BBC Gallery

[wolfetundra]

Version
2.0.4 (Currently)

Description
I'm looking for a Gallery that looks/operates like this, http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=473, but one that is BBC based. That is, when someone posts a BBC image (img=blah blah) in a post, I want a Gallery that will pick up that code and add it to a page displaying all BBC images posted.

Permissions
The only restrictions I can see is having either a Gallery for each board or limiting certain groups from visiting BBC images that originated from excluded boards.

Feature Set
I would like to limit Guest access.

[Arantor]

The problem with doing that is that it tends to get quite awkward to store and manage that data.

What benefit would it actually provide to have it?

[emanuele]

When I coded something like this, I did it in order to (well, hoping to, reality has been different) facilitate the users to find images that were posted in a 200+ pages (at the time, few years ago) topic.

But reality has been that nobody ever added a tag and nobody is using or used it... lol

[wolfetundra]

The problem with doing that is that it tends to get quite awkward to store and manage that data.

What benefit would it actually provide to have it?

I don't allow files/images hosted on my site. The benefit, I would think, is obvious ... to have all images posted to the forum to show up in one location.

[Arantor]

That's the thing, it's not nearly as obvious as you seem to believe it is. I realise that it would give you a list of all the images posted. My point stands: what actual use would you get out of doing it? So you have a list of linked images... It helps you how?

[wolfetundra]

Arantor, I posted "...when someone posts a BBC image (img=blah blah) in a post, I want a Gallery that will pick up that code and add it to a page displaying all BBC images posted."

So when you asked what the benefit is of having such a feature, I responded with it being quite obvious ... IF you read my original post that is. Both of your questions that you have asked me so far can all be answered in my first post.

What benefit would it actually provide to have it?

a Gallery ... a page displaying all BBC images posted.

I guess it would help me the same way an Image Gallery would help someone who hosted files. If that doesn't answer your question, perhaps you can ask whoever uses an Image Gallery on what benefit having all their images in one location serves.

That's the thing, it's not nearly as obvious as you seem to believe it is. I realise that it would give you a list of all the images posted. My point stands: what actual use would you get out of doing it? So you have a list of linked images... It helps you how?

You just said what I would get out of it ... a list of all the images posted. Or, like I stated in my original post,

a Gallery ... a page displaying all BBC images posted.

Look, I didn't come on this site to have someone badger me about my needs or benefits of a code or other scripts. If you can help me, then help me. If you can't, then please allow others to step in and help me. If it's not possible or it's too taxing on available resources, then say so. But please do not attempt to belittle my idea/request because of some preconceived notion that my idea is stupid or without use.

When I coded something like this, I did it in order to (well, hoping to, reality has been different) facilitate the users to find images that were posted in a 200+ pages (at the time, few years ago) topic.

emanuele, that's pretty much my goal.

[Arantor]

So when you asked what the benefit is of having such a feature, I responded with it being quite obvious

Except that it's not. You've said the benefit would be that you have it. Not how you'd actually USE it.

I guess it would help me the same way an Image Gallery would help someone who hosted files. If that doesn't answer your question, perhaps you can ask whoever uses an Image Gallery on what benefit having all their images in one location serves.

Don't know about you but I use a gallery with everything arranged in albums (one for each type of image), custom fields to help me find certain images... putting all the images in one place doesn't really help me find anything, all it does is allow me to add extra data to the images to help me find them in the future.

Here's the thing, you're asking someone here to spend their free time on something for YOUR benefit (not ours), it's sort of motivating to understand what benefit you'll get out of it.

Yes, you'll have all the images in one place. The point I was trying to get at is how that helps you. I don't know about you but going through 200 images or more would be an insane effort to actually find anything.

But please do not attempt to belittle my idea/request because of some preconceived notion that my idea is stupid or without use.

And please do not attempt to infer a reason into why I'm asking. I'm asking because I genuinely do not believe this will help you achieve what you want to achieve but since I don't know what you want to achieve, only how you think you must achieve it, I can't really help you.

Seriously, wading through hundreds of items to find a single one is a painful job. I cannot seriously believe that is your end goal.

[wolfetundra]

Oh I apologize. I didn't realize my use for it dictated your willingness to assist me. I would use it to have all my BBC images in one location. Oh but you probably don't know why I would want such an ability. Emanuele covered that pretty well with his reply;

in order to facilitate the users to find images that were posted in a 200+ pages topic.

But, for you, I'll reword it in such a way to better explain such a use. I would use it so myself, and members, don't have to go board to board, post to post, page to page to view all the BBC images posted.

If you still don't understand what I intend to use such a feature for then I can't think of any other way to phrase it in a way that you could understand. Emanuele was able to understand my request from my original post without this badgering.

I didn't infer anything when I asked you to not attempt to belittle my idea/request because of some preconceived notion that my idea is stupid or without use. You made it quite clear that you see no use of such a feature. 

I genuinely do not believe this will help you achieve what you want to achieve...

Seriously, wading through hundreds of items to find a single one is a painful job. I cannot seriously believe that is your end goal.

I hope that I've satisfied your inquisition into my use for such a feature on my BBC based forum.

[Arantor]

I think there is a fairly large miscommunication.

If you have a 200 page topic with images, presumably that's a lot of images. Having all those in one place is going to make it hard to find any of those images unless you only have a few images to deal with. In which case searching is probably a better method.

Seriously: for my day job, I'm an analyst/programmer. That means I don't just build what people ask me to build. I figure out what problem they're trying to solve and then build something for that.

The problem is that you have a 200 page topic with images scattered in it. To me, a page that just shows all the images does not seem an effective way of finding a given image in that topic, assuming that's what you're trying to do. It just seems that you're going to end up with a lot of images to wade through and be bogged down trying to find a given image, which is not really a good solution to a problem.

So, is the problem that you're just trying to find a given picture? Is the problem that you need to police the images for inappropriate content? Is the problem that you need to look for dead links? Is the problem that you just don't have a good way to categorise the information you have?

You see, you have defined your problem in terms of how you think you have to solve it, not what your actual problem IS. It is very likely that the best solution for you is nothing to do with what you actually asked for. It certainly is that way with my clients.

I don't see that the feature has no use. I see that the feature requested probably solves one problem (not having all the images) and gives you another (too many images to deal with), so I'm trying to find out exactly what's going on and what your final goal is once you have all those images.


The other problem, though, is that heading through 200 pages of topic means examining at least 3000 messages and there's no way to do that without hurting a server fairly heavily (unless you build and subsequently maintain an index)

Oh, and it's not about me personally. It's quite simple: you're asking someone to write something that has extremely limited use. No-one here will do that for you for free unless they have a reason to do so themselves, and it's not like there are a lot of users here who actually have the necessary skills to do so.

[emanuele]

If you have a 200 page topic with images, presumably that's a lot of images. Having all those in one place is going to make it hard to find any of those images unless you only have a few images to deal with. In which case searching is probably a better method.

[...]

The problem is that you have a 200 page topic with images scattered in it. To me, a page that just shows all the images does not seem an effective way of finding a given image in that topic, assuming that's what you're trying to do. It just seems that you're going to end up with a lot of images to wade through and be bogged down trying to find a given image, which is not really a good solution to a problem.

And that was covered by my:

But reality has been that nobody ever added a tag and nobody is using or used it... lol

Unfortunately unless your users want to collaborate and "attach" something (a tag, a category, a description, whatever) to the images to allow others to find them easily, the system will just show a bunch of images, that will probably be even more difficult to browse (because it will not be just one topic, but also many topics mixed together, and even if you narrow down the browsing of the gallery to the topic level (thing that I planned, but then didn't realise), I guess the number of pages will be not significantly less than the original topic because people post multiple images per message that compensate the messages without an image. To give you actual figures: the "images" topic of my forum is about 300 pages right now, the number of images collected in the category the topic is in fills 200+ pages using 16 images per page, considering that single topic collects at least 75% of the images posted in that category, it means that even showing *only* the images of that single topic would require about 150 pages or so...waste of time).

It may work to grab the message text and use that to describe the picture, though it's an approximation and in most cases it wouldn't work because (if your forum works similar to mine) people are posting images without messages (just for the fun of showing a funny image) or with a smiley, so completely useless.

There may be a solution, but I still have to find it (I even started writing some javascript that was able to identify the image in the post and create a nice list next to the posting textarea asking for tags or categories, I never finished that, because I myself found it annoying), I added the tag attribute to the img bbcode, I added myself many tags at the beginning to try to "push" the system, but it didn't work.

[Arantor]

And this is why I challenge the use of it. Not the necessity, but the specified use (which is something entirely different)

[emanuele]

Yep, I imagined.

Obviously *if* your users are willing to cooperate and support the system, that's another discussion.