As of late, we’ve had a few commenters that have engaged in “graph wars” i.e., they throw up an image of a graph with little more than “look at this” attached to it in a comment thread. Then someone else responds in the same way.
One of the most repeated graphs in the last two days is this one, being used multiple times:
There are others.
These are repeatedly uploaded into comments, each time somebody wants to make the same point they’ve already made elsewhere.
The problem:
- Repetitive images used in comments get uploaded into our database each time they are used in a comment.
- Each image takes significant space in the database, compared to a comment, and our database of WUWT content is already overloaded.
- An overloaded database runs slower for everyone, and costs us more in the long run.
- Many of the people doing this are not paid subscribers, so this ends up being a loss.
Then there’s the irritation of seeing these again and again and again. It adds nothing to the discourse.
So, here’s the deal. STOP IT.
You can link to external images rather than filling up our database.
If the problem worsens, I will be forced to limit image uploads to paid subscribers.
-Anthony
WUWT is in good company. Despite the scientific pivot, over 105,000 papers in Google Scholar mention RCP8.5, and thousands of papers utilizing the framework continue to be published.
Might as well pursue the worst case scenario if you want to be a great academic activist. Gets notice by “scientific journalists” and sometimes the promise of some grant money, because your woke university needs to signal virtue to attract alumni donations. Still the same old “follow the science” routine, truth be darned.
Well, having never learned to post an image, I’m way ahead on this one.
Some people get a little attach image icon in the lower right corner of the edit box, others don’t (like moi).
Same here, and I’m a paying customer.
Same, Paul. I have no idea what the criteria is that allows someone to post images vs. not.
I imagine it’s a browser issue, not something at WUWT’s end.
Most likely- it works well with Firefox browser.
I disagree.
I don’t have the post image option in Firefox, Chrome or Brave. I don’t worry about it. Plain Old Text is fine with me. 🙂
Same. Having some knowledge of WordPress, I suspect that lack of an upload icon is due a permissions/roles issue. I’m guessing, but WUWT probably has several roles, for nonsubscribers, and varying levels of paid subscribers. I’d guess that the one we belong to is missing a permission.
Neither do I. Still don’t know how to upload images.
I always post links.
Sometimes it shows as a link. Sometimes it shows as an image.
I haven’t been able to figure out why.
Some links to images don’t point directly to the image. If it doesn’t end in .jpg, .png, or other accepted image, the system won’t interpret it as an image.
Is that a WordPress thing? My browser doesn’t seem to have any problem interpreting it as an image?
Without seeing a sample link, I couldn’t say definitively. But part of it is certainly up to WordPress. It’s not going to dig into an external site to resolve an image that isn’t explicit in the link itself. Your browser, on the other hand, is processing whatever the host at the link is presenting.
I should add that many hosts don’t allow this kind of “hotlinking”, since it is a drain on their bandwidth every time that image is served.
Just post a URL link to the graph if it exists somewhere else on the Internet and not just on your own PC. Readers of your comment may not click on it (especially if they don’t agree with you), but at least you referenced the source to support what you are saying.
I too am not sure how to post graphs in comments, so Anthony can be sure it won’t happen with me.
One can also post a link to a previous comment that has the image.
Anthony, have you considered imgur.com as imagehost? Typically used at phpBB discussion forums.
Thanks but, no and hell no. I don’t have time to rewrite WordPress code just because some people can’t stop themselves.
Correct attitude with some style…glad you’re keeping the lanes open for the rest of us!
I apologise. Now that I know there is an issue, I will try to use links back to previous graphs.
… or use an exterior image storage… which seems to work.
I use imgbb.com
Well, if you just post a link to a picture elsewhere it seems to work fine – and it will not occupy any local space. This here btw. a nice summary on why “climate science” WV was a pos. feedback, while it is definitely a large neg. feedback – in every single view.
The main process by far for warming of the air is: (1) sunlight warms the earth’s surfaces, (2) air contacts warm surfaces and by conduction heats up and (3) warm air rises up and by convection heats up the atmosphere. Advection is another process for warming of air in a region. For example, hot air from desert is blown by the wind to a nearby region. Hot air coming out of desert is called a siroccos. A light warm breeze from a desert is called a zephyr.
The greenhouse effect is not the main process for warming of air. In winter H2O and CO2 hibernate.
yep, hot air..
These articles are not for children.
The solar radiation is very broad band, not just “light”
The radiation is absorbed by all of planet earth – the entire atmosphere down to the surface, all the oceans and water bodies as well as the continents and islands.
So the “temperature” of each of these components of the planet depends upon the nature of the component and there are large differences amongst them and the idea of a mean or an average temperature is simply nonsense.
The entire “climate science” challenge is to eventually discover how to measure the energy which is totally coming into the planet and totally leaving the planet.
The warming claim is that overall less energy is shed than is received.
The devil is in the detail and the task is very difficult to accomplish.
Now, from where on earth did you get the utterly ridiculous assertion that an intrinsic property particular compounds can hibernate ?!?!
What about videos for which we post the link in a comment, and which redirects to YouTube? Maybe a silly question, but I know absolutely nothing about servers and hosting.
If you are posting a link its basically a redirect to the actual content. All that should wind up in the database is the link itself, not the content. I say “should” because WordPress is a very convoluted environment that can have unexpected consequences to what looks like a simple code change.
Thank you! WordPress seems both very comprehensive and more difficult to get into than it first appears.
I run several WP sites. Unless there is some weird plugin, no, links do not store the content in the WP database or on the server.
I upload my own graphics to a flickr account and hyperlink to them in my comments. WordPress then does the work of presenting them.
I keep a list of the individual flickr hyperlinks with descriptions of their contents so that when I want to reuse one, it’s right there.
I usually compose my comments in a text file, save it into a folder on my PC, and then load it into the WUWT comment box.
When it’s posted, I will then add the WordPress hyperlink for that particular comment into the text file.
I’ve got a text copy of nearly every comment I’ve made on WUWT going back twelve years or so.
It seems there are two routes to slap an image up on WUWT.
(1) That little icon in the lower right on the posting dialog box is one that apparently loads into WUWT’s web page, delivers a reduced image at the bottom of your post that readers can click on that opens a new tab with the full size image displayed. I’m guessing that’s the one that chews up WUWT memory.
(2) Find or upload an image to an independent web page, copy the URL and paste it in your message. It will appear here at WUWT just fine.
I’m guessing I can continue to slap my favorite Eagle Eating Wind Mill up here at WUWT as often as I like if I use method (2)
If I’m wrong about all that please let me know.
I just clicked on the link and the message “can’t reach this page” was displayed.
Cant reach this page.
Steve, hopefully this works. The link you created looks like this:
“http://eagle%20eating%20wind%20mill/”
which will actually load in a browser as:
“http://eagle eating wind mill/”
since the %20 represents a Space, which is invalid as it then contains spaces.
The best way to insert a link is to visit the page you wish to display and then Copy the url at the top and then Paste it into the link.
Let’s see if this works LINK
That worked.
All these years of web browsers and they *still* cannot parse links that have spaces and other characters replaced with %nn codes. It should be a bleeping simple two column table lookup! Every time a % is in a URL, replace it and the next two characters with the one character from the table.
Instead of the %20, why not just use an underline “_”?
2 fewer ascii bytes, and it works.
why not just use an underline
URL encoding. space becomes %20.
those %20 %20 %20 characters can only exist thanks to Bill Gates stupid OS.
Those of us using ****ux – 64 bit even don’t use non standards based BS.
Having said that, the bias of most organisations where you see source code even in .pdf (yea right, Adobe’s knock off of ***ux GS) showing refs to original doc in WORD!!
(or even worse some other orifice sw like ppt!)
arrggh!
It might be good if the image file is as small as possible to save space.
I compared some different image formats:
a48ntv68.png: 1,095,538 bytes
gif: 251,756 bytes
jpg: 238,090 bytes
Better to just post the link, that’s usually 100 bytes or less.
The only problem is that some of the internet imagery that doesn’t support the MSM meme has a habit of disappearing. Thus, if one makes a claim and it is contested, it might be impossible to backup the claim. What might be helpful would be a list of WUWT images and a large ‘thumbnail’ so that if a commenter needs to remind someone of a point, they can provide a link to something that is already archived here.
What are you storing the data on exactly?
Modern storage uses deduplication to solve this exact problem. The cheapest of the cheap storage arrays don’t have this feature but that’s a tiny sliver of the market. Message me directly if you want to explore this.
In some WP setups, users can access their own subset of the Media Library in WP. That means they can access items they’ve uploaded before and point them to the current comment. It’s understandable that WUWT doesn’t so this, as that can cause a bit of unnecessary overhead on the server.
But generally, you’re right.
That’s the advantage of doing storage layer deduplication. It has no load on the servers, and its completely invisible to WP, users don’t need to have access to anything. Bonus, if someone quotes another comment in their own post, that gets deduplicated too. Someone could quote from a ten year old comment and it would get deduplicated.
I usually use this method when the image is already uploaded, I right-click the image and select Copy image address or Copy image link. This copies the image’s direct URL to my clipboard.
Then I right-click in the comment and choose Paste. The link to the image is pasted into the comment.
Good tip! You are not uploading a new image, you are linking to an image that has already been previously uploaded to WUWT.
Now if I can just find my list of already-uploaded images. 🙂
I also use your method with image files previously added by me to (the end of) WUWT comments, but with the following “tweak”.
The “Copy image address or Copy image link” stage usually results in a character string ending in something along the lines of :
“…[filename].jpg?fit=%2C&quality=83&ssl=1”
I have to delete the “?[options]” suffix to the URL in the WUWT comment box so that it ends with “[filename].jpg” or “[filename].jpeg” or “[filename].png” (or “[filename].gif”, though they seem to work less often for some obscure reason).
My experience has been that the WUWT (/ WordPress) code cannot cope with the “?[options]” suffix, but URLs ending “.jpg” or “.jpeg” or “.png” are (usually !) fetched and rendered inline as expected.
Not only does this allow multiple “image files” to be added to a single comment, it provides a better “flow” for the reader in cases where the logical argument being made is either long and/or contains several sub-elements.
There is no decent, simple offer that some idiotic people cannot resist abusing to the detriment of all. The miscreants must be returned to the Land of the Morons.
At least me being mean doesn’t eat up data.
When I read the heading: “A simple warning note to some WUWT commenters”, I assumed it would be about the frequent ad hominem attacks which many commenters on this site use in place of counter-arguments.
Yes
Bob Newhart’s “Stop It!” sketch comes to mind.
Anthony, does “upload into comments” only mean to use the little “Attach an image to this comment” button?
Or does it also mean images done the way I just did that one: by posting a link to a .png file hosted elsewhere?
As you know, I very often include multiple graphs and other images in my comments, by linking to .png, .jpg, and/or .gif files which reside on my sealevel.info website. Here’s an example from 20 days ago.
The images show up inline in my comments here on WUWT. Does that contribute to the problem, or is it okay?
I think the images are being loaded from my site, rather than your database, but can you please confirm that I’m not overburdening your server?
“Or does it also mean images done the way I just did that one: by posting a link to a .png file hosted elsewhere?”
If you simply paste a link, it’s not being hosted on this site. Yes, it’s when you click that icon and actually browse to an image on your machine to upload.
The database needs changed to eliminate all exact duplicates of files and point every link to the same single copy. I’m sure there’s a database guru somewhere who can do that.
Everything is “quick and easy” when somebody else has to do all the hard work.
You mean like Net Zero is easy? 😉
Anthony just do it, as “some folks” will never learn nor change their behaviour. Too harsh? Nope, just years of experience…
A picture is worth a thousand words, but costs a million byes (or more of storage) while the thousand words, on average costs 6 kilo byes (give or take).
Time to move into the computer age and start appreciating memory and storage as conservable resources.
I did a paper back in the mid-80s. Central to the theme was that the information age would be limited by storage capacity and communications bandwidth. That has been proven accurate every year since.
For those experimenting with how to put a link into a comment without the image itself showing up instead, may I suggest using the “test” page under the dropdown for “About” in the title bar?
The advantage is this post won’t grow into a zillion comments.
The downside is that you won’t get helpful tips from commenters if you’re having trouble.
Some years ago web site builders used images which were shrunken down so that their web pages would load quickly. With faster internet connections, this idea has been generally forgotten. The result is massive image bloat and web pages now can take much longer to load.
Anyone who feels that they must upload an image in a comment should check the size first.