As promised, in response to the "Pictures Posted in Trip Reports" thread in this section, here's an attempt to capture enough opinion to suggest a standard practice for posting multiple photos.
 
After writing this offline I tried to post it as an actual poll (with anonymous replies and automatic tallying) instead of a regular post, only to discover that the fields in the poll form were much too small. I don't think I could have expressed the options clearly enough in the number of characters allowed by that form no matter how long I struggled. But it should be simple enough to respond, and for me to summarize response later, via replies to this post. All you need to do if you're interested in "voting" is list your choices by number and letter, e.g.: "1: a, d; 2: c."
 
[Edit:] Obviously optional—as is this entire poll —but it might help us all better appreciate the parameters if you mention your monitor's resolution, your operating system (Windows or Mac? which version?), and which browser you use in your reply.
 
PART 1: FORMAT
(choose more than one answer if desired)
 
When a forum member wants to share a collection of photos, I would prefer that he or she:
 
a. Limit full-sized photos to a certain maximum width (specific width is addressed in Part 2 below).
 
b. Limit the number of full-sized photos per report to a maximum of 12.
 
c. Post all photos as clickable thumbnails (minis) that link to full-sized copies on an external host page. (Please bear in mind that it may take two clicks to access the maximum enlargement from a thumbnail, and at least the initial version accessed will not be a solitary image; it will appear on a page with several other elements, all of which take time to load.)
 
d. Display a small selection of large photos (no more than 6 to 8), followed by a link to an external gallery or slideshow of the remaining photos or the complete collection.
 
e. Display a small selection of large photos (no more than 6 to 8), followed by additional photos in thumbnail form as described in #3.  
 
f. Post no images at all—only a link to an external gallery or slideshow.
 
PART 2: MAXIMUM IMAGE SIZE
 
I think the maximum width of posted photos should be:
 
a. 640 pixels
 
b. 800 pixels
 
c. 900 pixels
 
d. 1000 pixels
 
e. 1100 pixels
 
f. 1200 pixels
 
g. Pixel dimensions are less important than size of file
(please suggest maximum size, expressed as kilobytes [KB], in your reply)

See note added under option #3. I don't want to discourage anyone from voting for thumbnails. I just think they're better in concept than reality, and want to try to ensure people are not overrating them.
 
Also, as noted in my addition to the intro, it could be helpful if people who reply would include some details about their computer system.

Thanks Ed.
 
Anyone else want to "vote" (or restate your preferences in your own terms)?

Quote from MMM on Oct 18^th, 2009, 12:38pm:

Eh?   This isn't about me, it's about all of us who like to share our photos. Including, notably, yourself, whose wonderful pictures from the car show were bigger than the last set I posted. I'm trying to follow through on the issues Bryan raised by encouraging any of our fellow fanatics whose systems have been excessively challenged by past pictorial trip reports to speak up and be specific about the limiting factors. Having that kind of information is the only way we can optimize our photo postings for everyone's enjoyment, without being more inhibited than necessary. If people are getting frustrated with slow loads/navigation and chopped-off images, and giving up on the thread, what's the point?

Quote from fuzzyscorpio on Oct 18^th, 2009, 1:43pm:

 
I appreciate people posting their pictures, and wouldn't want to tell them what I think is right.  However they prefer to post...  For me just looking though, it's easiest to just look through a thread with them all showing, and not have to click.
 
Where I goofed up with those pictures was putting too many in each post - about 30 or so in each.  I should have spread them out more - maybe 10-15 per post - so they would have posted over at least two thread pages instead of one.  That would have helped with loading since half as much would have to be digested at once.  Sorry about that...
 
Reducing the pictures to 800 at the widest is a pretty good compromise between image and file size for showing here.  I used 1024 the last time, but 800 would have been still looked OK.

There's (at least as a default) a view of 15 posts per page in a thread.  If I had 300 pictures, I could have split them where 10 were in a post, and 150 total on each of 2 pages.  Then you'd only have to load 150 at once, instead of 300.

Thanks Martin, looks like you've identified an important factor that I discounted. I see what you mean about the forum being set to a maximum of 15 posts per page. I had never noticed that, and based on my dangerously scanty knowledge of HTML I assumed the pages here were defined by depth. On the contrary, it looks like this set-up will allow pages to go on forever until they reach that 15-post maximum.  
 
Since my Harley weekend post was a little complicated I composed it offline in Word and I still have that file, so I'm going to repost the same group of ~75 images as 15 separate posts in the test zone and see how it loads.  
 
We will still need to decide (individually or collectively) what our maximum images-per-post should be. And size (both dimensions and data) will always have an impact on speed and ease of viewing regardless of the number of images on the page. But this sounds like progress...
 
EDIT: For what it's worth I did the test described above. It doesn't disprove Martin's theory, it just shows that breaking images into separate posts, in and of itself, doesn't make any difference in terms of how long the page takes to load. Which I think is somewhat useful to know. Here are links:
 
~75 PIX IN 15 POSTS
 
~75 PIX IN 1 POST + 14 REPLIES (the original)
 
Since my system is fairly fast and I do get a slight load lag on both of these threads, the experience suggests to me that 5 images per post is probably too many.  
 
I'm going to do one more test, with two images per post (which will spread the same material over three pages). Then we can compare the two test threads and see if they point to an ideal compromise.

EDIT, AGAIN: Here's the link to the two-per-post test. Individual pages behave better, but is it worth navigating multiple pages?  Feedback, anyone?
 
~75 PIX IN 37 POSTS
(link has been fixed, it originally went to third page of thread, sorry)

Quote from Znorfmond on Oct 21^st, 2009, 5:29pm:

Hmmm, that's interesting—or do you mean your monitor settings (resolution)? I can't find anything in Firefox preferences that I could change to make those images fit on my display. But if you're on Windows you probably have access to more specifications in Firefox (or IE). For us Mac dummies, ya know, they like to keep things simple .
 
Quote:

Well, it seems the critical issue is the number of images per PAGE, not per post—but images per post is the only way we as users can control images per page. That's why Martin's observation about the 15-post maximum is so helpful. If we decide that we don't want to deal with, say, more than 50 images on the page, then we know we should limit ourselves to about 3 images per post; that way, somewhere around image #45, the thread will automatically run over to a new page.
 
My tentative suggestion at this point for all of us (including me!) who like to post big images is to keep their size under 1000 pixels on the long side and stay in the range of 2 to 3 images per post. (My 1000 pixel maximum may be a bit high. Capping it at 800 would be safe for almost any system, but not as punchy as I'd like, personally.)
 
Thanks for your comments.