squidgestatus

Two very updates for Squidge Images.

The first update is we have opened up signup access for Squidge Images. Instead of having to leave us a ticket for an image hosting account, we have decided that it's been long enough, and the folks who were abusing image hosting have most likely moved on. So all that is done.

Second, and most important, Squidge Image Hosting will be down starting at 8am Pacific on Sunday, March 1st for an upgrade. Read that again.  I say this because we will inevitably get 8,000 tickets asking us why image hosting is down, and when will it be back up again. Seriously. We've seen this with FenRecs.com posts - they are completely ignored and people will log tickets asking when it will be back (later this week, we hope!).  This upgrade is important because will be transitioning from on-site hosting of images to remote hosting of images. Oh, and the upgrade should bring video support as well!  So if you have videos you need hosting and, like us, hate Youtube, you'll be able to host your videos on Squidge Images.

Again, Squidge Image Hosting will be down starting at 8am Pacific time on Sunday, March 1st for an upgrade.  We hope to be fully upgraded and back up within four hours, but we all know technology can be a giant pain sometimes.

Questions?  Leave us a message here, or leave us a trouble ticket by clicking here.

Image hosting (https://images.squidge.org) is currently down. It will be up as soon as we're able to.  Please be aware that if this takes longer than expected, image hosting will become password-protected and unavailable until released.

As of 1/1/24 11:20am Pacific: After quite a bit of work, Image Hosting seems to be up and running again just fine. Please let us know if you experience any oddities - thanks!

Squidge Image Hosting (https://images.squidge.org) is going down NOW - 12:30 Pacific Time, for about an hour for maintenance.

update: The fix wasn't possible, so we will limp along a few more days until we can get this fixed permanently!

These are the updates to our previous statement on Squidge Image hosting:

• Furry art is allowed.  Adult-themed is also allowed as long as the intent of the art is to depict all characters in it being people 18 years and older


• D&D art is allowed.  Adult-themed is also allowed as long as the intent of the art is to depict all characters in it being those of 18 years and older/those beings considered adults


• “lolita” or “shotacon” which depicts those under 18 in sexually explicit or sexual situations, is not allowed.


• “Porn for porn’s sake” – this is for the people that screen capture porn for personal and shareable “spank bank”.  Think about it as if looking at a wall of picture and saying “These 50 pictures would be more appropriate on the wall of an adult bookstore” – that is porn for porn’s sake, and is not allowed.  It’s like porn bots on Tumblr or other services where the person posts porn just to post porn.  Their only intention is to post porn that has zero to do with fandom.  Just because Squidge Image hosting allows adult images doesn’t mean we allow porn for porn’s sake.


• Anything, including drawings and anime, that depicts humans under 18 years of age in sexually explicit or sexual situations is not allowed. Period.


• Anything, including drawings and anime, that depicts child or child-like non-humans in sexually explicit or sexual situations is not allowed. Period.

FYI, the Squidge.org Terms of Service have been updated with this statement, important section bolded:

Added September 21st, 2007, with the note that this is specific to personal website hosting, NOT image hosting: We have been asked to clarify what “kiddie porn” means. First of all, the artistic writing in fandoms, such as Harry Potter, is not considered kiddie porn. According to a court ruling in the United States, it is more the actual image that is the problem. Now as for artists who create pieces of work that are in like the Harry Potter or such fandoms, the law is specific. The piece of work must have artistic intent. As an artist doing the work, you are putting forth artistic intent. Thus, for those pages that you have artistic intent work on, we suggest you put a disclaimer stating your artistic value of the work, and that objectors should redirect to Google.com or something. Again, this is for people who use Squidge personal homepages, and not Squidge Image hosting. The differentiation is that with website hosting, there is an interim space where people can “back out” should they not want to see the images. With image hosting, that barrier is not available.

There have been a few questions today about AI and Squidge.org's approach, so I thought I would drop a blogpost here so people know.  Here's our philosophy:

While AI (Artificial Intelligence) can be a great thing in the realm of medicine, like computers spotting lung or breast cancer before a human can, AI shouldn't have any place in the fanfiction world.  Honestly, probably not in the pro-fiction world, either, but every day companies like Grammarly are rolling out, "Try our new AI tool to assist your writing!" programs.  When it comes to writing, each voice is unique - and that's a wonderful thing.  Bringing AI into the realm of fanfiction is just asking for those unique voices to be squashed in favor of bland, generalized voice that is "safe for the masses."

That's not what we're here for.

Starting soon (days, not months) we'll make a concerted effort to keep screen-scraping bots away from Squidge.org properties, including SquidgeWorld Archive, Squidge.org homepages, and Squidge Images.  That's not to say more sophisticated screen scraping programs won't be able to slip through the cracks.  However, most generic screen scraping programs that AI uses can be identified and blocked.

Additionally, there are two settings that will protect you better on SquidgeWorld Archive.  Those are:

• In your profile preferences, there is an option called "Hide my work from search engines when possible."  This will discourage your work from being found by Search Engines, not necessarily by screen scrapers.

• For the works that you choose to archive within SquidgeWorld Archive, please make sure that this checkbox is ticked.  That way your fanwork will be available only to registered users - and prevent both Search Engines and screen scrapers from being able to access your works.  The setting looks like this:

Your work will show up in the list of results, just like before screenshot below.  Notice the lock next to the penname?  That means that this work can only be read if you are logged into an Archive account.

Please reply with what questions you have.  And thanks!

 

DW edit: The items aren't formatted quite right, but you get my meaning. If not, please ping me!

For the last week or so, we've noticed a large influx of new people on our Images server. Whereas we would normally get a new user every other day or so, we're sometimes getting dozens an hour - and that's okay! The image server that Squidge.org has in place is here for that use. Due to the influx, we'll be looking to see if we need to move to a more powerful server or such.

The only real thing to remember with the image servers is to blur your NSFW images, though if it impacts how it displays on your remote site, then it's okay not to. I've been talking to the developer about getting an option that individual users can tick to keep their images (NSFW or not) out of the "Recent Images" section. But until that time, remember if you hit up the "Recent Images" section of the server, there's the possibility of seeing explicit images.

And finally, Imgur was used by many, many people for many, many services. But Squidge.org image hosting should be for fandom use - either fandom images or personal image hosting for people in fandom. It's not here for commercial use (I booted that person rather quickly) for the fandom community. Let's keep it that way!

This weekend, during the routine Squidge.org maintenance window, we'll be upgrading the software behind Squidge Image Hosting. Lots of new features and security issues and bugs squashed. Normal window is every Sunday at 07:00 Pacific to 07:30 Pacific, but for Image hosting, expect to be down between 07:00 Pacific and 09:00 Pacific. If you need to know the conversion, click here.

Two updates for Image hosting at Squidge.org

First of all, there's going to be a downtime starting around 10:30am Pacific time (about 15 minutes from this post) for some maintenance.

Second, people will now be required to create accounts on images.squidge.org in order to upload pictures. This is due to adult image spammers trying to scam bandwidth from Squidge.org.  Yes, you're allowed to put fan based NSFW images on https://images.squidge.org - but adult dating/scam/spamming is definitely not allowed. 

While Squidge.org can't take on all the projects that are coming about due to the loss of Tumblr, I'd like to announce that we have rolled out image hosting! It's an open source script hosted on it's own server, and is here for fandom use. If you're in need of image hosting, you can head over to http://images.squidge.org for image hosting and sharing.

Right now there are two options. First is non-account hosting. This is like imgur.com or such, and allows you to upload an image to the site that is up to 2.5Mb in size. You don't need an account. Simply go to http://images.squidge.org and you can either use the uploader tool, or just drag & drop your file onto the webpage. The system will give you options for sharing that file.

Second is account hosting. If you register, you can upload files up to 256Mb in size. Simply register, then upload your images.

Either way, the first thing you'll see is a wonderful image to warn you that yes, there is a space for NSFW works available on the server. Once you approve that yes, you're okay with being around NSFW images, you can upload away.

If you have questions, don't hesitate to ping me here, on Twitter, or email at walterh@squidge.org.