If the thread that you are reading is missing pictures ...

no I think your mis reading. It not referring to linking images, but using imgur as a host to store and retrieve for another site. ie my personal website, instead of using my resources, is to store all content on another site (IMGUR)and just link to it..

That said IMGUR is also in the midst of change. They are seeing the 'future' more as a social media site than an image hosting site. Some may have seen some of the testing results, images having a border with link to IMGUR among other features, download link-view count.. Your picture will show but become a traffic generator to IMGUR
https://community.imgur.com/t/great-well-i-guess-imgur-is-unusable-now/43870
http://blog.imgur.com/2017/06/21/a-new-look-for-direct-links/
Which may not be too bad,

however my pain is uploading images to IMGUR site, (and most others) it assigns its own file name to picture. When editing a prior post becomes a matter of matching picture instead of just new url & file name, one more level of frustration. Scrolling thru pictures trying to find a match-rewriting url path minor (if thread hasnt been locked). Ive downloaded all my PB pics and created IMGUR account and uploaded them all but still looking for a host. Did a bout half an older post and stopped after half dozen pics-just tedious and pointless.

I cant help but think, because of the $400 annual upgrade tag, that PB really doesn't want to host pics anymore for sharing and expects folks to leave. If it were revenue, making free accounts $20 would have sated even the greediest..
Can you imagine YouTube doing this?

I keep thinking about what it would take to salvage the topics that can still be edited by loading all of the images to another hosting site, and updating all of the image links. It would be a lot of work, but it could be done. Imgur is one possible hosting site that is mentioned on this forum a lot, but looking at their terms of service it appears to me that they also forbid hot linking from other sites.

" Also, don't use Imgur to host image libraries you link to from elsewhere, content for your website, advertising, avatars, or anything else that turns us into your content delivery network. If you do – and we will be the judge – or if you do anything illegal, in addition to any other legal rights we may have, we will ban you along with the site you're hotlinking from, delete all your images, report you to the authorities if necessary, and prevent you from viewing any images hosted on Imgur.com. We mean it."

I hate to be redundant, repetitive, and superfluous, but it sounds like they mean it. How is it we are using Imgur today for hosting forum images when their TOS appear to forbid it?

I'm not to eager to put in the work necessary to move my images to another host just to have the same thing happen again.

:):)

There is a delete option for individual images, and entire folders.

You don't have to leave your images on their site if you don't want to.

In my case, if the images aren't going to show up on the RV forums, there is no reason to have them there.

:):)

So you dump photobucket, how do you get your pictures off there site? I bet you can't even erase them and they will still continue to display them as long as it's not 3rd party links.

deleted

As it turns out, our signature pic is the only one we can upload here, so it is not at all connected to photobucket.

I assume it is your signature picture that alerted them to the frequent downloads.
My PB pics are not restricted (yet).

They imply that popularity is involved on who they restrict. I can't say I chased down the details.

Hmmm... Did a write-up on my Lance skirt repair 10 years ago. Posted the photos to Photobucket, and copied the IMG links in to the RV.net thread. The thread is part of the TCU. Just checked and the pictures are still there.

So I am not sure what got whacked...?

-Eric