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I came across this question and in the process found that I could not access the corresponding image as it was hosted on imgur. Is there any solution for the above? (The questions contains a link image which has been probably now been deleted by the imgur site.) The imgur policy on deletion of images is

As long as images are getting at least 1 view every 6 months, they will stick around forever. After that, your image may be removed to create more space for newer images.

In that sense, can there be a feature designed so that the images linked to imgur are visited every 5 months or so by the site itself? Or should we systematically discourage people to use links to images as such as instead ask them to upload the image using the Image function of the stackexchange software?

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  • $\begingroup$ Slightly off-topic: There were already some question concerning uploading images, e.g. when you search for imgur you find a few. Perhaps questions related to images and image hosting would deserve their own tag? (I did not find a suitable tag among the tags which we already have.) $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    May 13, 2012 at 10:19
  • $\begingroup$ @MartinSleziak: Yeah and I don't think I have the power to enable new tags. There is another question of the similar nature meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/3271/…. But the discussion there has apparently failed in this particular case. $\endgroup$
    – user14082
    May 13, 2012 at 10:46
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    $\begingroup$ I've managed to restore the image; the trick was to remove the .stack portion of the image's URL... $\endgroup$
    – J. M. ain't a mathematician
    May 13, 2012 at 10:55
  • $\begingroup$ Ohh, that is nice :-). $\endgroup$
    – user14082
    May 13, 2012 at 11:12
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    $\begingroup$ I've created images tag - I hope it's a suitable name. $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    May 13, 2012 at 11:50
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    $\begingroup$ @J.M.: Did you re-upload the image or just remove .stack? This answer seems to indicate that images with urls containing .stack are not "owned" by SE in imgur's system and thus subject to the 6-month removal, whereas ones uploaded through SE are "owned" by SE, wouldn't have .stack, and not subject to the 6-month removal. $\endgroup$
    – Isaac
    May 13, 2012 at 19:17
  • $\begingroup$ @Isaac: I re-uploaded the image, using the "from the web" panel of the importer and using the .stack-less version of the URL as source. You can check the revision history... $\endgroup$
    – J. M. ain't a mathematician
    May 13, 2012 at 21:22

1 Answer 1

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Based on Jeff's answer here, images that have been uploaded through the StackExchange upload interface are not subject to the 6-month removal (they are hosted on imgur, but in a StackExchange account that does not have the restriction about needing traffic every few months).

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  • $\begingroup$ So, should a proper answer be that we should try to encourage people to use ".stack"-less links to the images when inserting images "from the web"? May be we can give such a suggestion below or above the "link" url in the dialog box? $\endgroup$
    – user14082
    May 15, 2012 at 18:48
  • $\begingroup$ @JayeshBadwaik: My understanding is that the only images that were broken by having .stack inserted in the URL were ones uploaded to imgur before SE made their own image-upload system based on imgur. That is, any new images should be uploaded using the insert image button in the post-editing toolbar (and in doing so, they will have the correct URL). $\endgroup$
    – Isaac
    May 15, 2012 at 18:52
  • $\begingroup$ Ohk, thanks for the clarification.. $\endgroup$
    – user14082
    May 18, 2012 at 12:43

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