Railfan Technology > And the reason TO's does not link to RP /YouTube is?

Just wondering - why can't TO's members link to certain sites like RP.net
and /or YouTube?

It seems we can link to some, but specifically, not those two.

Perhaps it was to avoid the ads? Potential viruses? Or to eliminate
view hording? All of which would seem possible on other allowable
linked sites.

Or, maybe a fear that linking to those two restricted sites (are there
others?) would yield inactive links in time? Ironically, it would seem
those two sites would have links that would stay valid longer then most
other sites that links are permitted.

If I recall, is there not an offsite link warning? Or does that not
cover risk well enough?

I've always found RP to have credibility in it's ability to serve as
a pretty good railfan reference database in terms of history, preservation
current events and even modeling. The same for YouTube.

Wondering - as I assume others may well be interested in the reasoning.

/Mitch

It is probably as simple as Trainorders.com is not affiliated with either of those sites and the person who owns this site doesn't wish to support those sites. After all, Trainorders.com is supported by paying members and at least one of those sites gets revenue from outside sources. Why would the owner of Trainorders.com want to direct traffic to those sites?

Andy

On the other hand, why should my dues at TO pay for the bandwidth used by those who like the video sharing capabilities here when I personally don't use that feature? Its kind of like paying for super fast internet connectivity from my cable co. whose bandwidth is hogged by movie downloaders living down the street. We all pay the same price. Some are bigger users.

Some of the TO policies about no outside links to those "certain" sites not being allowed, while all along ok to link to other outside links ok have made me scratch my head a time or two,

I don't remember Todd's explanation when those policies were instituted, and I've been around TO from the beginning, excepting a leave of absence.

But I still think it's a good deal, ain't b*itching, Mitch asks a question I've pondered as well.

Chico

The last interpretation I heard was a link could be used to answer a question but not as the subject of the original thread. One consideration was posting the original material on TO as opposed to another site. Either way I'm not losing much sleep over it. I link to my PBase site occasional in response to threads.

wheel_slip Wrote:
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> It is probably as simple as Trainorders.com is not
> affiliated with either of those sites and the
> person who owns this site doesn't wish to support
> those sites. After all, Trainorders.com is
> supported by paying members and at least one of
> those sites gets revenue from outside sources. Why
> would the owner of Trainorders.com want to direct
> traffic to those sites?
>
> Andy

Makes sense only if admin does not want to specifically
support those two sites as many other sites are, in fact,
linkable.

I can see one aspect of not allowing a link to YouTube as
some here might take a pass on uploading videos here. That
could drive down uploads which could otherwise attract patrons
to TO's, except... videos here are typically posted on YouTube
as well - often as teasers that promote a visit to YouTube to
see the full length video. If that is the case, perhaps
members could get rewarded for video uploads here - say,
every 5 or 10 would result in an subscription extension,
ect.

In my opinion - short of seeing the downfall /negatives,
it would be nice to be able to link to these relatively well
maintained databases of images and /or videos when trying
to discuss certain topics.

The only real downfall I see for those two sites would be having
TO's become view whore link central "Check out my stuff here!"
If that is an issue, it would seem administratable - both by
admin and even other patrons.

/Mitch

Early on I used to allow linking everywhere including Youtube, Railpictures, and just about everywhere else. This turned out to be a bad idea for a number of reasons:

1. For Youtube we kept seeing the same links to the same videos posted over and over again. There was one trick video someone made where it appeared someone was just about to get nailed by a train. A link to that video literally showed up on Trainorders more than 20 times in a 2 month period.

2. People tend to use the forums to push traffic to their Youtube, Railpicture, etc channel. Trainorders was not intended to be used a self promotional tool.

3. These other web sites make their revenue through advertising. The pictures sites bombard you with flashy ads, while Youtube will display video advertisements. Trainorders is an ad free environment and I intend to keep it that way.

4. In the early years when we allowed links a huge portion of our threads were nothing more than pointers linking to picture web sites. Many of those web sites are gone, or have rewritten their URL’s so that the former URL’s go nowhere now. Our archives are pretty amazing and by keep the content here we can ensure that all our media is accessible and does not disappear. Once we rely on 3rd parties for content we lose all control.

5. I offer a reliable service with almost 2 terabytes of content. That is a lot of video, photos, and data. If Trainorders allowed linking there wouldn’t be many photos or videos here because so many people would rather just have them open to the entire world, whether a member or not. With that there would be no incentive to be a member either and I would not have the revenue needed to keep the operation running. I will admit that in 2001 I came very close to shutting the site down altogether as without revenue the site was too costly to run.

While bandwidth and media storage is an expense, technologically serving videos and pictures is not a big deal. The real expense is from the custom software and hardware needed to handle 20,000+ visitors a day we see, and the power needed to maintain, and query the millions of discussion messages maintained in our database.

Todd Clark
Canyon Country, CA
Trainorders.com

If there is any link I want to see I just write it down and type it into my browser.

I guess it would be nice to be able to copy paste the link so it could be pasted to the URL search after you leave TO.com but I would rather this site work well and I can find the other stuff on my own.

Posted from Windows Phone OS 7

fbe Wrote:
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> I guess it would be nice to be able to copy paste
> the link so it could be pasted to the URL search
> after you leave TO.com but I would rather this
> site work well and I can find the other stuff on
> my own.

On my PC (Win 7), I can triple click (left mouse button) and it will highlight the full line of text. If it's a non-hyperlinked URL, I can then Ctrl+C to copy and go up to the address of my broswer and ctrl+V to paste.

All of Todd's points are valid and I think it's worked well. I really appreciate that TO is ad-free and has a lot of great content right here.

Ryan Wilkerson
Fair Oaks, CA

I prefer to see content here, not just a lot of posts to other places where I now have to navigate another site.

If I am interested in RP I can go there and have it bookmarked and I have an account.

Bob

RyanWilkerson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> All of Todd's points are valid and I think it's
> worked well. I really appreciate that TO is
> ad-free and has a lot of great content right here.

I agree - add free, virus free and campaign free.

If RP admin was smart, they'd attempt to better integrate
with TO's as the site itself serves the hobby well as a
valuable reference database of images. Unfortunately, at
least for now, it is not a good fit considering the ads,
risky popups and campaign promoting image view counter.

As for "I prefer to see interesting content here", the
issue is of course, not all of it originates, nor can
be referenced here.

Thanks Todd - I appreciate your taking the time to answer
my query with facts I think most of us can appreciate.

/Mitch

If I could wave a magic wand and change TO in some way, it would be to be able to search the TO photo archive the way I can RP. For someone researching photo locations for a chase, for example, it's very valuable.

Offering that capability on future uploads would be a big plus for me. I might be alone, and it may not be worth the expense, but perhaps you could ask users how much they value that sort of search capability.

2-24-2014
TO's not deleting urls, like Amazon does in its reviews, is much appreciated. Copy-&-Paste is easy, and solves the problem. Amazon reviewers have resorted to spelling out "at" and "dot". With TO, a few keystrokes suffice.

I am thankful that TO remains ad-free.
Youtube has it's ups and downs, suffers from long ads and overshare. RP links = avoid the drama; Pop-up laden with 9 out of 10 only serving to stroke the self-promoting click counter.
Links to personal sites, p-base, etc can be appreciated.

JW, just throwing in my .02

johnacraft Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If I could wave a magic wand and change TO in some
> way, it would be to be able to search the TO photo
> archive the way I can RP. For someone researching
> photo locations for a chase, for example, it's
> very valuable.
>
> Offering that capability on future uploads would
> be a big plus for me. I might be alone, and it may
> not be worth the expense, but perhaps you could
> ask users how much they value that sort of search
> capability.

I would most definitely support and urge the owners here at TO to consider implementing a location based photo tagging system. One that would allow you to search by city, state, railroad, subdivision and date. That's really the only thing RP.net is good for anymore anyways.

5-13-2014 Re: JohnaCraft & Hoydie17: Allow location-based photo tagging system.

They make a valid point, one which I wholeheartedly support.