Up: I did consider the security issue, but decided that the folks making the free tools that make this site possible deserved a little credit, and that a troublemaker could figure out most of the accurate bits of info I included above anyway. Anyway, I’ve leaked the info into the ocean that is the net, so I’m not gonna try draining it now.

I think we’ve been very fortunate at IS with not having any handle imposters, but protecting handles is something to consider - especially as the site gains popularity. (I know that I plan to pimp it out to friends around the net).

Thanks for the background. I’ve often found myself pondering how it works, so I really appreciate it.

Saving captions: I think most of the gallery keepers go with the old ‘file | save as’ feature in most modern browsers. Of course now you need to shave off the mail to link along with the captions you don’t want.

Protected handles & wiki: I’ve implemeted the lot of that (except guest users) at Wasting Precious Time so it may not be impossible to cross over to IS, but there may be a few kinks in the interface to be worked out.

How it’s done: To dodge the question, I’ll just list the tools. The site is indeed written in php & mysql along with the smarty templating language. The mail a caption feature uses phpmailer. Grabs are mostly obtained using VirtualDub, ImageMagick, and a few scripts I wrote using ActiveState’s widow’s implementation of perl.

Linking capper’s names to their wiki profile pages would be nice - but presents a potential problem in that it would probably require registration. Hmm… what about allowing registered users who can password protect their names - and link them to the wiki - but also allowing guests who can just type in a name for themselves? (Does that make sense?)

Would love an easier way to save captions - or sets of captions. Unfortunately the best I’ve come up with is taking screen captures of the galleries. (The email feature is really nice, though).

Earlier I had made a suggestion for some form of shoutbox. I understand that we don’t want to change the delicate balance of capping vs. chatting. I think it would work, though, as a place where people can greet others, or laugh at captions, or any more chatter related things. Just an idea to play with. Maybe make it small and unimposing and refresh with the gallery.

So far you’ve done a terrific job adding very useful features. Thanks for providing us with this excellent site! It is *the* funniest place on the net, and it is better than CT! ever was.

BTW, I’m curious how the site works. I’m assuming MySQL/php. It would be really cool if you made a page that described a bit of the ‘behind the scenes’ stuff. (Can you tell I’m a programmer?)

First off, the stable link to the gallery is
http://lustforlunch.com/is/?gallery=1

This is mentioned in passing at
http://sector7g-zz9.com/is/linktous.php
and used to be on the general info page, but I realize that all qualifies as fine print.

The long numbers in the URLs are there to allow you to use your back button to page through old galleries and grabs. There’s probably a better way to do that, but “that’s how we’ve always done it”.

I can see some benefit in listing the galery activity on the ‘entry page’, and also some work, some technical risk, and a little risk of scaring people off when the gallery’s been empty for a while. (And even assuming we consider ’saying hi to long departed cappers’ to be a big problem, it’s unrelated - you can’t see names in the gallery to greet without also going into the gallery and having the timestamp info available).

Dang, you make me wish you were a moron, your replies are so accurate and find the exact weak points so well. Ah, weh mir.
Yes, that the silhouettes wouldn’t look like much against ~ 200 x 150 images did occur to me. - Well I tried, didn’t I?

As for the ‘hi ho to cappers who are long gone’, um, did I miss making the point that you can’t see that timestamps on the images in the gallery until you go to the gallery?
And did I make the point, also, that people start out at http://www.lustforlunch.com/is (or whatever URL - that is, they don’t start out at the Gallery, get it? -), i.e. the captioning page, which currently does NOT show the e.g. ‘Last caption at 3:18 PM / The current time is 3:18 PM’, which is only (currently) on the Gallery page [?do you see?] …Something like that for the captioning page e.g. http://www.lustforlunch.com/is/index.php?gid=whatever_long_#... saves having to access the gallery first (which is never a stable link, that I know of, the way e.g. http://www.lustforlunch.com/is is.)

If I’m not clear yet, I’ll try again! Thanks for reading and responding.

(Yes, “who’s posted in the last X minutes” (if X were more like 7-10 minutes) would do - IF it were put, not on the gallery, but on the … other one, whatever.)

Sincerely,
devoted capper UpSky2

Un: Do you mean variety as in “images I haven’t seen before” or “something that was made in the last 20 years”? If the former, I’ve been working to inject new images most days (adding over 5,000 new images and removing a few hundred old ones in the last 2 1/2 months), and the seven hours a day of non-ephemeral films and LOC content should hold a lot that most people haven’t capped before. Plus, a lot of the effort that might have gone into writing new code will go into speeding up the new image acquisitions. If the latter, I’m stlll neurotic about the public domain thing and haven’t found any new and good veins of material outside archive.org.

cat: See the public domain thing above.

Up: I’ve seen the ‘hi to people who left a while ago’ problem happen when the last caption and current time indicators were 40 minutes apart. While I could make the “capped at” timestamps on each caption more obvious than a mouseover, I tend to think that no matter how bright and shiny I make these timestamps, a healthy percentage of people won’t bother with them. That said, adding a “who’s posted in the last five minutes:” list should be pretty simple and achieve some of what you’re asking for.
As for the avatars - apart from the technical challenges and so forth, my first response is that grabs just aren’t big enough to have a fifth or more of them obscured without really making it too tough to view at lower resolution.

- “a crude indicator of current activity, aside from timestamps” - because I noticed another capper saying “Hi” to previous cappers who were long (>20 min previously) gone from the gallery… evidently timestamps did not tell their tale about this obviously enough.
So: something in place of the “Last Caption At”, or to accompany it, like a badge with three versions by color, e.g. RED (>20 min since last caption), BLUE (8-19 min since last caption), or GREEN (for 0-7 min since last caption… possibly a fourth color, e.g. STRIPED GREEN AND (uh, whatever you think would go with that, e.g.) THIN YELLOW STRIPES.
W/e.g. a text legend superposed on these badges, for RED, “[Gallery] Idle”, for BLUE, “Slow”, for GREEN, “Active”, and for STRIPED Whatevers, “Busy!”
Summary: “Gallery Status” icon or badge.

[second idea for feature:]
- Actually, I forgot what the second idea was. So I’ll just borrow one: how about a profiled silhouette/avatar (yes, Yahoo! avatars are garbage… I’m very aware…) to go with the capper’s regular name, to be superposed on the captioned image (as Mike/Joel and the ‘Bots were in the original MST3K show.) - The point? well, let’s say such silhouette would have a Default position (lower right corner), but could be positioned anywhere along the bottom if control touched, and might also have an optional ‘appendage, pointing’ e.g. an arm-hand-finger that can point toward a direction of choice. ….Or something like that!
Summary: personal graphic inclusion in captioned image, minimally adjustable.
(PS: as to what style of silhouette… why not let the cappers design and submit [or even doubtfully, upload??] their own designs! that would sure allow a lot of leeway, add ideal personalization, and, uh, take a load of Gerson maybe… if that were allowed and this whole cranky idea were operating, the versions with an upraised arm/tentacle/back-scratcher/whatever would also have to be user-designed-&-submitted variations, I guess. Bla bla bla….)