Hello, Kurt Weiske.
On 9/18/20 7:38 AM you wrote:

 KW>  Starting to get a little frustrated with the Telegram 
 KW> integration.  Fidonet's always been about communication, and one 
 KW> of the things I  appreciate about it is the long-form capability 
 KW> of Fido echoes - most  BBSes and offline readers support 
 KW> paragraphs and formatting, unlike  Facebook or Twitter.

I don't think unaccompanied links would be the norm.  Stas, the developer of the bot to gateway Telegram and Fido, has been working on some things, and I think the links are testing it out.

 KW>  Posting links to jpegs with no accompanying text loses something 
 KW> in  the translation once it gets back to the BBSes it originates 
 KW> from.

I agree. An unaccompanied link makes me leery unless I happen to know the person it's from.  But that's the case anywhere.
 
 KW>  When I see a message in a Fido echo with no content save for an 
 KW> image  URL, I'm reminded that just because something can be done, 
 KW> that it  doesn't follow that it should be done.  Or, maybe I'm 
 KW> just old-school.

It's a tool that's being tried out.  There are potential uses for it.  And with anything new,from time to time, mistakes might happen.
I remember plenty of times in the past that echoes got flooded with messages because a new sysop misdirected some things on his setup.  It's frustrating as hell, but it'll get better.  
Or if it doesn't, the echo moderators can pull their permission to link through the gateway.

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Best regards!
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