Reading Aaron's history of Summitpost, it seems that there was a community wide purge of unnecessary/bad/repetitive/stupid photos. Perhaps it is time to have another one of those. I know there are pictures attached to some of my pages that add absolutely no insight or have no scenic quality and just clutter up the image gallery. Cutting these would be a great way to increase space.

Bubba Suess wrote:Reading Aaron's history of Summitpost, it seems that there was a community wide purge of unnecessary/bad/repetitive/stupid photos. Perhaps it is time to have another one of those. I know there are pictures attached to some of my pages that add absolutely no insight or have no scenic quality and just clutter up the image gallery. Cutting these would be a great way to increase space.

You can delete the offending images off your own pages. They'll still be on whatever other pages (if any) to which the author attached them, but at the least your pages will be better off for the effort. It's absolutely amazing how many pictures can accumulate on larger pages of popular mountains or areas (i.e., Mt. Rainier, Mt. Whitney, Glacier NP, Yellowstone NP, etc.), with many of those photos (redundently) appearing on several pages at the same time. Pruning one's own pages of unneeded/duplicate/not relevant visual material helps in several ways.

saintgrizzly wrote:You can delete the offending images off your own pages. They'll still be on whatever other pages (if any) to which the author attached them, but at the least your pages will be better off for the effort. It's absolutely amazing how many pictures can accumulate on larger pages of popular mountains or areas (i.e., Mt. Rainier, Mt. Whitney, Glacier NP, Yellowstone NP, etc.), with many of those photos (redundently) appearing on several pages at the same time. Pruning one's own pages of unneeded/duplicate/not relevant visual material helps in several ways.

I agree, and I need to do that on some of my pages. I have hesitated thus far because I do not want to be perceived as a image tyrant. Still, I think a system wide purge of bad pics would help Summitpost in general.

Bubba Suess wrote:Reading Aaron's history of Summitpost, it seems that there was a community wide purge of unnecessary/bad/repetitive/stupid photos. Perhaps it is time to have another one of those.

I would LOVE to do that. Would anyone like to fill in at work for me for about a year? It would probably take at least that long.

I can't upload any photos at all!!!!!!
They come out as red cross failures!


There was also quite a lot of photos which didn't seem to be of very good quality but had a function, which went in that purge. That annoyed people, messed up some pages and created some general havoc. Most of the photos was good riddance though.
To not create that situation again, I guess it would take a year or so.

There's 10.613 mountainpages on SP.
There's 1.119 areapages on SP.
There's 6.426 TRs on SP.

If 150 of the largest contributors removed their history versions but 1, it would likely free a lot of space.

Of 50.406 members, only more than a 1000 members have more than a few contribuitions, and from member 6190 onward there's no contributions whatsoever.
It's a small group of members who contributes, and if one could get at least some of them to purge versions and bad photos, likely a lot would be gained.

Not very optimistic about it, though. Maybe, when they too hit the brake with a new ccontribution...

I took the advice here and deleted many older versions of the pages that I own.

I daresay that many people have no idea that when a page is edited, a new object is created, and the old page just gets added to the pile. I certainly didn't at first.

Can older versions of pages simply be dropped after a given period of time? I know there's the argument that someone may want to go back and get info on an old page, but (a) how often does that really happen and (b) if the page is a year old or more, is it likely that that person will even miss the page, much less need it?

As for ephemeral members - those who sign on and never again participate, and which apparently cover a sizable percentage of SP members - how about a self-cleaning mechanism whereby anyone not active for 2+ years and who has no contributions other than their primary image photo be dropped?

This would free up space for the valuable photos of dirt roads and flowers.

surgent wrote:This would free up space for the valuable photos of dirt roads and flowers.

Don't forget the butterflies and kitties!

and leaves

I usually edit my pages quite a few times. While I usually go back in the end and delete past versions, I notice that there seems to be a limit as to how many versions of your page the system keeps (maybe 10 ish), and the oldest versions seem to automatically get deleted.

Would it make sense to lower that limit, so that anything older than, say, the last 2 or 3 versions of your page, are automatically wiped out? This will give you a chance to revert back to a previous version if you accidentally made some huge mistake or deleted a bunch of stuff, but it'll get rid of a lot of the older versions that you probably would never need.

I'm not sure if it would be technologically capable, but another idea: why not have the system automatically delete all but the newest version(s) of pages after it's been created and unedited for, I don't know, a few weeks? I'm sure there's a lot of people who don't know their older pages are still saved, and they might never know if they don't look at the forums.

Maybe if the elves delete pics of barely clothed hot chicks that have been uploaded to SP, that would free up some space.

truchas wrote:Maybe if the elves delete pics of barely clothed hot chicks that have been uploaded to SP, that would free up some space.

Actually...that's not that bad an idea. Couldn't hurt.... After all, pics like "barely clothed hot chicks" are more readily available on a LOT of non-mountaineering web sites.

Castlereagh wrote:...I notice that there seems to be a limit as to how many versions of your page the system keeps (maybe 10 ish), and the oldest versions seem to automatically get deleted.

Unless it has been changed, I don't think that's the case. When I first discovered the "View History" link on the "Editorial Options" bar, virtually all my pages had HUGE numbers of old stuff. I have a lot of trouble organizing pages visually (I'm not proficient at HTML, so do a lot of "trial and error" work—this after all the writing is prepared in advance off site), so end up with many, many older versions. I don't know, for example, upon first stumbling across the "View History" option, how many pages were stored in history for my GNP page, but it may well have been a couple hundred!

Although it is my understanding that those backup pages are nothing but writing and numbers, because all images are referenced by such-and-such a number, assigned at its initial inception on SP—meaning they don't take up as much server space as the most recent page, the one viewed in all its pictorial glory!

Just my couple cents worth, but I think that it would be good for the "View History" feature to be openly mentioned, and featured, as an invaluable tool for anyone putting up pages on SP. Even if "old" pages are entirely stored as letters/numbers, the server space saving would seem to be substantial.

saintgrizzly wrote:

Castlereagh wrote:...I notice that there seems to be a limit as to how many versions of your page the system keeps (maybe 10 ish), and the oldest versions seem to automatically get deleted.

Unless it has been changed, I don't think that's the case.

You're correct. When working on my construction page, I've sometimes had 30+ versions before the final was done. I do delete all those histories (except the last one, which would delete the page) when I'm done.

Would it be helpful if I used the tool to PM all members to send a brief note about histories and request them to clean them out as time permits?