Image hosts in violation of AO policy

[CoolKevin]

imgpaying is already on the banned list

 

[Ceewan]

I suppose that in the spirit of fairness I should also note that the image host used by AO user KG999 seems to not violate AO policy. I am pleasantly surprised.

Isn't that the member who has been posting torrents for...longer than I have been a member? I know you are on a mission bro, but he has been around and faithful for over 6 years.

Instead on trying to get people banned you might consider a softer approach and work with the staff and the posters to find suitable hosting solutions without robbing members of new content (which will be the case if the staff decides to go hog wild here). Multiple warnings and suspensions can be a very effective method of achieving a given objective here. Many of these posters make a living (or at least additional income) by uploading content here and elsewhere. It only makes sense that many of these uploaders use a neutral imagehoster rather than trying to hotlink images from here elsewhere (which, even if it was feasable, would probably cause more harm than good).

So maybe what we actually need here is a list of approved imagehosts for these uploaders to choose from. Other imagehosts could be added to this list if approved by staff. This might actually be more effective than the ban list or trying to force every uploader to follow the ever changing ban list. Akiba-Online may even be able to add a few advertisements of these imagehosts here just like it does the file hosting sites and help defray the continuing cost of the server and forum upgrades. Food for thought.

 

[daredemonai]

Isn't that the member who has been posting torrents for...longer than I have been a member? I know you are on a mission bro, but he has been around and faithful for over 6 years.

The point I was making was that he was using a non-spammy, not obnoxious image host, so I wanted to give him credit.

Instead on trying to get people banned you might consider a softer approach and work with the staff and the posters to find suitable hosting solutions without robbing members of new content (which will be the case if the staff decides to go hog wild here).

Multiple warnings and suspensions can be a very effective method of achieving a given objective here. Many of these posters make a living (or at least additional income) by uploading content here and elsewhere. It only makes sense that many of these uploaders use a neutral imagehoster rather than trying to hotlink images from here elsewhere (which, even if it was feasable, would probably cause more harm than good).

Sorry, I'm not sure I understood the last sentence.

So maybe what we actually need here is a list of approved imagehosts for these uploaders to choose from. Other imagehosts could be added to this list if approved by staff. This might actually be more effective than the ban list or trying to force every uploader to follow the ever changing ban list. Akiba-Online may even be able to add a few advertisements of these imagehosts here just like it does the file hosting sites and help defray the continuing cost of the server and forum upgrades. Food for thought.

Ceewan, that sounds like an excellent idea. The question is if there are any paying image hosts that don't violate AO rules. I don't know if KG999's image host pays. (I will find out.)

 

[Ceewan]

Sorry, I'm not sure I understood the last sentence.

Imagehosts are used for a variety of reasons but a few major ones are storage space and traffic. Although Akiba-Online does a pretty good job of hosting its' own images it is not set up (to the best of my knowledge) to handle the the traffic and storage of an imagehoster for uploaders to start hosting images here for their posts elsewhere.

There is fair logic to assuming that these same uploadrs are posting elsewhere, imagehosts don't pay that well and they pay per every 1,000 hits or more per image. So it only makes sense for these same posters to want to get as many hits as possible on their previews and with all the competetion here it only makes sense that they also post elsewhere (hence many uploaders also have their own blogs or advertise other sites in their signature and/or profile).

There isn't a whole lot of incentive for uploaders to host their images here either (compared to imagehosts who actually pay them). If they take their previews elsewhere they may take their posts elsewhere and that should be seriously weighed here.

 

[daredemonai]

Hmm... I'm not convinced that 1) AO has any obligation to provide spammers with a source of income, and 2) those spammers actual contribute much real content. Yes, they post hundreds of torrents. But most are recycled from more legitimate posts that are just a week old, or are terrible quality, or are not seeded. I think the only forum in which spammers provide a majority of posts is the JAV forum. The other torrent forums would not, in my opinion, suffer if off-site image hosts that use pop-ups and redirects and other tricky stuff were banned completely. Maybe we could make the JAV forums a "spammers' haven." Most of the people downloading from there are not very picky anyway. LOL