Hotlinking

Daphne01

I've notice loads of comps being posted now have pics with hotlinks, have the rules been changed to allow them now?

weeowens

Hi,Daphne01

I don't think the rules were ever really that clear after this debate :-)
Here

Specifically this post:
Hi folks,

I just want to clarify our position on hotlinking, if we get complaints from the company hosting the picture we will obviously take the posts down, otherwise if they aren't causing a drain on their resources they are fine to be left up.

I hope that helps.

MSE Alana

The first post from MSE re hotlinking mentioned on a few threads seems to have been deleted but its alluded to in the comping guide.


I tend not to use the pics as you describe as its a bit more bother to post & I'm still not sure re hotlinking.Plus if the piccy is used as the link ,then MSE admin get a complaint re hotlinking,we may lose the link on editing.

If I want to add a piccy I tend just to add it via a hosting site such as Photobucket.

Daphne01

I do the same weeowens, just add a photobucket pic or copy and paste and remove the linkage.

I thought there was a sticky on the front page at one point stating not to hotlink, maybe I'm getting old and imagined it

Thanks for replying

weeowens

Hi,Daphne01

I think you are right re the sticky but if I recall correctly it was removed after the post I've linked to appeared.

Daphne01

This post mentions the old hotlinking sticky so I'm not going mad lol
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=37936074&postcount=977

The rules do seem to have changed to say that you can use a hotlink as long as it's ok with the site, as per weeowens/fire**fly's post s.

Thanks guys

weeowens

I think I'll stick with photobucket though :-)

One-Eye

The original post banning hotlinked images was https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2098601 but this was merged and has since disappeared, so the de facto rule is MSE's Alana's quoted above.

The use of hotlinked images is problematical in several ways, the main ones being:

1) It is bandwidth theft. Photo hosting sites are set up to do the job but some smaller sites are not set up to download images to thousands of users who are not even using their website. This is the source of complaints to MSE.

2) The image is not controlled by the poster. The third party website may delete the image, or even worse change it, possibly to something inappropriate.

(some of you may remember that I did this to a site who was copying MSE comp posts - I waited until they had copied one of my posts before deleting the post from MSE and changing the picture to something inviting them to go forth and fornicate)

3) You can turn images off in 'User-CP' - something useful if you are using mobile connections (or slow/restricted for other reasons). If you view posts such as THIS ONE with images turned off you are left with the image URL, not the URL for the comp.

Daphne01

Thanks One-Eye, I think the rule should be re-instated. As you point out there are many problems associated with it.
Thanks for the replies

weeowens

Hi,it just seemed that when the "rule" was posted many ignored it & MSE admin did not enforce it :-)

weeowens

Just spotted our latest MSE email Comp of the week here.

Competitions thread of the week: Win a VW Campervan tent

Seems that no greater example of MSE's tolerance of hotlinking could be shown :-)
One-Eye has given example of the risks on this thread & so have I in the past but here we are.