Deleting pictures in bulk.
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Martin,
One of our list members has a signature as a graphic so every timeOops. So I see two problems here. How do I do a bulk delete of pictures? I can do single deletes, but iThat's one of them. We don't have that feature yet. The other is how to automatically detect such signature images and not store them individually, both to avoid this problem in the Emailed Photos album, and to avoid the related problem of needlessly using up your group's storage quota. There probably are relatively quick ways to determine if that such an image has already been stored, especially since we don't need (nor want) a "looks like" type of match, an exact match of the image file (and maybe the surrounding text of the signature) will do. A manual solution would be to have checkbox or button in the Emailed Photos album where you can designate an image as being repeated (as in a signature). The system would go merge all copies into a single stored copy and check future message posts for more of the same. One question about doing this would be what to do about the "Message" button that takes you back to the message the image came from. It would likely be ok if that was a link back to the first use. At the other extreme it could bring up a list of all the messages (operating like a kind of search result), but that might be over the top - imagining your case with 670 messages containing the image. Anyone spot the obvious flaw with this idea, before I post it in beta? Shal |
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My suggestion is an option in the user profile like "Do not save graphics in my posts to the group pictures folder." For my group, I would like this to be the default, but other groups may be different. I would prefer to have members explicitly upload to the group pictures folder rather than assume that any graphic included in a post should go to the pictures folder.
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Generally, I find it better to let individuals designate what they want done rather than automate decisions and make exceptions and mitigations downstream. Most often, I find that approach reduces system processing and avoids tortured logic. I don't think your idea is flawed, but it might introduce unneeded complication and processing. Best, Marv -----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Shal Farley Sent: Friday, December 22, 2017 7:25 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [GMF] Deleting pictures in bulk. Martin, > One of our list members has a signature as a graphic so every time > they post, the graphic is saved to our group pictures folder - we have > 670 copies so far! Oops. So I see two problems here. > How do I do a bulk delete of pictures? I can do single deletes, but i > won't live long enough to do this 670 times (and counting!!). That's one of them. We don't have that feature yet. The other is how to automatically detect such signature images and not store them individually, both to avoid this problem in the Emailed Photos album, and to avoid the related problem of needlessly using up your group's storage quota. There probably are relatively quick ways to determine if that such an image has already been stored, especially since we don't need (nor want) a "looks like" type of match, an exact match of the image file (and maybe the surrounding text of the signature) will do. A manual solution would be to have checkbox or button in the Emailed Photos album where you can designate an image as being repeated (as in a signature). The system would go merge all copies into a single stored copy and check future message posts for more of the same. One question about doing this would be what to do about the "Message" button that takes you back to the message the image came from. It would likely be ok if that was a link back to the first use. At the other extreme it could bring up a list of all the messages (operating like a kind of search result), but that might be over the top - imagining your case with 670 messages containing the image. Anyone spot the obvious flaw with this idea, before I post it in beta? Shal |
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Marv,
My suggestion is an option in the user profile like "Do not saveI saw that in beta@ and may comment on it. However I'm not sure it addresses Martin's issue, which was primarily with an multitude of copies on an image from a member's message signature. If I'm understanding correctly his group might value the pictures of book covers, title pages, and other images carried in the body of the messages. So a blanket option to effectively turn off the Emailed Photos album might be too severe a solution. Notably there's no real cost implied by having the photos from email messages be gathered into the Emailed Photos album - the storage for the photo was necessarily consumed to have the photo remain as part of the message body or attachment in the Messages archive. Putting a reference to them in the Emailed Photos album is simply an convenient way to find and organize them. Except when that album becomes cluttered by an overabundance of copies of the same signature image. I don't think your idea is flawed, but it might introduce unneededI'll grant there's some complication in what I proposed, especially in the fully automatic version. Whether that complication is unneeded or not only those who might use it can tell us. I think it would have value in any group that encounters that kind of duplicated image posts, allowing them to be handled gracefully rather than becoming a source of friction between the group member(s) and group admins. Shal |
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You are right. I was thinking that for our group, simply opting out of automated posting to the photos folder would eliminate the duplication problem before it started. I expect most things that will show up in our photos folder will be inadvertent. I notice that a graphic from a signature has already appeared in our photos folder during minimal testing. From that, I anticipate that tidying up the photos folder will be a daily task. Since our Y! group photos folder is mostly unused, it occurred to me that an opt out flag would be an easy improvement for us, but we can certainly live without it.
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Best, Marv -----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Shal Farley Sent: Saturday, December 23, 2017 12:40 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [GMF] Deleting pictures in bulk. Marv, > My suggestion is an option in the user profile like "Do not save > graphics in my posts to the group pictures folder." I saw that in beta@ and may comment on it. However I'm not sure it addresses Martin's issue, which was primarily with an multitude of copies on an image from a member's message signature. If I'm understanding correctly his group might value the pictures of book covers, title pages, and other images carried in the body of the messages. So a blanket option to effectively turn off the Emailed Photos album might be too severe a solution. Notably there's no real cost implied by having the photos from email messages be gathered into the Emailed Photos album - the storage for the photo was necessarily consumed to have the photo remain as part of the message body or attachment in the Messages archive. Putting a reference to them in the Emailed Photos album is simply an convenient way to find and organize them. Except when that album becomes cluttered by an overabundance of copies of the same signature image. > I don't think your idea is flawed, but it might introduce unneeded > complication and processing. I'll grant there's some complication in what I proposed, especially in the fully automatic version. Whether that complication is unneeded or not only those who might use it can tell us. I think it would have value in any group that encounters that kind of duplicated image posts, allowing them to be handled gracefully rather than becoming a source of friction between the group member(s) and group admins. Shal |
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Judy,
After reading the initial post about this problem, I went and checkedSounds like your group could really use a means to identify signature images and consolidate or delete them. Something like an image search, where you can do a bulk operation on the result. That's what I had in mind for Martin's similar finding. Would you have any interest in finding and perhaps hiding or removing signature text in the messages archive along with the signature images? Mark already has a pattern matching list that operates across all groups to strip recognized advertisements from messages; that idea might be extended to member signatures. Kind of the opposite of the feature added not too long ago that allows a member to add a signature to his postings. I spent six hours yesterday deleting garbage.What consideration(s) motivated that effort? An obvious possibility is that they make the Emailed Photos album nearly useless - too hard to find the wheat amid all that chaff. Another I can imagine, with numbers that high, would be a concern with the amount of your storage needlessly consumed. It is fortunate that such images tend to be relatively small files, or the total of them might be non-negligible. The family photos I'm trying to leave, but I may end up having to turnIn what way? That is, do you plan to check the "Plain Text Only" box in the message formatting? The other method I can see would be to prohibit attachments. Or am I missing something? Shal |
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Judy, Martin, Marv, ...
My thought was to turn it off, but then I decided against that becauseI've posted my suggestion for handling these signature images to beta@ See if any of those ideas make sense to you as a way to handle this problem. Note that although I talk about images that are part of a member's signature, I don't think the proposed mechanism(s) would or could actually make that distinction: any photo posted in a message would be a target. Shal |
Duane
Shal Farley
Marvin Waschke