• Anything ‘published’ on the web is viewed as intellectual property and, regardless of whether it displays a copyright symbol or not, is therefore copyrighted by the originator. The only exception to this is if there is a “free and unrestricted reuse” statement associated with the work.

    In order to protect our members and TFL from possible litigation, all members must abide by the following new rules:

    1. Copying and pasting entire articles from another site to TFL is strictly prohibited. The same applies to articles from print or other media, and to posting photographs taken of copyrighted pages or other media.

    2. Copyright law provides for “fair use” of portions of a copyrighted work. You can copy no more than a SINGLE paragraph from the article to your post (3 or 4 sentences at most).

    3. You must provide a link to the article along with the name of website. For example: ww.xxx.yyy/zzz (The Lower Thumbsuck Daily News).

    4. You must provide, in your own words, a brief summary of the article AND your reasons for believing it will be of interest to TFL members. Failure to do so may result in the thread being closed or your post being deleted as a “cut and paste drive by.”

    5. Photographs and other images are also copyrighted. "Hotlinking" of images (so that it appears in your message) from other sites is also prohibited unless you own rights to the image. If you wish to share an image, provide a clickable link to it.

    Posts that do not follow these new guidelines will be altered or deleted by staff. Members who continue to violate this policy may lose their posting privileges at TFL.

    Thank you for your cooperation and your participation in TFL, the leading online forum for firearms enthusiasts.

Avatars and Youtube.

B

Boberama

New member
I can see why you don't allow avatars. It somehow makes the site seem lower-class, less serious and unreputable in many instances.

But how come Youtube tags aren't allowed? It would let a user watch a video without clicking a link and allow them to see what they would be watching.
 
Obviously, that's not included in the standard tag set from vBulletin. I imagine it is an add-on from somewhere. We have no plans to add it to our tags at this time. We prefer to leave the option to view a video or not up to the individual member through the use of a URL link rather than having a multi-megabyte video autostart every time they open a post containing it.
 
@Mal

In support of adding youtube, the video neither autostarts, nor autobuffers, forcing no one to watch or waste bandwith for a video no one wish's to see.

Please see this link for an example of how the video looks and acts in a thread.
Personally I think its no worse than an extra large picture in a thread.

http://www.geekpoint.net/forum-administration-management/4648-youtube-bbcode-vbulletin.html

The video is 3 or 4 posts down.

So merely my opinion, I don't make the big bucks or run things.
 
Thanks, that explains the function a little better. It doesn't exactly "let a user watch a video without clicking a link". In essence the link is an image retrieved from Youtube with each post view, but you do have to click on it.

I don't see how adding the first image from a video is a big advantage over a plain URL link to Youtube. Nonetheless, we'll discuss it and see if it's something we want here.
 
I'm having trouble thinking of videos that would be so relevant to discussion on TFL that they merit linking, much less embedding. If there is one occasionally, it's certainly unusual enough that the difference between linking and embedding doesn't make a significant difference to anyone.

That said, video embedding on the web is ubiquitous, and if there were relevant content that could be embedded while maintaining TFL's S/N ratio, I don't think anyone would have a problem with that.

I think the concern is not whether embedded videos are good or bad for TFL, but rather how TFL members' use of that feature would alter the S/N ratio and increase moderation overhead, all for very little benefit.
 
There have been many occasions where I've watched some embedded videos on other sites. So, I've been conflicted about any response I might make in this thread. Until now, that is.

Five or six years ago our patron, Rich Lucibella, went on a crusade to get rid of some of the really stupid stuff some people do. One that really peeved him was the tendency of people to paste a link or an entire article and make no effort to direct the conversation of the thread they just created. To be fair, people would do the same thing in responding to another member, as if the link or cut-n-paste article was all that needed to be said. Rich coined the term, "Drive-By Cut and Paste Post" (click on the link for an explanation of what this is).

Back when the old Legal & Political forum was still active, Dave (the Bluesman) and I had had so much of this activity, that we made it a forum specific rules violation. This rules violation was carried over to the new Law and Civil Rights forum.

That helped the L&P and L&CR forums, but folks were just hitting the rest of the board harder and harder with these types of posts. Bud, over in the General Discussion forums, began using the "Drive-By" rules Dave and I had set up.

Finally, we arrived at the point where all the mods were blocking these posts, so it became a General Forum Rule.

Now, in taking a hard look at other forums, and their use of embedded you tube videos, what I saw was the same thing. Post an embedded video with not much more than a "Hey! Look At This, Guys!"

...sigh... Classic Drive-By, +90% of the time.

No, instead of allowing the embedded videos, I'll vote to continue just allowing the link with the appropriate commentary by the person who posts it. Just like any other link or partial pasting of articles, anywhere else on the Firing Line.
 
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