I agree, @Ken Anderson . I come to SOC to "visit" and not read a bunch of links and watch a bunch of videos, though an occasional share of something funny or interesting is fun. Many times a video adds context to the topic as well.
Embedded videos don't cost us any resources, but photos and other images do, so these should contribute to the discussion. Sometimes, it can be interesting to know what other forum members are watching online, and since they (embedded videos) don't detract from our available resources, they aren't as concerning to me, but if no one is going to talk about it and it doesn't serve any purpose other than to take up space, it could be thought of as clutter.
While they serve a purpose and can be useful in some contexts, links are often a pet peeve for me because we should be able to talk about stuff without referring to other websites or experts, and they particularly annoy me when the full URL is posted rather than turning text into a link, which is easy enough to do here. Again, links can sometimes be helpful, but I don't think many people click them, and they too often detract rather than enhance a discussion. I am not harping as much on SEO as I did in the old forum, but there is also the fact that every outward link can slightly detract from our SEO, while links to our forum can slightly improve our standing in search engines. If the link adds to the discussion, fine, but it's a good idea to ask yourself whether it really does.
Photos and other images are the biggest hogs of our available resources, so I would like to beg people not to upload a photo or image to the forum just because they found it somewhere on the Internet and thought it was cute at the moment. If the photo is one you took yourself or of something you are discussing in the forum, it can enhance that thread and be worth the space it takes up. A picture might be worth a thousand words, but a thousand words are more valuable in a discussion forum, and they're much cheaper.
If you take a picture of your garden, your dog, your car, or anything else, these photos might be worth the cost because we care about you. If you're describing something you once owned but don't have a photo of, and you can find one that looks like the one you had, this might be worthwhile to include in a discussion as well. So, I am not saying don't post photos or images, but please be careful not to waste our resources. If no one is going to look at it after the day that you posted it, it will nevertheless take up the same amount of space for as long as the forum is here.
There are potential legal problems with posting images you find online, as well. Although it's rare for someone to sue over the use of copyrighted images in a seniors forum, we're not exempt from these laws, and taking the image down after the lawsuit has been filed won't necessarily remove the liability. So please, just because you can view an image online doesn't mean it's free to upload it to another site. On the old forum, I did get one threat of a lawsuit over the use of an image that someone had posted to a discussion. Since the warning came before the lawsuit, I was able to simply remove it, but there is no requirement to warn someone prior to a lawsuit. Plus, it's not good form to steal someone else's stuff.
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