I'm not sure there's much to do here, but I wanted to vent a bit anyway. Imagine this scenario:

You are working on a project and need some references/questions answered/problems solved.

So you open a web browser, hit armorama.com, plug in your search terms and see just the right article listed.

You click through, start reading and get excited when the author describes your exact issue.

You scroll down and find.... BROKEN IMAGES! You see, it's been more than a year since the original post, so something's happened to the author's original images that are hosted off site. Now the article may or may not be worthwhile.

I wonder if there's a better solution for image hosting on-site or off, to help avoid this, even years later. I really wish the image hosting was easier/larger capacity. It really feels like we're losing a lot of our history!

I understand your frustration, sometimes the images get deleted, due to lack of space.
I usually upload photos to the album section here. On my first couple of trys I had the photos at too high a resolution and they took up to much space in the gallery section.
If anyone looks in the large scale section for the build of Merits 1/18th. Flak 36 well this is what happened.
Donald

I also see the Photobucket "sorry the owner has removed this image" icon all over the place.
I dont understand why any one would do that. I have never removed an image from my Photobucket account, there is no storage limit there. - not that my model pictures are particularly worth keeping forever, but as a courtesy to the future browser, just as you describe, I leave them where anyone might look for them.

Image hosting here, for those of us who are paying subscribers, is also unlimited. there is no reason to delete pictures in your gallery. I dont know why they do it.

I usually deleat the older photos, I am not a paying subscriber here. Being a disabled Vietnam Veteran money is tight. There are some people who want different models built. They supply the kit and I build it.
I have over 56 years of modeling experience.

Dead mages is a common problem in our digital age, and the best protection against it is to have your build written up as a Feature article so it and the images get hosted in perpetuity by Kitmaker.

Individuals remove pics from accounts here or at PhotoBucket etc as and when they want, so eventually you'll get the big red X - there's nothing you can do about it. (The internet has turned us from an archiving society into an existential one, where the only currency is "now"...)