Direct link sourcing

I've noticed that a lot of people put a direct link to the picture they are posting (or edit the source of other people's uploads like it happened to me) as the source, instead of the main page of the artist's site (or pixiv account). I don't know if that's considered fine here, but I always hated that because lots of sites have anti-direct linking measures and sometimes you can't just edit the url to get to the main site (especially when it's a blog), so you have to spend extra time googling to get to the artist's site.

tl;dr: can't we just always post the url to the main site instead of direct-linking to the picture?

Having the direct link allows mass-editing later, e.g. adding the appropriate artist tag to all post whose image URL matches.

In the case of pixiv it's easy to go to the page of the image, just open any pixiv image and replace the post ID with that of the direct link you're trying to follow.

Though it would perhaps be good to have two source fields then, one for the direct link, and one for the page it came from.

I generally dislike the direct image link as well. But I do it because that seems to be the etiquette here.

I would prefer a link to the page the picture is on or linked from.

Also anyone who uses Danboorup gets the source automatically set as the direct link. Also if I find a post I want to upload is a duplicate, but doesn't have the source listed, I will add it provided my link is from the artist's site. (It could be that I'm one of the people you were refering to)

An any case the best solution I think is to ensure that the main page of the artist's site is listed in their wiki entry. I make sure to do this with any new artist I add. It's just as easy to click the '?' next to the artist's name and find their main page link if the direct link fails.

Like piespy said, you need the source link to be the original link--I've seen people remove the source link if it was "useless": don't do this.

My idea is to make a link redirector kinda thing for pixiv source entries, at least:
A link like: http://img07.pixiv.net/img/hinamina/644612.jpg
Would redirect if clicked to:
http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=644612

I don't know anything about coding, so other people will have to say if it's possible/feasible/a good idea, but that's my concept of a solution to the pixiv 403 source issue.

Until then, please keep the source as the direct link to the image, even if it's protected.

I like piespy's idea too, although my solution has the advantage that it retroactively works for all the current entries (but the disadvantage that it only works for pixiv).

What you're describing could trivially be done with a greasemonkey script. That wouldn't likely work for everyone, but it wouldn't be hard to write.

surasshu: This is probably a trivial concern, but creating exceptions for particular sites such as pixiv enforces the impression that we are "stealing images from pixiv" even more :P

Ok, pixiv greasemonkey script written. You can get it at forum #6691 if you like.

Danbooruup also allows you to use the source page as well by clicking the < > buttons next to the source text box.

A pixiv fix should be made serverside because of postbots like truth imo.

piespy said:
Though it would perhaps be good to have two source fields then, one for the direct link, and one for the page it came from.

I'm not sure what the benefit is of having one or the other for mass-editing: you should be able to mass edit based on "http://site.com/artist" just as you can for "http://site.com/artist/pic1.jpg". So, personally I don't care which one is used, but I don't think there's any need for multiple URLs in a post.

It would be nice to be able to specify the "source" field with metatags, so I can upload from a source URL while specifying separately what's stored in "source", but this is tricky to interface in the metatag syntax (spaces and underscores are distinct in the source field, so their aliasing as is done with pool: won't work).

petopeto said:
I'm not sure what the benefit is of having one or the other for mass-editing: you should be able to mass edit based on "http://site.com/artist" just as you can for "http://site.com/artist/pic1.jpg".

But not, for example, from http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=701004 (which some people were advocating as what should go in the source field).

For pixiv, to make the original image accessible, you need the PHP link above, but to let danbooru figure out the artist from the URL, you need the direct link to the jpg file, which gives 403 when you try to open it.

Not much reason to be clicking the source when you have the picture on danbooru. If you're looking for more of the artist's work you can simply click to the artist's wiki page here on Danbooru and peruse the links, given the people who post from Pixiv actually make artist entries (imo. no one should post from Pixiv without it).
From a direct link, you can gather the ID to the illustration and "normalize" it manually. But as the illustration webpage links do not contain anything else than the ID only to the illustration, you will not be able to search for more pictures posted from the artist's pixiv account here on danbooru, unless there is an artist entry, which most neglect to make anyway.

Take http://img02.pixiv.net/img/yasoshigeru/701004.jpg from the above link, search on danbooru: source:*/yasoshigeru/*
Take the direct link, extract the ID,
http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=<insert the ID>
Fairly simple for something you normally wouldn't need.

Yara said:
Not much reason to be clicking the source when you have the picture on danbooru. If you're looking for more of the artist's work you can simply click to the artist's wiki page here on Danbooru and peruse the links, given the people who post from Pixiv actually make artist entries (imo. no one should post from Pixiv without it).

Except that not every image has an artist tag on it. That's especially true with older uploads.

Speaking of direct links, I've managed to upload some pictures with dead links, retrieving them through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine's archives. Should I include the Wayback Machine url from which I retrieved the image?

It might be better to put that in a comment instead.

I've tried writing a bookmarklet based on the Ffffound! one which attempts to capture the referring page, with mixed results. It doesn't work very well with sites that use frames, or hide images behind redirects, etc.

I agree it's a problem but I'm not sure if there's an easy answer. Having to always manually add a home page when you're uploading an unidentified post is annoying.