problem with people that use forums as a image gallery

Hello,
Im admin of one forum and im having a problem, a very old problem.
I dont have yet an image gallery but some people likes to open a thread to put pictures, one picture per post, the same user, and in the rules i ask people not to do that, and dont do doble posting in less than one hour.
Some people likes to increase their counters using one thread as a gallery and it makes me get nervious because the pictures sometimes are taken from other webs.

Anyway, i don't like it and i deleted the counter of the postbit and only let the one in the user profile. Im thinking to delete this one too and try to use a new politics about promotions not based on post count.
Whay do you think?
Thanx

IMO, you should disable all image posting permissions until your members can learn to follow the rules.

Depends on your member base. My members would go berserk if I started taking features away like they were 3 year olds. Have you made a nice post with your reasoning about images? I think it's fair to ask that copyrighted materials obviously don't misused and posted. On that note, do you have any rules or guidelines posted? New members for me get fed into my introductions forum, which has a sticky post linking to some rules, features, and getting started on the site tips. I also have gallery installed (not one that's VB integrated) and let anyone who asks for an account to post their own galleries. We also have a decent size off topic forum so random pictures and movies all go to the same place and don't make a mess of the on topic forums. Maybe that was a little much of a brain dump, but I hope you find it helpful.

exec summary: make reasonable guidelines, enforce them consistently, and you should be OK.

-Raymond

Limit how many attachments per post via vbulletin options ---

AFAICT, these are user posted images, [IMG] linked.

First, I would return them the post count, but I would remove the post count based promotions.

There are alternatives such as the activity hack (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=93831) that could help you fine tune your promotions.

sorry to jump in but maybe make a seperate board for these type of posts (if you havent already) and disable the post counts

Thanx a lot for all your suggestions.

The forum its a new one, with only 30 days o f live, but 90% of user come from another forum that has been closed 3 moths ago due to many problems, very difficult to explain in few words. Then for me its not diffucult, because we are beginning to hide the counters and the activity hack seems a great solution to the ego issue, but without showing post count.

I thing that a gallery will solve many problems but also, as popowich says, i would have to insist in rules. I have all the things done but its not enought because many people dont see themselves as guest, they seem, not all, to feel a little bit unconfortable. In the old forum from where we all came there was no rules at all.

Then i will try the following: to put a gallery first, to stop galleries in forums but progresively and, use the activity hack. I will tell you.
Thanx.
Ah, i have linited the attachment file per post but they like a lot to put images and there's no stop form them, many years of doing what they wanted to do.

You have a good case study there. Forum migrations are never easy, theres a lot of nostalgia involved, and there will be a lot of egos to battle.

You have many options on what to do, and many of them will be hit and miss, but personally maybe I would try with adding a low moderation forum. Many of the "free spirits" will roam there, but hopefully you can make them move his participation to the other more regulated forums posting good threads over there. Find the more mature members and try to entice them to open good threads by making them part of your staff or maybe a special usergroup with some privileges. Edit: This low moderatin forum would not have post count added to the users. So even if it becomes spam heaven you can have some control of the post count. Even if you remove it visually.

Hello,

Thanx for your suggestion.I've done it. I have now a very low moderation forum where my free spirits feel free posting images untill i dont install a gallery, and maybe after install it i will have to be permisive with users that still be posting images as a gallery on the forums.