Yeah, I think this would be good too. I voted silver star, but I could accept gold as well.

I don't really think it'd be too much of a problem.

I also think this could be good and will vote at silver star with the caveat...
I'm also not sure about what kind of abuse @lucky760 is worried about. If it's embedded malware of some kind that could infect the sift or sifters, I might change that to no, since we have had some high ranked members try to trash the sift on their way out.
If it's just about possible inappropriate pictures, hobble/ban should take care of that quickly, but the guidelines should be quite clear what's OK and what's not, and exactly where the line is.

What is to stop me from putting up a big cock.gif in tight speedo with the words " 'sup ? " ???

Nothing.

I doubt you all want that.

All it will do is cause problems, you are naive to think this would not be abused, it will drive the peoples away as this place slowly becomes a Reddit clone.

** and how can the definition of appropriate picture be any different than what a video can contain, and that is cock and balls and breasts and vaginas and whole human bodies - if in an artistic fashion. Now let us define what artistic is ? ...

I already have to block your avatar at work!

Perhaps a set of rules that clearly say you will be insta-banned/hobbled for X,Y, or Z types of pictures?
Might not do it, for reasons you mentioned. Can I have my vote back?

I see little upside and a huge potential downside. Im guessing it would be used for sifters trying to be clever/funny and not sure what else. I think it would also derail comment threads easily with large images that take up a shit ton of space. With embedding videos it's typically used to add info to the sifted video in some manner.

Maybe if you have to click on a hyperlink type thing to open the image. Keeping the footprint small in the comment thread.

This is what i assume it would typically be used for. Personally i think it works fine just the way it was done with a hyperlink.
http://videosift.com/video/Left-Shark-The-Real-MVP-of-Super-Bowl-XLIX#comment-1841651

How about if a comment with negative votes gets the image turned into a link?

I'm basing my opinion on how it's used over at liveleak, where it's used for illustrations, diagrams, silly pictures, and generally doesn't cause trouble, at least not that I've seen.

You could always set him to ignore.

@newtboy, et al. - It's not necessarily about specific visual content that would be embedded (though animated gifs and huge images are worth concern). It's more about the overall aesthetic of the page and the visual stick-in-the-eye of a bunch of big, ugly images strewn about filling up a comment listing like a bulletin board circa 1999.

-edit- What he said ^

I think it should be the opposite. How about a link that you can opt in to view image. I can't recall the last time someone linked by url or hyperlink an image they felt like sharing especially an informative one that compliments a video. I just don't think there is a need and if necessary i don't see why a link wouldn't suffice. Like I said i see little upside and potential big downside. Interesting comment threads is one of the best things about the sift. I think big images would visually hurt the flow of a comment thread. I think if it was a text link that could open an image then the flow would be fine but just an image seems like a bad idea.

You mean like these comments, right?

http://videosift.com/video/Streetfighter-Red-Tape-Chun-Li#comment-1743938
http://videosift.com/video/18-Month-Old-Healthy-Giraffe-Publicly-Killed-and-Dismembered#comment-1733042
http://videosift.com/talk/Friendsonloc-A-video-and-photo-sharing-platform-for-friends#comment-1719996
http://videosift.com/video/The-daguerreotype-process-is-beautiful#comment-1628859

I personally think they're fine!

Yeah, but that's just one asshole going mad with power. Think about if most or every comment included one or multiple images.

I can see how the idea sounds good, say if they were treated as videos are, I mean you can embed a video into the comments and they are generally relevant to the video submitted. I guesstimate that if people with such and such merit here be it time or gold star it probably would not be abused. I just do not trust people enough to think they would not paste what some timid minded peoples level of acceptance.

Well that would be bad, but even if it happened I think folks would get bored with it pretty quickly.

I've only had a few occasions in the past month where I would've posted an image in a comment, and I expect most people never would.

yea because that would be so darn tootin funny.

How so?

How about using thumbnails? Whenever someone posts a picture, it could appear in the comment as a thumbnail about the size of a video thumbnail. For some images, this would probably suffice, and for others, you could click on the thumbnail to view the full sized image.

Good idea by @Lilithia. Let's keep track of the proposed functionality:

1) Allow users to disable comment images.
2) If images in comments are enabled, only display them as a thumbnail.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I'm kind of neutral on this. I do use RES on Reddit and Alien Blue, and I kind of like the way images are reduced to thumbnails in comments, and you can expand or not if you like.

From a community culture standpoint, I think what we'd see is just heaps of memes from Imgr, that - although I enjoy, don't add a tremendous amount to discussions.

Beyond that, there's the technical requirements, acceptable formats, do we allow gifs? size constraints, host constraints. Lucky could talk more to that.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Also, the poll isn't quite fair, as we have all the people who want images, at just different star levels, against the unified no vote. We need a preferential voting system. ;-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting

I didn't think that through, did I?

It can be a bit of a quagmire. I'd be just fine if we just had a button that could expand like in RES on reddit. Also there should be some sort of curation in the same way we do comments, so someone doesn't post outrageous stuff just to piss people off.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

That's OK, we can use the patented VideoSift "gist" voting system - wherein we get the gist of it.

VideoSifts best asset imo is its community which has been created through comment threads. It's the one thing here that works well and what separates itself from other sites(imo). We already have to deal with enough clutter in the threads as is(@siftbot i'm looking at you). Ideally maybe it could add some content although nothing that couldn't be done with a hyperlink or url and even then are we left with a few comments and a giant image that just wrecks the flow? I see this at other sites. To often a persons way to state a snarky opinion. One they wouldn't state normally but with such an easy vehicle they have no problem doing it. Embedded images are so "look at me" that they just bully the rest of the thread(imo). It's easy enough for someone to derail a comment thread with just a comment(A former sifter was quite good at it). I think it will be WAY more easy to do with embedded images. It's just to easy to abuse. Do we really want to fool with the one thing that works well on this site. Anyway the idea bothers me so much that it's possible my thinking is clouded. Feel free to check my head on the subject

-edit- It seems i am repeating myself a bit Sorry for that)

Damn, you really need to make that patent available for use under a Creative Commons license or some such. The world could use a whole lot more "getting it".

FWIW, I'm pretty much neutral on the idea. If only because we could always adjust the mechanics if it leads to problems. (See how much I love and count on you, Lucky?)

I'm sure we would see some obnoxiousness, but there are definitely cases where it could add something as well. Personally, I'd lean towards starting it out with a relatively low barrier to entry...non-Probies, or even non-hobbled. But it should probably be informed by how much effort it would actually take to change things if change were needed.

I'm not a fan. I don't think this is possible at any star level of the Sift to get even 10% of the images posted to be more beneficial than harmful to conversations. Using other people's images to make your own point discourages thought, and our required level of commitment to at least verbalizing your arguments yourself is one of the key ingredients that makes this such a great community.

@eric3579 has mentioned several times that there's little advantage to it. If there aren't any advantages and there are obvious predictable disadvantages, then it's a bad idea. Can anybody give examples of embedded images in comments that would benefit the Sift to such a degree that they outweigh the obvious negatives?

As @dag has said, it'll mostly be imgr etc. memes. These images are usually meant to end conversations, not foster them, so once an image like that has been dropped into a thread, it's not likely anybody will continue talking on that thread (within the comment stream).

Allowing images would encourage people to do a quick drive-by chirp or just be funny rather than actually engage. If someone posts a meme answer, I can't very well quote the meme and ask them to elaborate, nor will I waste my time explaining how I disagree with it.

I've had lots of engaging conversations with people I disagree with on the Sift because we have to use words. If those people had used a meme instead as a shortcut to their own more precise idea, they wouldn't have been forced to articulate themselves, and I wouldn't have answered.

So, no, not at any level.

I'm pretty neutral on this one, although I tend to shy on the "negatives outweigh the positives" side. I've put a link to images in comments before, and that serves well enough to make a truly relevant image available (or to capitalize on someone else's wit with a "relevant" imgur meme thingy).

But, a lot of good ideas here about how the negatives could be mitigated. So I guess that it could be OK, as long as the people doing the mitigating would be fine with the potential extra workload.

Voting for this poll ended with the majority of users voting No, abuse of this would cause too many problems..

This is so bang on in every way. I can think of a few occasions that it might be worthwhile - for example when serious discussions are going on it'd be nice to be able to post figures (graphs, plots) from literature, but that's only ever happened to me once and to be honest it might even be more beneficial to the discussion if people have to be invested to the degree of opening other links and skimming to relevant bits.

The memes would be a plague. I've no problem with memes, or even using memes to get a point across. But the kind of ridiculous crap that sits in top rated comments on facebook would just kill any desire i have for conversation. They're click-bait, so anyone can instantly take a like or dislike to it because you can take it on different levels - ironic, satirical, or just flat out face value. So a harmless joke could turn into something other people see as abhorrent, perhaps even forever there with 15 comment votes, under their own video and nothing they can do about it.

We can link memes. People just have to click first - and that's a really introductory level of commitment to reading a comment i think i snobbishly encourage.

We need to get this seen by more people, i feel like 32 votes isn't representative of us. Would it be foolish of me to suggest that maybe when we make big decisions that fundamentally affect the sift, we see a distinctly noticeable advertisement about it on the front page, possibly in the bar of every page?

As it stands, top rated comments are considered higher priority for us to draw attention to than our democratic sift-changing decisions.

Things like this can be frontpaged if need be. Actually i feel 32 votes is quite good for the amount of traffic we get these days. I'm sure the votes were actually a small percentage of sifters that actually saw the post. Many probably didn't care or were neutral which wouldn't be shown in voting. Also i think this is something that's considered and doesn't set anything in stone one way or another. Polls outcomes don't necessarily make it so.

As lucky was quoted as saying
"If the constituency stands united with a single voice, perhaps the site admins would reconsider the issue."

Well said.

.\\//