Images on older caches being lost

[+cachbefound]

I'm maintaining a group of caches that were created in 2003. Here's an example, My link. The listings for these caches include images and those images are no longer being displayed.

 

Within the listing these images have a path with the following format.

 

http://img.Groundspeak.com/cache/65313_200.jpg

 

Is there a link broken or are these image files lost? Has anyone else seen this issue?

 

cachbefound - Ray

[+MAntunes]

I can confirm that there are problems with images in older caches.

 

I have several of them, and found that the images seems to be lost in the following:

 

http://coord.info/GC88D3

 

http://coord.info/GCA14F

 

http://coord.info/GCA16D

 

http://coord.info/GC9E71

 

http://coord.info/GCGE98

 

http://coord.info/GCGEN1

 

http://coord.info/GCGGC1

 

(and I'm referring only the active ones)

 

I really would like to have this problem solved.

[+cachbefound]

I can confirm that there are problems with images in older caches.

 

I have several of them, and found that the images seems to be lost in the following:

 

http://coord.info/GC88D3

 

http://coord.info/GCA14F

 

http://coord.info/GCA16D

 

http://coord.info/GC9E71

 

http://coord.info/GCGE98

 

http://coord.info/GCGEN1

 

http://coord.info/GCGGC1

 

(and I'm referring only the active ones)

 

I really would like to have this problem solved.

 

I sent a question into Groundspeak about this issue on 11/18/12 and I'm still waiting for a reply. In my case I have 17 caches that are impacted and since these were all adopted caches I don't have the original image files. I believe I can replace them all except a few but it will be some work.

[7rxc]

I'm maintaining a group of caches that were created in 2003. Here's an example, My link. The listings for these caches include images and those images are no longer being displayed.

 

Within the listing these images have a path with the following format.

 

http://img.Groundspeak.com/cache/65313_200.jpg

 

Is there a link broken or are these image files lost? Has anyone else seen this issue?

 

cachbefound - Ray

 

I've been looking at this for a few days, and I'm wondering if the name of the file is the problem.

So far those broken links seem to have these 'original' file names vs most of the ones that work have the longer GC generated image names. On the first of the long listing I couldn't see any broken links at all (edited out?) The others were 'short' names so far.

 

Not anything definitve of course, but these simply might have escaped being altered when the long names were generated... or the CO missed any notice to update the page. I did notice that this happens for images ON/IN the description text, I did not find any gallery images missing so far. There have been occasions where people lost images hosted on outside sites. I did when one site went out of business a while back, but mostly from forum posts.

 

Doug 7rxc

[+The A-Team]

Not anything definitve of course, but these simply might have escaped being altered when the long names were generated... or the CO missed any notice to update the page. I did notice that this happens for images ON/IN the description text, I did not find any gallery images missing so far.

I've heard in the past where people would upload images to a cache page, make note of the URL, then delete the image. The image itself would still reside on the server, but it wouldn't show up in the cache listing gallery (I guess they wanted to keep the page tidy or something). The problem is, Groundspeak occasionally goes through and purges those "deleted" images from the server, since they are apparently unneeded (they were deleted by the CO, after all). Maybe that's what happened here? Is there anyone from Groundspeak reading this discussion that can say whether one of these purges has occurred recently?

[+cheech gang]

Not anything definitve of course, but these simply might have escaped being altered when the long names were generated... or the CO missed any notice to update the page. I did notice that this happens for images ON/IN the description text, I did not find any gallery images missing so far.

I've heard in the past where people would upload images to a cache page, make note of the URL, then delete the image. The image itself would still reside on the server, but it wouldn't show up in the cache listing gallery (I guess they wanted to keep the page tidy or something). The problem is, Groundspeak occasionally goes through and purges those "deleted" images from the server, since they are apparently unneeded (they were deleted by the CO, after all). Maybe that's what happened here? Is there anyone from Groundspeak reading this discussion that can say whether one of these purges has occurred recently?

 

Yikes, I would hope the above is not true, I have been doing that for many years.

[Moun10Bike]

No images have been purged from the servers. However, naming conventions were recently changed and standardized, with old images being updated to match these standards.

 

If you have links to the old images on a cache page, you simply need to update the the link to the new name, which in most cases can be found by clicking on the image on the cache page. If the image has been deleted from the cache page, then you will need to write contact@geocaching.com to ask for the new name (be sure to list the old name of the image so that we can locate it in the database).

[+The A-Team]

I've heard in the past where people would upload images to a cache page, make note of the URL, then delete the image. The image itself would still reside on the server, but it wouldn't show up in the cache listing gallery (I guess they wanted to keep the page tidy or something). The problem is, Groundspeak occasionally goes through and purges those "deleted" images from the server, since they are apparently unneeded (they were deleted by the CO, after all). Maybe that's what happened here? Is there anyone from Groundspeak reading this discussion that can say whether one of these purges has occurred recently?

Yikes, I would hope the above is not true, I have been doing that for many years.

Okay, after doing some searching, it sounds like they haven't actually done this. Yet. Here's a post from Keystone from just over a year ago:

Many years ago (in relative Geocaching terms), Groundspeak said that they'd eventually clean up the image server to remove deleted images. "Eventually" hasn't arrived yet. Still, link to the deleted image at your own risk.

If the number of archived images becomes excessive and starts to become a significant hit on storage, I fully expect they'd follow through.

 

Edit: Cross-posted with Moun10Bike. I see there's a good explanation of what happened to the images in question.

Edited November 26, 2012 by The A-Team

[+MAntunes]

Thanks for the solution to solve this issue. The email was sent with the links for the missing images.

[+The A-Team]

No images have been purged from the servers.

Good to know. However, Keystone's post that I linked to seems to imply that this may occur at some point in the future. Can you tell us whether this is still the case, or has Groundspeak decided to leave these archived images as is indefinitely? Are there plans to close the loophole (ie. "from this point on, deleting images really deletes them")? It really doesn't matter to me, I'm just curious.

[Moun10Bike]

There are definitely no plans at this time to do anything like that. However, I know that Jeremy has referenced doing so in the past. As a cache owner myself who has images of this nature, I know that I would personally lobby against purging.

[+cheech gang]

If you have links to the old images on a cache page, you simply need to update the the link to the new name, which in most cases can be found by clicking on the image on the cache page. If the image has been deleted from the cache page, then you will need to write contact@geocaching.com to ask for the new name (be sure to list the old name of the image so that we can locate it in the database).

 

Foe example one like this

[+cachbefound]

I'm maintaining a group of caches that were created in 2003. Here's an example, My link. The listings for these caches include images and those images are no longer being displayed.

 

Within the listing these images have a path with the following format.

 

http://img.Groundspeak.com/cache/65313_200.jpg

 

Is there a link broken or are these image files lost? Has anyone else seen this issue?

 

cachbefound - Ray

 

It took them a while but Groundspeak finally got to the bottom of this. Here's their last reply.

 

Hi Ray,

 

The cache you are referencing has an image URL of: http://img.Groundspeak.com/cache/65165_200.jpg

 

This is the old naming that was done away with earlier this year in a site release that updated image handlers on the website. You will need to use the new file name for the image. If the image had not been deleted from the cache page, then the new name would be readily available. However, since it was deleted, we have looked up the new name in the database, which is: e678d8c0-1575-4852-85df-7f3684d6b0e3.jpg

 

You will need to change the URL in the cache description to: http://img.Groundspeak.com/cache/e678d8c0-1575-4852-85df-7f3684d6b0e3.jpg

 

Best regards,

 

Katie

 

Naturally I had something like 25 images among 17 caches that I needed them to provide the new GUID based name for. Katie provided them all overnight.

 

I hope this helps others with older caches with images.

Edited November 29, 2012 by cachbefound

[+Viajero Perdido]

If you have an old archived cache laying around, you can upload your images there, for use on your other (active) cache pages. That's what I do.

 

In my case the archived cache is one that was never published - I'd archived it before submitting for review, due to destruction of the hiding spot. In this case, the images I upload there are quite private because there's no way for other cachers to see them, other than when I provide a link. This comes in handy because some of those images are related to puzzles.

Edited November 30, 2012 by Viajero Perdido

[+cachbefound]

If you have an old archived cache laying around, you can upload your images there, for use on your other (active) cache pages. That's what I do.

 

In my case the archived cache is one that was never published - I'd archived it before submitting for review, due to destruction of the hiding spot. In this case, the images I upload there are quite private because there's no way for other cachers to see them, other than when I provide a link. This comes in handy because some of those images are related to puzzles.

 

What I've done is to simply open a cache and never publish it. I upload images to it and reference those images in my other active caches. My understanding is that until you publish the cache no one other than you has access to it. Although I have heard someone claim that as soon as you open a cache Groundspeak can in fact access it.

[+Lil Devil]

My understanding is that until you publish the cache no one other than you has access to it. Although I have heard someone claim that as soon as you open a cache Groundspeak can in fact access it.

Until you enable it, it won't show up in the reviewer's queue. But it is always visible to reviewers and lackeys if they look at the list of your caches, or happen to see it nearby another cache they are reviewing.

[+Viajero Perdido]

As long as you leave the coords as N0 W0 (in the ocean off Africa), it won't keep showing up to the reviewer when they do proximity checks - which I believe would otherwise happen and perhaps annoy them.

[+MAntunes]

Just a note to say that I received an email from Groundspeak with the new names for all my missing images and that I recovered all of my cache listings that were affected.