MicrostockGroup

Thank you for the explanation and the links, Serban. This certainly helps.

Some of us don't spend all of our time in the forums (we are actually out trying to make money), and therefore don't always see when major changes are made or when new policies arise. It is really becoming difficult to keep up with all the changes going on right now. For exclusives, the task might be easier. But when a contributor uploads to several sites, the task is daunting. Not your fault, as I know you would love for everyone to be exclusive!

I think I still disagree with you about the 2 cents though. When the net result of flagging spam is to clean up the database and attract more buyers, everyone can get on board with that, and does so with that sole intention. When the net result of flagging spam is to make money, you have attracted people who could care less about buyers and contributors and just want to add to their pockets.

But I do agree with you about everything else.

Well said Cathy!  This sums up my feelings exactly!

I am grateful to Serban for posting here and hope the tone of these forums does not chase you away.  We get excited about things sometimes, but there is so much good information and when you post here you are often communicating with people who can't keep up with all the individual site forums. 

I applaud the goal of cleaning up the keywording system, but I do worry that the issue of keyword phrases is a problem.  Reviewers will naturally approve the removal of the words slot machine from an image of a water machine with a coin slot, and similar situations.  I would too if it was presented to me that way.

I also think that the .02 "reward" is having unintended consequences, such as generating hundreds of thousands of flags, many of which are false.  If you eliminated the payment you would be more likely to get legitimate flags from people who care about accurate searches.

But again, thanks very much for taking the time to post here and also for being open and receptive to contributors concerns

ive had enough of DT aswell, i get flagged quite a lot for bad keywords and most of the time its false. now i just upload images and let the key mentors keyword everything. cant get flagged then. if i have a batch of simular images i just upload 1 and then copy all the keywords to my simular images. my sales have plummeted really badlt this year - worst ever!

The whole IS/Thinkstock/StockXpert thing was definitely discussed here, in depth, about 2 weeks ago. For days. And I disagree with you about threads not ever getting locked on IS...that happens all the time! We must be visiting two different IS forums. 

We don't delete any posts or threads that are not either debated to death in another thread (usually we move posts for this) or agressive and harsh. Also, any kind of attack towards another user is deleted or moderated. The number of moderated posts is minimal (around 2-3 posts per week at most) and most of the attacks came from users from here, after reading a misleading thread. There are many negative posts in the threads I posted and as you can see they are still there.

Our forums are not censored but moderated. We apply the basic rules of netiquette.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netiquette
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29

I can give you a huge list of extremely rude posts made by admins of the website you mentioned. I will not replicate that here. I'll not divert this into an attack towards someone else, but if you really think we're bad for moderating/deleting a post, send me a PM to give you some examples of the language used.

There are tons of threads here that defame agencies and their editors or admin. Offensive language was used often and the meaning of the agency is slowly lost. I'm not eager to participate into this process, as it eventually will affect the overall perception of contributors.

Until problems mentioned above are fixed, this will be my last post here. If you have questions about flagging or anything else, please contact me via Dreamstime's comments or by email at any time and whenever you need help. Farewell.

Same thing happened to me.   

Eloquently put.

Ellen's example shows that even with the best intentions lead to confusion between contributors and reviewers.

Implementing the flagging system that focuses on the actual keyword part of an image is one thing (despite the problem of missing disambiguation...) but DT's move to include the image description into the search function therefore creates a big problem when it comes to keyword reporting. This means more instances of confusing reports that have to be checked.

Technically a very simple process when it comes to avoiding this but this has not been thought through from DT at the time of implementation.
Maybe now this can be tackled... 

I think using the description additionally to keywords is important for relevance.  If an image has a wod only in the description, it's less relevant than if it is in the keywords.

I, for instance, have a photo of a clay court and in the description I say it's the type of court of Roland Garros, but Roland Garros is not a keyword.  If you search for "Roland Garros", non editorial, it's the last image in the results - and it is one of the two with more downloads in the results.  You will notice also that many images before it have Roland Garros as keywords, even if some don't even show a court - tennis balls illustrations, for instance.  THAT is spam.

I am not saying that a buyer looking for Roland Garros will like to find my images, I'm only showing that the description has a smaller weight in the relevance sorting.  But this weight can still be very important.

You need to read through this entire thread in the DT forums and if that does not answer your question you will have to contact their support with a specific question.
http://www.dreamstime.com/thread_7808

I have just learnt that you can use the "reply" in the comment to explain the flagged keywords, and not only the person who flagged the image will see it, but also the reviewer later.  I had thought we would have to send a note to support.

I just got the opposite of this. I had a message about a bunch of keywords added. This has never happened to me at DT. Anyone else have this?

Somebody must like you a lot.