Directory: Member Pictures Disappearing

We're a brand new YSA ward that was created at the beginning of May 2012. We were created from two existing YSA wards in our stake.

Since our ward was created we've had trouble with our member directory on lds.org, specific to pictures. Currently, members who have pictures associated with their profiles will be available for others to see at one moment, but not the next.

Is anyone familiar with what could be causing this issue to occur, and how it can be fixed?

If needed, our Stake Technology Specialist has more information.

dudraper wrote:Currently, members who have pictures associated with their profiles will be available for others to see at one moment, but not the next.

Four silly questions:

1) Are you sure there isn't confusion between "individual" and "family" photos? In a singles ward, you need to upload both to have them visible in all areas.
2) Are you sure the members aren't deleting their own photos?
3) You are aware that unapproved photos can be seen by some leaders but not the general ward? That could cause confusion when it's visible under one login and then the next day it's not visible to someone else.
4) You are aware that different photos can have different "permissions" which limit who can see them?

RussellHltn wrote:
1) Are you sure there isn't confusion between "individual" and "family" photos? In a singles ward, you need to upload both to have them visible in all areas.
2) Are you sure the members aren't deleting their own photos?
3) You are aware that unapproved photos can be seen by some leaders but not the general ward? That could cause confusion when it's visible under one login and then the next day it's not visible to someone else.
4) You are aware that different photos can have different "permissions" which limit who can see them?

1-This might be affecting some of the members, which is something I will check. However, for some of the members who are available at one moment but not the next, this isn't the case.
2-The issue doesn't appear to be caused by members deleting pictures, as this is affecting a brother who is uploading the pictures into LDS.org.
3-Yes, we are aware that depending on the permissions associated with a member's profile can affect this. I don't believe that this is entirely the case, specific with answer number 2.
4-I was not aware that different photos, I'm assuming for an individual member, could have different permissions. I could actually see this being the cause of the discrepancy, but this wouldn't explain a photo being available at one point and not the next.

dudraper wrote:4-I was not aware that different photos, I'm assuming for an individual member, could have different permissions. I could actually see this being the cause of the discrepancy, but this wouldn't explain a photo being available at one point and not the next.

Actually, I was referring to different individuals in the directory having different privacy settings, but it does appear that you can have different settings for the family and individual photos as well. While that may see odd for a YSA ward, I can see where a family might want different settings for individual photos of the children.

The bottom line, is when checking, make sure that you're using using the same lds account to look at the directory as there can be a number of factors that cause things to be different depending on what account is used.

Also, you may want to be on the look out for the problem reported in Privacy settings randomly changed? thread.

And ... I have not looked into how the directory stores the photos, but in other systems I've seen where the photos may be stored on different servers. Depending on what sever is down, different photos will disappear. In that case, the tie might be photos that were uploaded around the same time will disappear/reappear together.

Another factor to consider. In another thread Alan has pointed out there there's a number of different sizes of photos used. It's possible that all the different sizes are created just after upload instead of "on the fly". If for any reason, the resize failed to generate some of the products, you could have missing photos in some reports/displays and not others - even for the same user and the same photo.

Are some displays more prone to having a missing picture then others?

If you pinpoint the problem, please ping me and I'll add it to the troubleshooting section of the directory help.

I'm the Stake Technology Specialist and it doesn't really have any consistency one member for example has photos for both individual and household. I can see the photo of the member in LDS Tools on both my android phone and on my iPad. When I go to the directory on LDS.org and view that specific member it shows me the individual photo and the household photo (same picture) but when I go to the Photos (like the photo directory) I can see some members photos but that member referenced earlier doesn't have a photo that's shown. I hope all of this makes sense, we are kinda confused. It might be best if someone was able to get on a conference call with us so that we could go through all of the different examples that we have and show them to someone.

I'm seeing some inconsistencies as well. The pattern I've observed so far would fit the theory that not all photo sizes were created at upload and as a result the photos may be missing from some products but not others.

Also an observation: The Photo directory uses a single silhouette as a place holder suggesting it's for individual photos. It's not, they are family photos.

To help pinpoint the problem, I would like to add to the scenario added by the Stake Technologist. If individual A is looking at individual B's photo, A can see B's photo on the iPad, Android phone, and in certain reports in lds.org, but cannot see B's picture from within the photo directory. However, if individual B looks at the photo directory, he will see his own picture. As individual B can see his picture from the photo directory, would this be a problem with the photo sizes or something else?

Specific to the size of photo's uploaded, they should all be the same size. Being a YSA ward, we add 3-10 new members each week, which in turn requires that we upload 3-10 new photos each week. With so many members coming and going, the bishopric is looking for a way to put names with faces, which is what we were hoping to use the photo directory for. As it was mentioned that a server could go down at any time, from your opinion, will the photo directory in lds.org be a good way to get the bishopric this information?

Also, specific to the statement about photo's that have already been uploaded to lds.org, the propagated to the different systems that could referrence the picture. How long should this push to all systems take?