User blog:Semerone/Imgur images only show as text?

This blog was originally posted at Kishin Douji Zenki Wikia.

Update
(November 28, 2017)

Hello, dear fellow wikians.

As of today, the "Imgur images"-issue has been resolved.

In fact, a staff member checked out the issue and came to the conclusion, that it's not an issue, but a security update, that has been applied to all wikis.

Here's the answer I got via mail:

"Rappy: (Wikia/FANDOM Staff) "Hello,

Thanks for contacting FANDOM. Unfortunately, the experience you are seeing is intended. Hotlinking images like this can allow users to show images on FANDOM that are against our Terms of Use. I would suggest uploading the images locally instead.

Rappy"

So, in this mail, Rappy explains, that Imgur images are now being displayed as links intstead of images, to prevent Terms of Use related issues.

I think, that this might be related to the fact, that the Wikia/FANDOM staff can't really check out the Imgur images unless they come across them, so anyone could just go and upload an image and an offensive image would go unnoticed until a staff member or admin comes along it by sheer chance, cue the change.

Again, this is neither Rappy's nor anyone else's fault. It's just a security update.

Of cause, this is very unfortunate for the people, who don't post any offensive content and instead use Imgur to post funny memes like our dear Freddy, but unfortunately for the time being, there's nothing to be done about it.

Thank you for reading.

Greetings Semerone (the founder of Kishin Douji Zenki Wikia)

Welcome
(November 25, 2017)

Hello and welcome to the "Imgur images only appear as text"-blog.

This blog is meant to cover a recent change that has been noticed and reported to me by multiple users over at Kishin Douji Zenki Wikia. Feel free to discuss the issue in the comments section below.

Everyone is welcome. ;)

About the Issue
In the most recent time, there has been a change to Wikia/FANDOM.

Before the change, adding an Imgur image link on any page would cause the image to be displayed on that page, regardless if it was used on an article, a blog, the forum, the comments section, the message walls, templates, etc.

Since the change, the Imgur images aren't shown anymore and are now depicted by their link.

That means, what was once shown as an image is now a bunch of text, that sends to you Imgur, where you can view the image, if you click onto the text.

Obviously, this isn't how it was before the change.

It is currently unknown why this was changed and the change can be seen regardless, if the page is viewed via a desktop or a mobile device.

It's likely not browser-related
I initially assumed, that the Issue was related to the latest Firefox browser update to a newer engine, but when I used Internet Explorer, the issue was still there.

When I asked my father to try it with Chrome and Safari, the issue was there, too, so it definitely isn't browser related.

It might be related to Wikia/FANDOM itself
Another thing I did was searching for the issue in Community Central's and Wikia's/FANDOM's forums in general.

Only old threads came up, though. These were back from around 2011 and about the new Imgur images feature and how to enable it.

Then I checked out the code that was mentioned and found out, that the code for enabling the feature isn't present on any of the wikis I'm an administrator at.

Also, only the Wikia/FANDOM Staff has the permission to edit the list, so there's nothing I can do about it.

But this doesn't solve the issue, especially, as the threads were from 2011, so I don't know, if Wikia/FANDOM still uses the list for these display policies, so I have no idea, if it is really the list, which causes the Imgur images to show as links instead of images, or if this is a global setting, that has been changed by the Staff.

Conclusion
Going through a few possibilites, I'm none the wiser, what is the cause for the change, but I assume, that it might be one of two things:


 * 1) The Staff changed a global setting due to security policy updates
 * 2) The Wikia/FANDOM backend was updated to a new version, thus the settings were reset on a global level

These two are the most likely, but not being a member of the Staff, I can't know for sure. I hope this blog shed some light on the issue, though.

Thank you for reading.

Greetings Semerone (the founder of Kishin Douji Zenki Wikia)