slide shows are a pain!!!
Can you be more specific? Some of the folks have made positive comments about the slideshows, Mr. Grinch.
I'll be specific!
I'm no grinch, I look out for every one the board.
Some people don't have state of the art DSL-or even high speed internet let alone a state of the art warp drive computer sitting right next to the DSL transmitter substation. People still have Square monitors and windows 98. If they are on a satellite feed or dial up or they are long distance from the DSL transmitter a it's pretty bad when pictures are posted. They sure aren't going to slow things down even more and click on a link.
The reason for the auto resize of pictures on GBO is to speed up the page load an make the pictures fit these older machines.
As the moderator I have to look at every link. When I was in South Africa there was nothing worse than to have review a post full of links. Not only was I working on slow speed internet, but I was 8,000 miles form the server and my computer would often time out waiting for the page to load the various links.
I still see this when I go upstairs and work on the wifes older laptop and I try and avoid any internet work on the 6 year old desktop in the other room. Thumbdrives are great invention
People with the older equipment understand the problem and are willing to accept the slow load for posted pictures, when they do encounter links they just ignore the links. It's especially bad when there is a whole row of links. They have to click on each one and wait for each to open, then you forget where you were.
It's kind of like reading book. It would be pretty frustratring to read a book that kept referring to the items in the illustrations in other books instead of illustrating them right there. It's kind of like footnotes. The book you are reading should tell the story, you shouldn't have to look up the referrence in the foot note to get the story.
Bottom line. No rule says you can't post a link to a slideshow. It's a good way to share information and and often the only way. But it's a lot better when you have things to say or share to post them right in the post where the item can be seen and discussed. When you have a lot of pictures a slide show is a good way to share them. But post a few highlights pictures first and tell us what else is in the slide show. Folks can then decide if they want to take the time to click or not.