Why are file uploads now disabled?

[Nathan Explosion]

I got an email from our hosts yesterday indicating that the site's bandwidth usage has gone up considerably in the last few days so I had to look into why, so that I can figure out the cause before it becomes a monetary issue.

After several hours of analysiing logs last night to determine what the reason may be, I discovered that a number of images uploaded to the site recently are being linked to elsewhere. Further checking reveals that the Gallery application on here was visible to users when I don't intend to have it available for use, and that is where some of the files were uploaded.

Further files are sprinkled in other topics on here too, and thanks to you lot bickering about AI images I managed to locate several of them today.

Simple - due to the site being used to host images, images are no longer going to be allowed to be hosted at this time.

At some point they'll be re-enabled for those who should have access, but for now they're done.