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I linked to an image in an answer.

Someone edited the answer to directly show the image. But I've always been told that hotlinking images like that was bad form. Is there an official site policy?

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  • Gah. NSFL. Cannot unsee.
    – RegDwigнt Mod
    Commented Jan 7, 2014 at 21:35
  • Do downvotes here mean that the question isn't appropriate for meta?
    – starwed
    Commented Jan 7, 2014 at 22:37
  • 1
    (For anyone scared off by Reg's comment, it is literally just a picture of a kid making a funny face, exacerbated by a prominent eyebrow. Not in anyway NSFL.)
    – starwed
    Commented Jan 7, 2014 at 22:39
  • 3
    Downvotes on meta mean "I disagree" at best, and nothing at all at worst. That's why they have no effect on your rep. Feel free to ignore. As to the picture, I actually do mean what I said. I really do want to move to the parallel universe in which I have not seen it. And from there, to the parallel universe where there's no photography, children, eyebrows, or myself. Just to be sure.
    – RegDwigнt Mod
    Commented Jan 8, 2014 at 11:24

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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You're right that hotlinking is discouraged. Links are better than hotlinking; however, your links will be subject to the vagaries of the internet, and will go away with time.

If you want to make the images link-rot-proof (well, as link-rot-proof as reasonably feasible), you can upload them - StackExchange uses Imgur.com to store what you upload.

The default for uploaded images is to embed them in the post, but that will send poor RegDwigнt scrambling to find the brain bleach. So the best of both worlds (link-rot-proof, but people can choose whether to view the images or not) is to upload the image, but then edit out the exclamation mark from the image markdown code, i.e. instead of 

![enter image description here][1]

[1]: https://i.sstatic.net/123abc.jpg

you'd have

[enter image description here][1]

[1]: https://i.sstatic.net/123abc.jpg

(The latter is markdown syntax for a link.)

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  • "If you want to make the images link-rot-proof (well, as link-rot-proof as reasonably feasible), you can upload them - StackExchange uses Imgur.com to store what you upload. " -- Well no, I can't. It isn't my image to copy.
    – starwed
    Commented Jan 10, 2014 at 19:38
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    @starwed: What I usually do is save the picture to my computer, modify it so it's as relevant as possible (crop out parts that aren't important, reduce the size to the minimum that still gets my point across, etc.), and then upload that.
    – Marthaª
    Commented Jan 10, 2014 at 21:10

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