I don't think a hard limit would be good. More crap to enforce and another potential drama source. To me, it falls on the level basic conscientiousness... it's etiquette. And enforcing etiquette in minute, particular ways tends to lead to unforeseen problems later on. It's also kind of a slippery slope towards a more dogmatic community atmosphere. I have a lot of experience on forums, on both sides, and I think you guys on staff do a great job of maintaining a pretty healthy and open community... I don't see things going that way, but on principle it's not the best look. This isn't a bureaucratic exchange - it's a place for people to gather, share in their interests, and be themselves. I'm not saying leave it wide-open. Just a little open.
It's simple, really. The more arbitrary rules you lay out, the fewer of them people will follow, and the less those that do follow are willing to continue following when pressed. Save hard rules for things that absolutely require hard rules.
It'd be ideal if we could all come to some sort of spoken agreement to be considerate when posting multiple images. Any healthy community can manage that, I think. It should just be part of the established etiquette, supported by users and staff alike. And I think most people already understand this intuitively... we just forget. I did just the other day... and then this came up and I quickly put them between spoiler tags. No big deal.
I say put it in the guidelines... and then I'm sure many of us who've been around and get why it should be that way will follow it and try to remind others to do the same. Just a general request that non-image-centric threads not be flooded with lots of full-size images. Best not to make a big thing out of it, you know? It's nothing for most people to be expected to follow that when they can. And if for some reason there's a problem, users can always report the post and mods can give a nudge, or edit the post should the user either not be active in a reasonable time-frame or simply refuse, which I think probably wouldn't happen for no reason, anyway. That's the other thing... it's a judgement call situation and you can't account for everything. Sometimes, it's a given. Sometimes the reason is not obvious and requires a quick hashing-out. Other times, it's not necessary for every image to load automatically.
It's just that you can't expect that to be the way to go unanimously. It goes both ways. Sometimes people will want to post larger images, but shouldn't. Other times, it's much better if they're large, even if it weighs down the page. We all have to shoulder that, one way or another.
As far as practices go... I personally am not a fan of thumbnails. Especially lots of them. Say I want to examine all of the images on a page. If they're thumbnails, it can easy be as bothersome as having them all load can be for someone who doesn't want to view them. Because now, I have to click each one and either go back and forth between the overlay or push them all into tabs as I go. Not very convenient. I'm much more likely to skip over stuff that I might've otherwise appreciated. And on the flipside, knowing I'm going to be limited to thumbnails is going to make me less likely to want to post certain images. If people can't quite make out what the image is, they're not so liable to click on it in the first place. So why bother?
I think spoilers are the best middle ground. If it's not a picture-centric thread, spoilers shouldn't be a problem. And as suggested it should be acceptable to show one image in a set. That still leaves the issue of posts with pictures spaced out between text, where they all have context that makes it so that if those images were skipped, would cut-out the message. Those either have to be spoilers, or maybe just scaled down to half-size or something. Still no need for thumbnails imo. Having them small enough to load reasonably, but still big enough to make out the images well should be sufficient.
But again, it's hard to draw a line. The range of content here (or really, on any forum) is too varied to be able to effectively control things like this. It's probably better if everyone just does whatever they wanna do in order to not flood threads with images. Let us cater our measures to our content. Sometimes, a thumbnail is fine. Other times, you may want to show the images in a little more detail, so maybe make them a little larger than a thumbnail... like around double the size, if there's only a few. Or maybe you can compromise on image quality and compression in order to post more. Having that as an option built-in would be great, though a global implementation would hinder people like me, who like to upload high-quality photos and screenshots.) Flickr does pretty well with their compression though. A global implementation of something like that probably wouldn't leave anybody wanting and at least wouldn't bog people down as much. For screenshots, a good gallery would completely eliminate the need for anything more than maybe one medium-sized preview or a handful of smaller ones.
Honestly though, the best solution is probably through better software. We could use thumbnails more effectively if the viewer was more streamlined. Hover-preview and click for full-size would be neat. I'm sure there are all sorts of options that would greatly mitigate the issue, though I wouldn't really know off of the top of my head. Maybe something worth looking into.
www.techpowerup.com
It was suggested that a thread be opened to get feedback from site users on the topic for site admins/mods to consider.
Some restraint is good.
