Images for Area51 proposal community promotion on imgur.com?

Question

For each proposal on Area51, a promotional image is automatically generated and it shows the current state, e.g. number of followers/supporters or comitted. Example:

They’re obviously useful for community-ads on existing sites. Alas, the current requirements for those say that the image needs to be hosted on imgur.com. I can easily provide the URL https://area51.stackexchange.com/ads/proposal/{proposal-number}.png in the image upload dialog, to get a cryptic imgur address back, but I’m afraid that it won’t update dynamically.

Please note that I was able to use the area51 URL on some sites until right now, when the poster generator seems to be broken or off-line, but on other sites the software stopped me from posting any image not hosted on imgur. Can we please have the dynamic posters working everywhere (and in “HiDPI”) or be assured that the external service will update them regularly?

Answer 1

You can circumvent the requirements check by making an edit to your post. The system only checks when you first post, not when you edit. Post a false ad linking to an imgur image, then edit it to re-link to the Area 51 promotion image.

Here's an example, you can see that it works by checking the stats.

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^{Dear devs, please ignore this hack and don't fix it}

Answer 2

We already run proposal ads in the sidebar (example), so there's no need to spend a community ad slot on that. (Although, granted, they're not particularly targeted or necessarily relevant.)

But if you feel that you want a proposal ad to run more frequently or demo a specific proposal... making your own ad is your best bet at that point IMO.