The new drag and drop interface to add photos to posts is certainly convenient and works just fine.
I’ve noticed uploaded photos are stored on the EuroGA server in various sub-folders of the /system/1/user_files/ directory. Because posts only have a limited editing window it seems to me that this leaves the uploader without a way to remove or exchange their photos which I think is not quite right.
I’d be interested to know what EuroGA’s policy on this is. Is there a way to remove ones photos should one wish to do so other than sending an e-mail asking for removal?
There isn’t a specific policy as such. Technically, from the T&C:
You give EuroGA the right to use what you submit, both on this website and any other or any other medium, now and in the future. You cannot subsequently remove this right.
However, if you want a picture removed then just drop us a line and we’ll remove it.
Thanks for the clarification David.
I guess it’s up to the poster to weigh convenience versus direct control and decide whether to upload a photo to the EuroGA server or host it somewhere else and use a link instead.
Uploading it here is much better if you want to make EuroGA a valuable resource for others – because images stored on external sites nearly always vanish after some time. For example imgur.com deletes them 6 months after the last access.
Many other images just disappear as people clean up old flickr etc links and forget they used them to upload pics to EuroGA. Many people who discover EuroGA read old threads, trip reports, etc, and with externally hosted images they just find most of the images missing. Dropbox links are the worst and invariably disappear quickly afterwards.
All free picture library sites are inherently dodgy (because there is no free lunch) and, even if the site remains up, all they need to do is implement a quiet policy of not serving images unless requested directly from the site, and everywhere where you have used those images is now worthless. All free sites I know of already implement such measures to some degree. And if you are paying for the site, will you pay for it for ever? Or they can throttle the download speed, far enough to make it almost unusable (a very standard tactic). Sites which carry aviation photos frequently remove them after some time.
Obviously, in most cases, the original poster did not intend that his/her old posts should become worthless after a period of time – especially as the text remains.
Personally I would find it difficult to understand any reasonable (non legal / libel / etc) scenario where someone would wish to render their posting worthless in that way. Writing something which is to be valuable to somebody else takes time. When I do a trip report, etc, I go to a lot of trouble to store everything locally, including documents which usefully illustrate something and which are likely to disappear.
As anybody who has spent any time looking for something will know, the internet is full of garbage and a lot of it is garbage because of broken links. It’s very frustrating to the reader!
So I would encourage everyone who wants to make EuroGA a good aviation resource to use the image upload facility because that will preserve your postings and articles without you having to worry about it.
And finally it’s a hell of a lot easier than uploading images to some external site and then getting the link to it! 
Please therefore use the Drag/Drop method whenever at all possible – even if this means downloading the image file temporarily to your PC (e.g. right-click and choosing Save Image As, in the browser – or something similar) and then drag/drop uploading it to EuroGA.
