Why would a forum trust PB?
Why would I trust a forum to handle my photos?
Seems like someone got pissed& took a " oh yeah, well we just won't permit your sites photos on our site" attitude.
Which is a bit juvenile but I suppose to be expected in this age..
Destroying the forum... that's a bit melodramatic
No one at Social Knowledge got mad at PB, but they did get wise. Let's see if we can clear up some possible misconceptions and/or miscommunication about this issue.
Many members here use a photo hosting account and link to the pics there, when showing the pics here on FRF. That is always going to be a risk with this method, that the hosting account could turn off the linking ability. It's happened to other photo hosting sites, and is happening at PB currently.
When linking is denied, then threads that have these linked pics become somewhat broken, as well as the pic not showing up that may be key to the post and/or thread in general. This is especially true in DIY or help threads, that the pic is crucial to the solution. Don't forget that many people search our forums for already solved problems (and their pics) to help in solving their current problems..so ALL threads need to keep their pics intact..... which can't happen when the linking is denied to those pics which were linked to initially.
The question was raised, is why should a member trust FRF to handle their pics. FRF isn't a photo hosting site. We are a community of like minded RV'ers trying to help one another. The photos that are uploaded here, are going to be utilized to help others in problems, or posted to your albums...which is a free option the members have who want to share their RV/travel adventures. If you are looking to FRF to be a photo hosting site for ALL your pics INSTEAD of backing up your pics, then that's a misuse of the forums anyway.
FRF would like your pics that you voluntarily use to help others in posts, or want to share with other like minded members via your albums to be uploaded to the site. This way, ALL the threads will keep their useful information intact to help us all, and we will not be dependent on the business decisions of other companies to accomplish this.
It's like the old adage: Fool me once, shame on you; Fool me twice, shame on me
By taking these steps, we won't be fooled twice and have learned not to be dependent on other photo hosting sites in order to keep all our collective knowledge intact here on FRF
Hopefully this clears up some things, and also why FRF is disallowing linking to PB or other places that have the potential to disrupt the help/wisdom shared here among the members.
That's what Janet stated in the OP, as emboldened in red below:
Recently the image hosting service Photobucket changed their terms of use for account holders and no longer allow embedded images to be displayed on forums.
As a result the forum had many threads lose their photo documentation.
Moving forward we will disallow links to Photobucket and
ask that you store your images with the posted text that they were intended to augment, here on the forum.
Forum members can store images posts and threads using the attachment option found in the advanced reply editor or in photo albums set up in individual profiles. There is no cost to store images here and
this will ensure that your content is not diminished by an image hosting service changing their minds about how your content is handled. Thanks for understanding