Newcomers and Contribution

[George]

Hi Everyone

I've noticed today that the rich text editor's image options have been updated to some kind of custom image manager. Which is great for casual forum users that need somewhere to upload images to, etc.

But it's also introduced some kind of moderation facility that means that images have to be approved before they can be viewed by anyone other than the user that uploaded them?? Am I correct in this?

If this is the case, it's a problem. Surely the whole purpose of a Community Support Forum is to help get solutions to user's problems as quickly as possible... ie quicker than Spotify Staff can.

Images often can help explain what you mean, and often make it a lot easier for a user to understand what they need to do. Not being able to view images on a post for some time means that they are going to be left confused and frustrated.

I've just gotten around this issue myself by viewing my post in HTML view and hardcoding the image's SRC to the respective image in my public dropbox folder... but that defeats the whole purpose of the forum having its own image serving capabilities.

Either we need to have images not defaulting to require "approval", or we need to sort out how images are "approved" so that they can be approved quickly and efficiently - I mean within an hour of posting.

Thanks

George

[jvanderb]

I am not completely sure, but I believe the feature of which you speak is one that has been enabled for Founders, but not everyone.  I too noticed the moderation requirement for the pictures, and wondered if there was a better way.

[George]

That would explain why I've noticed it today. But it seems a backwards step to me... moderation takes time.

[jvanderb]

Agreed!  Perhaps this feature needs to be rethought.  I understand why moderation is desired, but it also makes posting images much less useful.

[George]

Perhaps more of a report driven moderation process would work better. So an image can be posted, but then the image can be reported by any user, that then requires the image to be "approved" by a moderator. That way, any offensive / dodgy images can be flagged, but genuinely helpful images can still be available as quickly as possible.

[Rorey]

This should be improved now.  Uploading images is absolutely fundamental in many cases, as screen shots come in quite handy when trouble shooting.  Let me know if this doesn't seem to be working for you.  

[George]

What have you changed? Images I add still get a placeholder if viewed by a user not signed in?

They still say "Awaiting Approval" in my "Image for username" section of my profile...

Am I expecting them to not need approving or is this still expected behaviour?

Edit: Admittedly, they have been approved in a very reasonable time. But for the sake of clarifcation?

[overfloater]

Not to bump an old thread... but this section of the forum isn't exactly spilling over with them at the moment. ;)

Are image uploads now notifying the moderators that they're waiting in the approval queue?

I ask because I uploaded an avatar image several days ago and it's still awaiting approval. Not that that's at all critical, but I also tested a small image in a regular post and noticed that I was able to view it while logged in but only saw the placeholder when logged out. The test image appeared to be uploaded to the same area of my profile as the avatar, and was similarly marked as awaiting approval, which led me to wonder if it too would have sat there indefinitely. (I've since deleted the test image, btw.)

[David]

We've been discussing images and image moderation rather a lot recently, as part of an overall plan for this community. Hopefully we'll come to a reasonable middle ground soon.

overfloater - That image has been approved now.

[Rorey]

Apologies for a collosal topic movement failure I've just made, which can only be attributed to a temporary lapse in focus.  It seems in an attempt to move this topic to the new Community Contribution board, I've actually managed to remove some posts.  

My sincerest apologies.  However, to continue what David has said here, we should more news on moderation in the near future.  More to come soon.