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I noticed that on at least one of my old answers, the recent imgur problem reared its 404 heads:

enter image description here

The broken url is https://i.sstatic.net/9c4aL.png.

I already took a look at:

After reading the last question above, played around with different subdomains:

What's up? Do I need to go and manually check all of my answers for broken image links?

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2
  • Did you upload to imgur yourself, or did you upload via the SE editor controls?
    – Rebecca Chernoff
    Commented Jun 20, 2011 at 4:23
  • I just commented on Jeff's answer - it appears that this was one of the few times that I used my own imgur account.
    – Matt Ball
    Commented Jun 20, 2011 at 4:24

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
18

For all posts made on or after August 17 2010, any image urls in the form of i.imgur.com were changed to i.stack.imgur.com network-wide.

This means, if …

  • your post was made on or after August 17 2010

  • you MANUALLY uploaded something to imgur, that is, outside of clicking the 'add image' button in our editor

  • your image URL will be broken and you'll have to manually edit it back to the old i.imgur.com form

Sorry, we assumed that 99% of users would be using the default image upload support provided by the editor, so those users who deviated will be affected.

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22
  • 1
    ...dammit, that's one of the seven images I used my own account for. Thanks, Jeff!
    – Matt Ball
    Commented Jun 20, 2011 at 4:22
  • 2
    man I need to go through my posts done having imgur urls to check for broken links now :\
    – Sathyajith Bhat
    Commented Jun 20, 2011 at 6:10
  • 1
    @JeffAtwood - I'm not sure the note about images disappearing after 6 months is really clear. Would it be correct to say that users who used the "add image" button do not have to worry about this sort of expiration?
    – Iszi
    Commented Jun 20, 2011 at 13:46
  • From imgur FAQ: How long do you keep the images? As long as images are getting at least 1 view every 6 months, they will stick around forever. After that, your image may be removed to create more space for newer images. So in practice it's a problem only for users who do not constantly view their all images at least once a few months (which is a good practice for many reasons). :-)
    – przemoc
    Commented Jun 30, 2011 at 17:36
  • 1
    @prz we've seen images get removed by imgur that should have had views. I would not trust that guidance as 100% accurate.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Jun 30, 2011 at 22:28
  • @Jeff: I see. This rule was most likely more restrictive in the past, so I hope you've just seen examples of images that were uploaded and have vanished before rules were changed (dunno when it was done exactly). Anyway, it's surely safer to use SX imgur. Thus I'll have to update my TeX.SX posts within 6 months, just in case...
    – przemoc
    Commented Jun 30, 2011 at 22:36
  • @prz, but now some of those images will not get any view at all, simply as their true URL has been changed into a i.stack.imgur.com URL, which does not apply to non-SE images.
    – Arjan
    Commented Jul 21, 2011 at 19:42
  • I'm quite curious why this was done? If you're regretting this: a year ago, sth used a datadump to download all images for SO. I guess that could be repeated using a pre-June 2011 dump, if the images are important.
    – Arjan
    Commented Jul 21, 2011 at 20:06
  • 1
    @arjan the ambiguity was extremely painful, and the broken images are more obviously wrong than an image which may randomly disappear at any time because it was not uploaded through an imgur pro account.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Jul 21, 2011 at 20:42
  • 1
    @Jeff, it seems something went bad with the URL change. I'm sure I've used the SE upload when changing a post in January. Meanwhile, the URLs were updated in the Markdown. However, 1) I still see the old URLs in the cooked HTML and 2) one of the two old image URLs no longer shows the image: i.imgur.com/HAjPB.png When I add stack all is fine, and I assume making a dummy edit would fix the cooked HTML.
    – Arjan
    Commented Jul 23, 2011 at 10:23
  • 1
    Fun fact: the official i.imgur.com/not-here.png shows a different 404 image than SE i.stack.imgur.com/not-here.png The first even serves a GIF rather than a PNG.
    – Arjan
    Commented Jul 23, 2011 at 10:29
  • @Sathya, beware: maybe the new URLs are only used after making some edit! (See my comments above but please do not edit my post to ensure the team can have a look if needed.)
    – Arjan
    Commented Jul 23, 2011 at 10:34
  • The cooked HTML for another question that has not been edited since January, does include the new stack in the image URLs. Odd?
    – Arjan
    Commented Jul 23, 2011 at 10:44
  • 1
    @arjan as I said above, we rewrote history, Terminator 2 style. We went back in time and made it as if everyone used i.stack even if they didn't.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Jul 31, 2011 at 8:31
  • 1
    @arjan it's possible, though incorrect, for them to disappear from i.imgur.com. We don't care so much about that any more, as all the images should (I mean, that were properly uploaded by users via our upload support in the first place..) have been properly migrated to i.stack.imgur.com which we do care about.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Jul 31, 2011 at 9:02

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