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It has been reported that "Hosting site Imgur will remove explicit and anonymous content next month". Are there possibly some images linked in MathOverflow questions or answers, attached to anonymous/inactive accounts, which might become unavailable? Does MathOverflow need to save some images before they disappear?

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Not an answer, but doesn't really fit in a comment.

Glorfindel ran a script to find and try to upload linked images to Stack Exchange's Imgur repository (those images won't be removed by Imgur). His answer includes a link to a (very long) output of results. Searching for "mathoverflow" jumps to the results for MathOverflow (and also meta.mathoverflow). Many images were successfully uploaded. There are only a handful of uncertainties or failures. Here they are (I "snipped" out the successful replacements):

## mathoverflow.net

### Successful replacements

[snip]

### Uncertainties

| Frequency | URL | Replacement | Post IDs |
|----------:|-----|-------------|----------|
| 1 | https://i.imgur.com/KFkbXCz.gif | Not uploaded but archived as https://web.archive.org/web/20230503101817/https://i.imgur.com/KFkbXCz.gif | 291829 |
| 1 | https://i.imgur.com/p7zUONx.gif | Not uploaded but archived as https://web.archive.org/web/20230503101846/https://i.imgur.com/p7zUONx.gif | 375339 |

### Failures

| Frequency | URL | Failure | Post IDs |
|----------:|-----|---------|----------|
| 1 | https://i.imgur.com/76yeO.png | com.stackexchange.toolbox.editor.ProcessImageException: com.stackexchange.toolbox.editor.DownloadFailedException: Invalid Content-Type application/octet-stream returned for https://web.archive.org/web/20150427162752///i.imgur.com/76yeO.png | 39637 |
| 1 | https://i.imgur.com/7ctju.gif | Not found in Wayback Machine. | 30136 |
| 1 | https://i.imgur.com/Gnpdn.png | Not found in Wayback Machine. | 25897 |
| 1 | https://i.imgur.com/RleJK.png | Not found in Wayback Machine. | 30136 |
| 1 | https://i.imgur.com/bj5zs.png | Not found in Wayback Machine. | 30136 |
| 1 | https://i.imgur.com/cZKaB.gif | com.stackexchange.toolbox.editor.ProcessImageException: com.stackexchange.toolbox.editor.DownloadFailedException: Broken image, an error image is served instead. | 24272 |
| 1 | https://i.imgur.com/pChFw.png | com.stackexchange.toolbox.editor.ProcessImageException: com.stackexchange.toolbox.editor.DownloadFailedException: Broken image, an error image is served instead. | 56138 |
| 1 | https://i.imgur.com/xAZZb.png | com.stackexchange.toolbox.editor.ProcessImageException: com.stackexchange.toolbox.editor.DownloadFailedException: com.stackexchange.toolbox.editor.ProcessImageException: com.stackexchange.toolbox.editor.DownloadFailedException: Broken image, an error image is served instead. | 38236 |
| 1 | https://imgur.com/F1x6j.png | ProcessImageException: com.stackexchange.toolbox.editor.DownloadFailedException: Not found in Wayback Machine. | 35780 |
| 1 | https://imgur.com/drlwRgv | DownloadFailedException: Image not found on imgur image page. | 168300 |
| 1 | https://imgur.com/xjxWV.gif | ProcessImageException: com.stackexchange.toolbox.editor.DownloadFailedException: Not found in Wayback Machine. | 24272 |

## meta.mathoverflow.net

### Successful replacements

[snip]

### Failures

| Frequency | URL | Failure | Post IDs |
|----------:|-----|---------|----------|
| 1 | https://i.imgur.com/76yeO.png | com.stackexchange.toolbox.editor.ProcessImageException: com.stackexchange.toolbox.editor.DownloadFailedException: Invalid Content-Type application/octet-stream returned for https://web.archive.org/web/20150427162752///i.imgur.com/76yeO.png | 5551 |
| 1 | https://i.imgur.com/cZKaB.gif | com.stackexchange.toolbox.editor.ProcessImageException: com.stackexchange.toolbox.editor.DownloadFailedException: Broken image, an error image is served instead. | 5551 |
| 1 | https://i.imgur.com/pChFw.png | com.stackexchange.toolbox.editor.ProcessImageException: com.stackexchange.toolbox.editor.DownloadFailedException: Broken image, an error image is served instead. | 5551 |
| 1 | https://i.imgur.com/xAZZb.png | com.stackexchange.toolbox.editor.ProcessImageException: com.stackexchange.toolbox.editor.DownloadFailedException: Broken image, an error image is served instead. | 5551 |
| 1 | http://imgur.com/ | ProcessImageException: com.stackexchange.toolbox.editor.DownloadFailedException: Invalid Content-Type text/html returned for https://web.archive.org/web/20230509011314/https://imgur.com/ | 773 |

Here is my attempt to make easier links to the MO and meta.MO posts (some of them have several broken/missing images, I just put one link for each post):

  1. DONE Existence of an integral equation (Faedo-Galerkin, Banach fixed point, Picard-Lindelof)

    I have removed the images and moved the links (and full citation) to the actual article to the top of the question, and pointed out the section and Lemma that the images portrayed.

  2. Numerical instability using only Heun's method on a simple PDE

    Uploaded the one available GIF to stack.imgur.com. Left the other two broken links as they are, since no copies are found on the Wayback Machine.

  3. When to throw away data

  4. What are good ways to 'relax' a uniform approximation into independent saddle-point expressions once the uniform approach is no longer needed?

    This gif is on imgur.com. It's too big to upload to stack.imgur.com (about 4.6MB). It seems to be in the Wayback Machine

  5. Why does the area function of a parallelogram have a nonintuitive geometric solution?

  6. DONE Topological scaling (?)

    The answer included a reference to the paper that the (now lost) image was taken from. I copied the image again and uploaded it.

    (The image has two parts marked (a) and (b), and caption text. I'm not sure if the original included all of that, or maybe just the (b) image. I decided to include all of it.)

  7. Which subsets of the plane are similar to all their affine images?

    This gif is on imgur.com. It's too big to upload to stack.imgur.com. It seems to be in the Wayback Machine

  8. Symmetries of the Julia sets for $z^2+c$

  9. How to formulate such problem mathematically? (line continuation search)

  10. The hexagonal property of Pascal's triangle

    Replaced image with tex (as suggested in chat)

  11. OK What is the status of the imgur images on MathOverflow? (This question asks about difference between i.imgur.com and i.stack.imgur.com, the links mentioned there are just examples.)

  12. OK How to post a file (This answer contains only a link to imgur.com, not to a specific picture.)

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    $\begingroup$ As mentioned in chat, the two links marked as "uncertainties" seem to actually be links to videos. $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Commented May 13, 2023 at 16:57
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    $\begingroup$ I suggest striking out the posts that have been dealt with (or don't need it, like the last one), as they get fixed. $\endgroup$
    – David Roberts Mod
    Commented May 17, 2023 at 6:20
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    $\begingroup$ For 1. It's screenshots from this paper: Matas, A., Merker, J. Existence of weak solutions to doubly degenerate diffusion equations. Appl Math 57, 43–69 (2012). doi.org/10.1007/s10492-012-0004-0, as indicated in the post, and I believe the last, missing image might be the top half of the eighth page, the last bit of the proof of Lemma 2.1. The Wayback machine doesn't have a copy of the missing image. And the springer.com link to the paper should really be a doi link, when it gets edited $\endgroup$
    – David Roberts Mod
    Commented May 17, 2023 at 6:27
  • $\begingroup$ For 2., the first gif still exists, the other two imgur links are broken. Haven't checked the Wayback machine $\endgroup$
    – David Roberts Mod
    Commented May 17, 2023 at 6:29
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    $\begingroup$ @DavidRoberts Generally, strikethrough is not accessible with screen readers, so it's best to avoid it if not absolutely necessary. $\endgroup$
    – The Amplitwist
    Commented May 17, 2023 at 11:59
  • $\begingroup$ @DavidRoberts The other two GIFs in 2. are not in the Wayback Machine (the table mentions "Not found in Wayback Machine" for these two entries, too). $\endgroup$
    – The Amplitwist
    Commented May 17, 2023 at 12:04
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    $\begingroup$ @Amplitwist fair enough. Having a big "DONE" on each finished item (or similar) will help, though, so people can know quickly how many still need attention. $\endgroup$
    – David Roberts Mod
    Commented May 18, 2023 at 4:48

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