Wendy,
Thank you, Classy Lady. It is nice to hear from you on this matter. Your input was very well put, and I couldn't agree with you more.
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seanchi, I would like to apologize for taking offense at your tone. I did do the google search you suggested. OOPS! I quickly saw part of our problem. It's that Scots-Irish heritage which we share. Not the most diplomatic people in the world are we? I am glad that this discussion did not get as hot as some board exchanges(wars?) I saw. I still have a problem seeing that the amount of traffic in pics here is a serious problem. I will say that there maybe was a problem with several threads though. Having an engineering background, I do notice numbers. And I had noticed the very high number of visits to the Harley thread. Since you have removed the majority of the pics, I was unable to assertain how many downloads there have been. Of the pics remaining, the high number was 353, with the majority falling under 100 views(downloads). The high count downloaded pic suggests that maybe it was just the tip of an iceberg and that many of the removed pics had a higher download number. It is still debatable how many of those "grabs" resulted in lost sales for you. There are some other threads that do have relatively high download counts, but in general, most pics here do not. A lot of this is due to the way download restrictions are. There are less than 180 members who have posts of over 100 and I suspect many of them, like me, don't download many pics here.
Then there are the numbers of
who is here on the home page. At the present moment as I write this, there are 19 members and 59 guests here. Since guests are unable to download pics; their presence, while contributing to the count for thread visits, do not count any for downloaded pics. All they can do here is read the posts, save small pics, and follow links posted here. I can readily see where links to sites that do post massive amounts of "stolen material" is a matter of deep concern to producers, not only in your field, but in all areas. I don't envy you - your problems there.
Summation - I don't see pic posting here as a big problem for you. As has been stated, they are also a promotion for your sites, not as good as your promo galleries, but a promotion nevertheless. There may need to be a modification of the rules here regarding posting. As it is, sometimes you have one member posting pics from a set, and then another member posts more pics from the same set, and then another.... Not good! Perhaps we need a modification in the rules regarding this. Perhaps the mods and the big boss could come up with something there.
I wish you the best of luck in your fight and like I said before - I don't envy you your problems. And I certainly don't envy your position as moderator - you can ask SSL about that.