/daring-acts/ archive missing thumbnails — parked 2026-05-15

DARE.CO.UK · PARKED SKETCH · 2026-07-15

Mirrored from ~/.claude/.../memory/project_daring_acts_thumbnails_parked.md. This is a design sketch parked for future build — read for context, not as a current deliverable.

The daring-acts archive grid (66 articles) shows blank cards where source articles have no body image. Surface + decide per-article: fix the body image at source, drop a placeholder, or accept blank. Parked Friday afternoon; resume when the daring-acts editorial sweep is on the docket.

Flagged 2026-05-15 16:50ish by Dan while the dashboard cache-toggle was in flight:

“Lets cue up missing thumbnails on https://dare.co.uk/daring-acts/ and park it for now.”

What needs investigating

• The /daring-acts/ archive renders 66 article cards
• Some cards display without thumbnails because the source article (e.g., /daring-acts/<slug>/) has no body <img> for the featured-strip picker to harvest
• These blank cards visually break the grid’s rhythm

Tools that already address this class

Built earlier in May, already in toolkit:

• dare_featured_picker.py — picks the body image for each article’s archive card
• dare_homepage_image_audit.py — audits placeholders + duplicates per page
• dare_lost_files_audit.py — finds articles whose images 404
• feedback_featured_card_image_required.md — the policy: image-less articles excluded from ranking entirely

On resume

1. Run ~/bin/dare_homepage_image_audit.py scoped to /daring-acts/ (probably needs a --section flag if not already there)
2. Surface the list of image-less daring-acts articles
3. Per article, editorial decision: - Source a real body image (best, requires editorial work) - Apply a coloured-text fallback card (existing feature per the archive grid template) - Drop the article from the archive grid entirely (per feedback_featured_card_image_required — image-less articles already excluded from featured-strip; same logic could apply to the broader grid)
4. After: re-run the dare_section_indexes_build to regenerate the daring-acts archive with the fix

Why parked

Friday-afternoon scope discipline. Tools exist; the work is editorial (which articles deserve real images, which deserve fallbacks). Editorial work needs unhurried attention. Park until Monday or the next /daring-acts/ pass.

Linked memories

• feedback_featured_card_image_required — image-policy this would honour
• project_dare_content_strategy — archive content strategy
• project_dare_canonical_taxonomy — daring-acts as the action-led mode complementing methods/culture/field-notes

The aphorism

Empty cards in an archive grid are honest about the source. The editorial question is whether honesty serves the reader, or whether the card should be hidden.