As I add images for Q&A's in LQ, it tells me how much space I'm using, etc. I finally happened upon the My LQ Profile place where it allows me to manage this so I can delete them.

But the dumb question is whether or not when I delete these copies, does it remove them from my Q&A in the threads?

So it does delete the images from the thread.

I feel this is bad. While I realize that the storage for file attachments has to be "somewhere" I also am aware that I have a limited space, there's a volume bar showing how much I've used and how much I have left available to use for attachments. That got me thinking. And now if I free up space, it then deletes the image from everywhere.

Not the best solution in my humble opinion.

2 members found this post helpful.

You can always use free 3rd party image hosting such as imgur, tinypic, photobucket, etc. Some can be used without logins.

Yeah, I did the same as you rtmistler and deleted all my local attatchements also. I then started just linking to off site image hosters and file uploaders like pastebin or imagur like
Suggested by Timothy.

I figured nobody cares about my attatchments. So why should I?

I may be incorrect about the limitations. For one you see that you cannot download an individual attachment greater than a certain size. The "implication" seeing the volume sort of slider bar is that when you reach the right, 100% you can no longer upload attachments. I don't know if that's true, but it appears that way. And of course this was excited by me attaching something and seeing my threshold near the max.

Like others, I can use another photo site, and for "junk" then it is a "who cares" thought. But I know that I've made screenshots as part of an actual answer and those should stay no matter if my account goes away or if I delete those attachments, or if some free photo site goes out of business. Actually I should not be able to delete attachments ... maybe. And that way I won't take away from an answer inadvertently. After all, LQ has limitations on file sizes. That's reasonable and I get that it also has limitations per user. So I don't know a solution. For me I guess I'll review my attachments and determine what ones are fluff and what ones are part of an answer or question and try to leave those if I feel they are helpful.

I agree with rtmistler. If the attachments are important in posts and the point of this site is to answer questions it hardly seems reasonable to have attachments be limited per user as opposed to "per post" or "per thread". I for one really don't want to be clicking on 3rd party links in most questions. Doing it per user might have the effect of penalizing those of us who have the most posts.

3rd party sites also have the downside that they might reorganize (or go defunct) at any point unbeknownst to the person that originally linked to them making any attachments simply disappear.

I didn't even realize until this thread that attachments were being tracked by user rather than by post.

1 members found this post helpful.

Me also

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...4/#post5397938

So I started linking off site because what you noticed. I noticed long ago. So I quit using this sites img uploader, to get my point across.

If the imagur site ceases to exist for any reason. All I can say is I
try and help with the parameters given to me. If I am limited.
Not my problem, esse'.

If deleting an attachment didn't actually delete it, that would create an ipso facto unlimited storage system. It would also not be very intuitive. Are you running into a storage issue? I'm willing to set the limit fairly high for Senior Members if some are coming close to the current limit.

--jeremy

FWIW, we initially had attachments disabled at LQ. The transient nature of many third party hosting sites was one major contributor to us enabling them. I've just doubled the limit for Senior Members and am happy to double it from there if we have members getting near the limit.

--jeremy

1 members found this post helpful.

Looking at the stats, only two members were near the old limit. I'll keep an eye on things and will increase again if necessary. Thanks for the feedback. For those interested, we currently have 15,561 attachments taking up roughly 1.5G. They've been downloaded over half a million times in aggregate.

--jeremy

1 members found this post helpful.

I agree on all three points. While maybe a little less important for My Screenshot type threads, informational or knowledge posts are, or should be, atomic in the sense that they are a unit and do not become incomplete over time due to third party components becoming unavailable. That makes use of offsite image sites taboo for most purposes.

That applies to attachments and answers which consist only of offsite links as well (another topic).

I have not hit any limits but thanks to Jeremy for putting the boundary further out.

From the stats provided I cannot see where storage or bandwidth should be a platform problem... yet...

Thanks for looking at it. And I do understand that LQ is not a file transfer or storage site. I think it's fully reasonable to restrict the type of files, the size of each type, and the overall size to avoid excess storage use for things that might go beyond the intentions of LQ.