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Gareth has been editing many of my posts recently to upload images that were already at Imgur to stack.imgur.com. Many posts were submitted after the whole let's just replace i.imgur with i.stack.imgur globally fail, so the image URLs weren't broken or anything.

  • Should I stop using Imgur directly and upload everything with WMD?
  • Should posts be edited just to transfer images from i.imgur to i.stack.imgur?

Related to Can all images be on 'stack.imgur' to prevent endless edits? - Super User Meta

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    The imgur images aren't bound to SE's paid account and will/might expire after 6 months. Hence, Gareth is making sure they are on the right account
    – Ivo Flipse Mod
    Commented Oct 8, 2011 at 9:17
  • @IvoFlipse imgur.com/faq#long: "As long as images are getting at least 1 view every 6 months, they will stick around forever."
    – Lri
    Commented Oct 8, 2011 at 9:20
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    In recent editing sessions I've come across a huge number of private imgur uploads that are broken and sadly lost - no archives or caches picked them up. I think that underlines why I've done this.
    – Gareth
    Commented Oct 9, 2011 at 3:30

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Is there some reason I should use

Yes, the image uploader tied to the WMD Editor toolbar uploads to Stack Exchange's imgur account which never expire. In addition, the team routinely backs up the images to Stack Exchange's server, so there are redundant back ups of the image archive.

Imgur may claim that at least one view every 6 months will result in the image not getting deleted, my personal experience has proven otherwise and I've had to re-take & upload at least 10 images by now.

Should anyone edit posts just to reupload images that are already at imgur?

I don't see why not. One of the main pillars of Stack Exchange is that it's an collaboratively edited Q&A site. Anyone can make edits and is actively encouraged. And with Gareth taking extraordinary steps to ensure there is no image/link rot, I really don't see why it should be opposed.

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    Ok, both Imgur deleting images despite their claims and there being additional backups of images at stack.imgur seem like good enough reasons not to use Imgur directly. Moving images to i.stack.imgur isn't something that should be done manually though.
    – Lri
    Commented Oct 8, 2011 at 12:48
  • I agree it shouldn't be done manually, but nobody has come up with an automated solution and almost all the images are practically transferred now anyway...
    – Gareth
    Commented Oct 9, 2011 at 3:31
  • @Gareth Almost all on all Stack Exchange sites? People won't stop embedding images outside stack.imgur either.
    – Lri
    Commented Oct 9, 2011 at 6:53
  • They won't, but from my experience the numbers are quite small. I check the data dumps every month and there's not many I have to deal with.
    – Gareth
    Commented Oct 9, 2011 at 8:14
  • @Lri if you look at the majority of recent posts you will see people using the image uploaded 90%+ of the time. Most people do not know the proper embedding codes so they use it
    – Simon Sheehan
    Commented Oct 10, 2011 at 13:56

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