MicrostockGroup

Well taking your last statement first.  My understanding is that no one gets paid until the reviewers decide if the flag was appropriate.  If the DT reviewers get upset at too many mis-flagged words I am sure they will take whatever action they think is necessary.

Yes, this is disambiguation which is a reasonable process and cost wise this seems a very reasonable way of doing it.  No sweat from contributors (unless they are spamming) and little reviewer time. 

If you are not spamming what are you worried about?  Some twit flagging one of your keywords?  So what? If they flagged it wrong the reviewers will catch it if they caught one of your mistakes you have a chance to fix it.

Just don't fall victim to the "confirmation bias" inherent in what you read about the process.  You are likely to only see posts about stupid keyword flagging errors because people like to complain about it.  The corrected keywords will be a lot more frequent but few people willl post some story about how someone flagged one of their stupid keywords.

fred   

- Do we get to know who flagged the image?
- Does DT tell us images have been flagged, or do we need to find it?

while i agree that scientific names are relevant keywords, detailed location of where your images were shot may not be relevant at all ... I assume you are referring here to images that show the geographical location? Because if you shoot a cup and saucer isolated on white, for example, the geographical location is not relevant at all and should not be in the keywords. 

IS tried to implement a similar system but it had several flaws.

1. Groups of contributors would create "ratings rings". Person A (no images - blank account) would flag the word "apple" on an image of an apple on white. This would push the image back in the search results (can't reward "spammers"). Then Person B would upload images of an apple on white which would now come earlier in the search because the other images were pushed back.

2. Relevant keywords were often removed because the reviewer didn't know what they were looking at. The previously mentioned Panthera Leo case is a good example. If I search for "large Cat" I won't find that image because "cat" was deemed to be irrelevant. The door swings both ways on this one. You may have contributors who don't know to use Panthera Leo for a Lion but you also have reviewers who are looking at the image of the lion and saying "It's not the astrological sign 'Leo' so it's an irrelevant keyword".

3. Reviewer overload. Once this catches on - particularly by those trying to dupe the system - the reviewers get so bogged down that it takes months before they can review things. IS had to set up a separate set of reviewers just for flagged keywords. When they get overloaded they stopped having the time to properly research the flag and just make snap decisions. This is part of what leads to number 2 on this list. Long wait times result in frustrated buyers (they just told you that the keyword was irrelevant why is still showing up a day later?) and pissed/panicked contributors (my image was flagged - I can't edit my image - why is it taking so long to realize that the flag is irrelevant - how is this affecting my sales/search placement?)

4. IS didn't pay flaggers. Instead you got a "wiki warrior" icon during a "wiki spree". Several people asked that the icon be removed because they were getting retaliation flags. ie you flagged my apple so I'll flag yours. Others requested that it be removed because they didn't want to be associated with the program when it really started going down hill with all the complaints of invalid flagging and reviewers removing relevant keywords.

5. Language barriers caused multiple issues. Contributors who didn't speak English well felt that they were getting punished for bad keywords (girl instead of woman) because flagging the keyword caused it change location with in the search results. Reviewers who didn't speak the same language as the contributor had a hard time judging subjective keywords. ie removing "knickers" or "bloomers" from a set of girls "panties" because they didn't know that all 3 words mean the same thing.

6. Personal experience. Every time someone wikied one of my images I would write a note to support explaining that the removed keywords were relevant and the words would be reinstated within a day or two. I don't know if DT has a system in place to reinstate keywords that should be there or not but they should. Reviewers don't know everything. It's not physically possible to know everything. And they don't usually have the time to properly research the difference between "wigwam" and "teepee".

I did not know there were that many problems with the IS plan, azurelaroux. I have noticed a decline in keyword rejections. They have moved on to disabling for lack of model/property releases now.

I also discovered another thing this morning. I had another image flagged on DT for a bad keyword. And I agree, the keyword needed to be removed. I went in and cleaned up the keywords on the image. Went back to the comments page to thank them, and the comment was gone and so was the comment that I got a couple of days ago from my first flagged image. Maybe they are removing them now because flaggers are already getting retaliation?

Yeah, this is probably going to end up like istocks plan.

But as a buyer I know it is very frustrating to search for a cow and get pictures of hotels in there (just an example, you get my drift). Something needs to be done.

Composed keywords is something sites should consider - but may it's too late.  StockXpert used to, but then they moved the opposite way.

If an image is flagged, does it lose something in search results while they have not been reviewed yet?

If you find a wrong flagging, like Lisa mentioned, what are we supposed to do, is there some way to automatically explain it to DT reviewers before they cut the keyword? 

Has anyone had the experience of having a wrong flagging accepted by DT?

So, am I supposed to be reciprocal and flag the flagger's bad keywords?  Would that be the best way to show my sincere gratitude?

Yes, but has anyone experienced having correct keywords that were inadequately flagged being removed by DT.  THAT would be a concern, and it has happened in IS.

LOL I think most peoples reactions would be similar to yours. However such action could land you in hot water with the DT admins!

I don't see how .. I wasn't talking about just going in and flagging words at random