Cathy Craig wrote: > > You know, accessing the photos via this wiki system is taking me 20 seconds > per. And I have a cable modem. So far I am not convinced it is speedier than > attachments. Cathy, It must be a unique set of circumstances that is causing this to happen. The WIKI images come in at a 'normal' speed here on my 33.6k modem, and very fast at work on a T3 line and a friend's DSL modem. Regarding the practical differences between attachments and the WIKI: As far as speed goes, theoretically the WIKI should be faster than email, since 8-bit binary images sent via email are encoded in 7-bit ASCII in order to be able to traverse mail servers. This encoding adds approximately 25% to their size until they are decoded at the receiving end. Because it has already been collected and stored by your ISP, email comes directly to you via the mailserver of your own internet provider, and generally at full speed of your internet connection. On the other hand, the speed of the WIKI depends on traffic at ibiblio.com, as well as the speed and number of 'hops' between your ISP's server and the host (ibiblio) server, and traffic on the internet in general. Storing images on the WIKI helps ensure that the mailboxes of members are not unnecessarily tied up with images. I hate to keep using the Yahoo Clivia discussion group as an example, but it serves as a good example of what can go wrong when a group becomes popular and users ignore posting etiquette. This past year, every time there was a Clivia show in South Africa, my mailbox was overflowing with image attachments every time I accessed it. (over 2 mb of images) This meant that it took about a half hour to collect my email. In my opinion, this is not what email is for. Some members suggested a limit to the size of attached images. (a 147 kb image size limit was already in the group charter) This sounds good, but in reality it did not work either. The person flooding the group was not attaching images which were individually too large, however that person was attaching multiple images to each email so that each email by far exceeded the recommended limit, and there were multiple, consecutive emails each time this happened. To make matters worse, many of the images were not particularly unique or remarkable, and subjects such as signage outside the show were being attached, along with images of people in attendance at the show. Apparently the poster was a personal friend of the group moderator, because nothing was ever said to discourage the practice, as far as I could tell. I realize that our own PBS image traffic is presently much lower than this, however we do want and expect the IBS to grow. If more members begin to take the time to share their images with the group, our traffic could be quite a bit heavier - enough to cause congestion in some members' mailboxes. A system such as the WIKI ensures that abuses and their subsequent complaints will not take place, and I feel that all participants are much better off for it. Big kudos to Mary Sue for setting us up with this great tool. Ken East S.F. Bay Area, Ca. USDA Zone 9 (mediterranean) -2°C to 38°C