Since people are still using attachments for non-news sections of the board (some even after they were asked not to), I'm looking at either...
- shutting down the feature until something more effective can be set up
- or, to downgrade people mis-using it, to a ranking that doesn't have access
- or, to limit it to a higher ranking and remind people of the Userguide (section 11) and the earlier request to limit attachments to new and important info topics only.
- or, purge the attachments folder after a month or year (or some set period)
Thoughts or preferences?
Personally I think shutting it down altogether. There are numerous sites we can upload photos to.
Now I know why I wasn't able to load some photos a few months back. I was only a rank 4 then.
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My thoughts too, We can always help people wanting to attach photos when they ask how to by pointing them in the right direction. But to make sure that there be no slip ups just shut down that option altogether. One less thing for you to monitor and keep an eye out, one less workload.
There's always the option of using Photobucket etc, which lower to higher members can freely use to do the attachment anyways.
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Can you just disable attachments for all the categories/sub forums you don't want them to be used, and only leave it enabled for the News section (or whatever section/s you want)? I'm pretty sure some board controls can do this, from the Admin Panel. This way, you could leave the ranking permissions as they are, which I think are quite fine.
Alternatively if this can't be done, I would shut it down until a better set up can be established. If you limit it to only members with a higher ranking, lesser ranked members who would have respected that feature will have to post news/important topics without attachments and will have to then rely on higher ranked members or a mod to do it for them. So there's both advantages and disadvantages in doing it that way.
I'd say shut it down and then it gets people like me who don't really know how to use a computer an incentive to actually go and learn(then my wife can drag me to 1 of those tafe course thingy's she goes to for computer stuff).i've been shown a couple of times and coached on how to do use the image hosting sites but as i don't post pic's anywhere else other then on ozformers i kinda forget after a few days on what i'm doing.
I too would say to just completely disable it; for the reasons everyone has mentioned previously + if it is unavailable to everyone & across the board, then there's no avenue or reason for complaint from any member.
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To be honest, once I discovered Photobucket, I've always used it as a preference, I find it easier, especially since I load most photos from my phone anyway, straight to photobucket, and when I go to use them on the forume, they are there ready to link in.
as mentioned above, we're always happy to help a new member with options of how to insert photos/images. maybe we could write up an instruction set for new members and include it in the forum rules and recommendations section so it's easy to access, or sticky it to the top of a section.