Storing screenshot/images from diary on osm.org server

[Stefal]

Description

Hi!

When you want to include some screenshots/images inside a diary, you have to find an external service to host these files. It could be difficult to find, and no matter what you do, this service will close in a few years. The result is that you lost your time to include a screenshot, and we will lost some informations in the future.

It will be easier if we could store these images directly on the osm.org servers when we write our diary. It could be a "add image" button or a copy/paste like discourse/gitlab/github/...

I'd like to have the same feature on changeset discussions too.

Screenshots

No response

[tomhughes]

Sure it would be lovely but implementing it would be a lot of work and there are significant operational questions around providing the actual storage and serving the images.

As to changeset comments I don't think those are rich text are they, so they don't support images?

[Stefal]

If I had the skills I could try to help with some patches but unfortunately this is not the case.

You're right, we can't include an image in a changeset discussion, only a link. If it became possible to store images on osm.org it would be wonderful to have the same feature on changeset discussions. It could be only a link. Displaying this image is another point, see #844.

[tomhughes]

Changeset discussions are deliberately text only because there isn't really space for complex rich text and images where they are displayed in the sidebar.

To be honest we kind of assumed changeset comments would be short - we never really anticipated threads running to dozens of messages some of essay length which are already pretty unreadable to my mind.

[simonpoole]

When you want to include some screenshots/images inside a diary, you have to find an external service to host these files.

If of general interest to the OSM community (which should be a given for a diary entry) you can store images on the OSM wiki and reference them from the diary.

[mmd-osm]

It could be a "add image" button or a copy/paste like discourse/gitlab/github/...

Although Discourse is still in testing phase, we might use it for diary publishing and abandon the current diary feature on the Rails port.

[tomhughes]

I was wondering much the same things, or even for changeset discussions if we integrated it so you could start a discussion from the main site and the database just remembered the thread and provided a link to it and maybe a summary.

[gravitystorm]

Although Discourse is still in testing phase, we might use it for diary publishing and abandon the current diary feature on the Rails port.

That's the first I've heard of this idea. Where is this being discussed?

[simonpoole]

That's the first I've heard of this idea. Where is this being discussed?

I've seen it being bandied around before (not that I think it is a good idea, as it is clearly distinct functionality from what Discourse offers and it implies throwing away even more of our historic content and work than is already planned), the discussion, if any, would be on slack (for obvious reasons).

[tomhughes]

I'm not aware of it being discussed, from my point of view it was an idea that crossed my mind this morning. I actually think it fits changeset discussions better than it does diaries.

[mmd-osm]

I'm not sure if there's any discussion on this topic anywhere else. I believe Discourse would support both a community forum & news/blog space. A quick search turned up something like this: https://www.elektronauts.com/news (mentioned on meta.discourse.org as an example).

One advantage I see is that moderation, search, commenting, community interaction all happens on one platform.

it implies throwing away even more of our historic content and work than is already planned)

Migrating old content is at least technically feasible, see https://forum.openstreetmap.fr as an example.

[HolgerJeromin]

Storing images has the downside people will upload unwanted (copyrighted?) stuff which results in unfriendly emails from lawyers and co.

[samwilson]

I've always assumed the wiki was the place to host images for diary entries. For more generally-useful ones, I put them on Wikimedia Commons (from where they're also usable on the OSM wiki). That said, shifting to Discourse sounds great!