens were so impressive that the Foundation would want to use them to promote sfg. I think most folks would give their approval if asked to allow use of the photos we would put in our posts instead of in the gallery. Would that work for the foundation?

Well, how much money we talking about? I don't mind helping out if it goes just to keep the forum going.

What I forsee in the future, if we don't have the gallery, is that we love photos, and we will see more photos in the posts, because we must see everyone's garden, veggies and all their bugs, etc.

It uses the same amount of room to store a picture, whether in the posts or in a gallery.

sherryeo wrote:Do I understand correctly that we could still post photos straight from our own computers to our posts even if we do delete the gallery? If so, I vote to delete the gallery.

I agree. This point needs clarification before a vote, please.
I just looked at the gallery, and only saw 103 public pictures. Am I missing something?
j

For clarification: We can post a bazillion pics in our posts, and it is free to do so.

If we put pics in either the public or personal galleries, we have to pay for storage space above 20MB. That is not much space in our circumstance.

Janezee>> Below the green rectangle and on the left side, in the brown, is a link to your personal gallery, and a link to everyone elses personal gallery.

I hope it's ok to make this post, but I just wanted to let anybody who might want to make a completely voluntary donation to the SFG Foundation know that you can do that on their website. Click on the "Website" link in the green banner, above.

I, for one, think their goal to try to help alleviate hunger around the world by teaching people to be more self-sufficient with sfgs is an honorable goal and one certainly worth supporting - especially since they let us have this cool forum, too!!!

Flickr allows free accounts up to a couple hundred pictures. After that, it's "one in one out" sort of. However, you can buy a "pro" account for what amounts to $26/yr. Not a huge expense if you take tons of pictures like me.

There are several other free "image hosting" sites around the web, too. ImageShack comes to mind.

As long as you keep your accounts current, the pictures you post here will not disappear in your threads.

How does this help the SFG site? Anything hosted somewhere else and "copy/pasted" here is of no expense......space issue.....for this site. If you upload your pics directly here and allow SFG to host them, it takes space from their servers. So, if you are into protecting the forum, you would naturally opt to host your pictures somewhere else and take the extra step to copy them over here.

I'm sorry this sounds complicated. It's really not too bad.

I have a Flickr account already, so it's no skin off my back and allows me to keep all my images in one place online. To each his/her own, though.

I voted to delete the gallery, but asking for donations for such a worthwhile organization that not only "feeds" us with this totally free forum but has as its goal to feed the world is certainly an option that I intend to take.

That being said, I have a way to download any picture in the gallery so that we could have a "gallery" section as another forum topic to which I would then upload individual pictures with the original gallery owner's name just like we do with our posts. It would, of course, require those who have either a personal or public gallery to give their permission for me to do that.

That would solve the hassle of using another uploading source like Flickr or equivalent, or using a paid service which may not be affordable to some of our members. And the Foundation could still have the images available for using however they wish to do so.

There would be no charge to either the Foundation or to individual members because I would do this as my community service to thank everyone from whom I learn so much each time I log on!

Let me know if you want me to do that and I will personally contact each member via PM to secure their permission and begin the process...if our webmaster will create the new Forum topic for me to upload them to.

BackyardBirdGardner wrote:Flickr allows free accounts up to a couple hundred pictures. After that, it's "one in one out" sort of. However, you can buy a "pro" account for what amounts to $26/yr. Not a huge expense if you take tons of pictures like me.

There are several other free "image hosting" sites around the web, too. ImageShack comes to mind.

As long as you keep your accounts current, the pictures you post here will not disappear in your threads.

How does this help the SFG site? Anything hosted somewhere else and "copy/pasted" here is of no expense......space issue.....for this site. If you upload your pics directly here and allow SFG to host them, it takes space from their servers. So, if you are into protecting the forum, you would naturally opt to host your pictures somewhere else and take the extra step to copy them over here.

I'm sorry this sounds complicated. It's really not too bad.

I have a Flickr account already, so it's no skin off my back and allows me to keep all my images in one place online. To each his/her own, though.

One can post from one's computer directly into one's post and it does not cost the foundation anything. Putting one's pics on a hosting web site and linking to them does not cost anything, but it is an extra step if you're not doing that already. The forum only pays for storage space when a member puts a picture in the gallery.

Understood, Boffer. But I was thinking that if in fact the Gallery were deleted, that we could still keep the photos as posts. That was what I was proposing to do, if the members who have pics posted there didn't want to "lose" them or go through the hassle of moving them into the Forum themselves.

Luci Dawson wrote:Understood, Boffer. But I was thinking that if in fact the Gallery were deleted, that we could still keep the photos as posts. That was what I was proposing to do, if the members who have pics posted there didn't want to "lose" them or go through the hassle of moving them into the Forum themselves.

I like this idea. The original draw for me to SFG (and this forum) were the photos on the old forum. I loved looking at other folks gardens, as if flicking through an album.

(I'm out of town this week and can't get to a computer as often as normal)

Understood, Luci. I was addressing BBG's post; I read his post several times and was still confused about what he was saying!

I agree with Camp. The only good thing about the old forum software was an auto selection and display picture feature. It was great. But the software was a feature that can't be used on our forum. I've spent a lot of hours trying to figure out a way to do the same thing here, but since we don't have access to the database, it's not possible to set up something similar.

There are different ways to do it manually, but collecting, sorting, and displaying becomes a very tedious chore after a while. Let's see if mm wants to brainstorm this, as she would have to be involved too, I think.

boffer wrote:(I'm out of town this week and can't get to a computer as often as normal)

Understood, Luci. I was addressing BBG's post; I read his post several times and was still confused about what he was saying!

I agree with Camp. The only good thing about the old forum software was an auto selection and display picture feature. It was great. But the software was a feature that can't be used on our forum. I've spent a lot of hours trying to figure out a way to do the same thing here, but since we don't have access to the database, it's not possible to set up something similar.

There are different ways to do it manually, but collecting, sorting, and displaying becomes a very tedious chore after a while. Let's see if mm wants to brainstorm this, as she would have to be involved too, I think.

Let me know if I can help in any way! I love looking at the gallery.

You could have a photo tab where people post links to their photo accounts, similar to people posting their websites. It's not as easy to navigate but people like sifting through others photos. I spent a lot of time earlier in the year prior to starting in spring looking at everyone's set up. Besides flicker there is also http://photobucket.com/ which recently lifted their limit to photo's and videos. Also, they allow you to have several gallery's and you can limit who can see which ones.

Sorry for the earlier confusion.

I think our answer is clear as far as the poll goes.

This is a thought from a challenged computer person... instead of having sooo many photos in the gallery, is there a way to store the photos somewhere else and simply rotate in a couple of the users for a pre determined amount of "gallery time"? Then switch those out and put in some other users?
Wallah, complete control of space being used and cost effective??? Oh well, just a little thought from llamamomma....

@BBG: With only 19 votes so far and over 7,000 registered users, I don't think the poll is quite as conclusive as one would wish it to be for making a firm decision.

For what it is worth, I found it easier to put photos into "my gallery" and then post them into the discussion than to use the image host software which sometimes I couldn't seem to get it to work.

I vote to do whatever is best for the foundation and forum.

Well, 2 cents again:
if 7000 folks each give a dollar, we could buy our own website and servers and have as many pics as we want!

Guess I wouldn't miss what I've never used. If the foundation needs to delete the gallery to keep the forum afloat, then delete away. And if they want to use any pics I've posted, just ask.

Kay

Bumping

krazikandiland wrote:You could have a photo tab where people post links to their photo accounts, similar to people posting their websites.

We currently can put links to our picture hosting sites in our signatures. We can also go into our profiles and put our link in the website space so that it will show up under our avatars.

Luci Dawson wrote:@BBG: With only 19 votes so far and over 7,000 registered users, I don't think the poll is quite as conclusive as one would wish it to be for making a firm decision.

As of today:
157 members have logged into the forum since this thread was started.
5331 have never posted.

A lot of folks just don't vote in any elections.

The horse bulletin board where I hang out periodically considers donations or user subscription fees. I don't believe it is practical, feasible or likely to bring out the best in people.

On the other hand, if you would like me to send my .02 rather than just offer it all the time, maybe it would add up to something useful!