With all due respect to the original artist...can someone be kind enough to detext it?

The pixiv source link for this image pointed out something curious.

44002641.jpg?1402328481 = 2270x500px (mode=big)

44002641.jpg = 1500x330px (???)

44002641_m.jpg = 600x133px (mode=medium)

This is the first time I've seen Pixiv load a different image size when you removed the trailing question mark and number when present. Usually there are only two sizes, medium and big, but for some reason this one has a third intermediate size. Though the 1500px version also has a server timestamp which is 25 minutes earlier than the 2270px version, so maybe this is just a side effect of silent image replacement by a pixiv premium users???

Yes, premium users can replace images without changing the ID. Normally they won't bother to change the size though.

我还傻傻的等着....原来只是这么宽啊

fireattack said:
Yes, premium users can replace images without changing the ID. Normally they won't bother to change the size though.

I know premium users have the ability to replace images in existing posts, but is it normal for the both versions to remain accessible at the same time from an image link? In the past I could have sworn the old version was permanently gone once an image was replaced, but this occurs so rarely, who really knows. If you are aware of another pixiv example which does this (different hash between *.ext & *.ext?number) I'd be curious.

Got your point. It's rare indeed. BTW besides medium they also have a mobile size which is slightly larger than medium one.

http://i2.pixiv.net/img02/img/igarasy/mobile/44042476_480mw.jpg
http://i2.pixiv.net/img02/img/igarasy/44042476_m.jpg

The only reason I personally find this noteworthy, is because I never actually click mode=big links on pixiv when downloading and viewing original images. Instead I use a combination of greasemonkey userscripts, which inline + link original images on mode=medium and manga pages, and add links for original images and manga pages below each thumbnail. These scripts which were written a couple years ago always explicitly removed the trailing question mark + numbers, which in the case of this image here gave me the wrong image. Easy to fix, but it made me go WTF when I first noticed it.

fireattack said:
BTW besides medium they also have a mobile size which is slightly larger than medium one.

Or rather it would seem that the mobile sizes are resized to 480px width, which will make landscape orientation images like this one even smaller @480x106px. http://i1.pixiv.net/img13/img/rella/mobile/44002641_480mw.jpg

lol, that's mildly interesting. btw mobile version doesn't require refer.

Well, since I know a guy that works at pixiv, I asked him to clarify what was going on:

Pixiv employee said:
so that user uploaded a lower-res image and then replaced it with a higher-res one
frontends cached the lower-res version. the questionmark and timestamp that that dude was stripping off is there for a reason.
cache should expire in a couple weeks or whatever, according to the response headers

Thanks for that follow-up pink_mist, makes sense.

Though interestingly, it seems pixiv's image server checks for but doesn't actually validate that timestamp number when loading images. Place a random string following the question mark and pixiv will still load the newest version of the image.