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Author Topic: Email from SS - Regarding Repeated Words and Phrases in Image Titles  (Read 51549 times)

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« Reply #200 on: July 01, 2016, 06:58 »
+2

I also received the email message.

I'm very disappointed in such an oversimplified negative message; up to now I only received encouragement as "People love this image" and "Send more like this". I'm really not aware of any spam in the title or descriptions of the approximately fully approved (!) 4,000 photos in my portfolio. Meanwhile, I wrote that back to Shutterstock and I asked for clarification and a list of the offending photographs.

Apparently some of us are changing titles retrospectively with spam words. ('Editing them in this manner after your content has been published is not allowed'). If that is the problem, why Shutterstock does not block the editing of the titles by the submitters at all? That must be  readily possible.

I also have a solution for the current issue:
-Remove all images with spammed titles and send a message to every submitter with a complete list of the deleted images;
-Block the afterwards editing of the titles, descriptions and keywords;
-Let each submitter optionally submit the deleted pictures again and let the reviewers also accurately look at the titles and descriptions.

That is my contribution to the discussion.


Tror

« Reply #201 on: July 01, 2016, 07:09 »
+5
IMHO with this mail shutterstock is leaving - like many others before - the territory of a reliable business partner. Threaten people for no reason with account suspension is not inly rude, but unprofessional.

Even if someone has titles like this ( I don`t): they changed their policy over night and could simply run a batch script to change existing titles and then threaten people if they do things like this _after_ the policy change came into effect.

Now they changed their policy over night and just threaten everybody.

What worries me is not the title case we have now....but imagine:
Suddeny you receive a mail like " we noticed you have various similar images in your portfolio of one series. This is considered Spam. Remove them or your account gets suspended."
Would be funny, right?

Shutterstock created a crowd sourced Monster and did nothing to educate it. Now it behaves bad and they do not know how to educate it beyond batch punishment. Very poor.

« Reply #202 on: July 01, 2016, 07:11 »
+4
I received too!

What a disrespect and threat!

ALSO, THERE IS NO SIGNATURE IN THAT EMAIL!

« Reply #203 on: July 01, 2016, 07:38 »
+3
Are they just so scared off offending these factories that they'd rather send emails out threatening everyone than risk offending the people who are really the problem?

wow i think you hit the nail on the head.
many years ago it was the same thing with mp3 which started as a site to promote "only indie musicians".
years later after these indie musicians made mp3 popular and earned them a lot of money
with a commissions of 0.0004 cts per dl of each song, they suddenly got noticed by some big names
like the dude from Journey,etc.
this dude got jealous because when he joined along with other names like Tori Amos, there were still
not top of the charts, with many indie artists holding the Top 9.
this dude complained to mp3 and mp3 sent nasty emails to warn these guys about whatever they can to get these indie top charters irate. then they said, from that year on, these same indie artists who made mp3 famous , must now paid a fee if they intend to stay , because these named recording artists are now with mp3 and everyone must be treated equally ie. you made us , but we really don't give a r@t$ a$$ . we now have these named artists and we no longer need you blokes.

sounds familiar???

« Reply #204 on: July 01, 2016, 07:39 »
0
This is the problem with crowd sourcing. They can waste tens of thousands of man hours pointlessly because it isn't their man hours. We are the ones having to pay out to fruitlessly search hundreds of thousands of images just because they couldn't be bothered to have a person spend an hour or two to get the script right and specify image numbers. Shows how much they value their contributors.

yes, read my comment re music of mp3 site.

« Reply #205 on: July 01, 2016, 07:49 »
+3
I know some of you guys are worried and angry, but I don't think SS is crazy or stupid enough to ban unintentional violators.
Agreed.
The ban hammer will come down and it's going to to be brutal for hundreds of spammy contributors.
If their spam detector flags up just about every account and can't separate spammers from everyone else it is rather hard to see how they will identify the real spammers and close them down.

talking about flags, does anyone remember that bl**ding issue at dreamscomatosetime
where any blinking idiot who doesn't like your port could flag you for illegal irrelevan keywords.
and you get emails upon emails warnings about you using illegal keywords or whatever?

then you wrote them and they wrote back to say, "if you 're not commiting these offences, not to worry,just ignore these emails . " but they did nothing about those buggers who flood your port with flags.

seems like the brilliant mind who suggested that flagging with dt, is now working with ss
and thus this brilliant idea re spamming repeated words.
as if they need more people going in to clean up their keywords or whatever, after that
attack by the hacker.
seems like ss is intent on slowing down their service by f**king things up consistently
and getting contributors to be angry and complaining at the forums.
remember the mass rejection issue with pages of complaints at the forum???

as i said, there is some blockhead child of a major shareholder who must be running the company these days.

« Reply #206 on: July 01, 2016, 07:52 »
+2
Maybe we should all cool down, I am sure that someone at SS is having a hard time just now. Give them a day or two to sort this out, fire the person who sent out the rude message and then apologize to all of us. If not, we have the power to seriously  damage their business by simply opting out on all our portfolio content, it only takes a minute but will have instant impact on their revenue if enough contributors do it.

But like I said, Im sure that they will sort it out. Cool down, let them sweat for a while, have a rest, eat an orange, orange, orange and keep uploading to other sites.
« Last Edit: July 01, 2016, 07:59 by PinkBadger »

« Reply #207 on: July 01, 2016, 08:01 »
+2
An hypothesis : it's july, they hired or outsourced a new team of inspectors for summer holidays totally new and unaware to the business, and applying the rules with way too much zeal. Maybe in the admin interface of the inspectors, there is an option "mark this contributor as a spammer" and they use it abusely, which is causing the 'automatic email' we all recieved.

But this does'nt explain the files apparently deleted for some contributors portfolio...

« Reply #208 on: July 01, 2016, 08:13 »
+2
Like all of you I received the famous email, like all of you I find it unjustified. I asked to another contributor that I know if he received it to,  and he do not received anything. we have the same serious way to work but he is a major contributor with more than 50 000 images, personnaly I have 10,000 images online. I would like to know if some very large contributors had also been alerted or if the message is intended for small and medium contributors

« Reply #209 on: July 01, 2016, 08:15 »
0
An hypothesis : it's july, they hired or outsourced a new team of inspectors for summer holidays totally new and unaware to the business, and applying the rules with way too much zeal. Maybe in the admin interface of the inspectors, there is an option "mark this contributor as a spammer" and they use it abusely, which is causing the 'automatic email' we all recieved.

But this does'nt explain the files apparently deleted for some contributors portfolio...

I havent uploaded for several weeks and I still got the message. Why are these inspectors going through old stuff? I guess they started a project with some temporary staff to tidy up the portfolios. Nothing wrong with that, except that it went horribly wrong. 

« Reply #210 on: July 01, 2016, 08:31 »
+2
Going through my files, out of curiosity..

So, do I belong to jail for titles like this?

qte
Panama City, Panama - August 29, 2015: Panama city skyline is seen at night on August 29, 2015 in Panama, Central America
unqte

That's the word Panama x 4 times and I have a few of those actually :)

« Reply #211 on: July 01, 2016, 08:41 »
+3
Going through my files, out of curiosity..

So, do I belong to jail for titles like this?

qte
Panama City, Panama - August 29, 2015: Panama city skyline is seen at night on August 29, 2015 in Panama, Central America
unqte

That's the word Panama x 4 times and I have a few of those actually :)
Of course, your total portfolio should be instantly and permanently suspended since you obviously "create a poor customer experience". How dare you???

« Reply #212 on: July 01, 2016, 08:41 »
+2
Going through my files, out of curiosity..

So, do I belong to jail for titles like this?

qte
Panama City, Panama - August 29, 2015: Panama city skyline is seen at night on August 29, 2015 in Panama, Central America
unqte

That's the word Panama x 4 times and I have a few of those actually :)

This is NOT blatant spamming
Blatant spamming is like the examples they gave prange,prange,prange

This is what happens when a code is written to filter certain criteria and no sensible human checks it over

Mass confusion and anger
Usually happens when you try to do things in a quick way without thinking it through
Multi Billiondollar company run by ijits

dbvirago

« Reply #213 on: July 01, 2016, 08:43 »
+5
An hypothesis : it's july, they hired or outsourced a new team of inspectors for summer holidays totally new and unaware to the business, and applying the rules with way too much zeal. Maybe in the admin interface of the inspectors, there is an option "mark this contributor as a spammer" and they use it abusely, which is causing the 'automatic email' we all recieved.

But this does'nt explain the files apparently deleted for some contributors portfolio...

Problem is, it won't be a day or two. Someone deliberately sent this prior to a four day weekend in the states. They wanted the pot to boil over while they are on holiday.

« Reply #214 on: July 01, 2016, 08:44 »
0
Going through my files, out of curiosity..

So, do I belong to jail for titles like this?

qte
Panama City, Panama - August 29, 2015: Panama city skyline is seen at night on August 29, 2015 in Panama, Central America
unqte

That's the word Panama x 4 times and I have a few of those actually :)

This is NOT blatant spamming
Blatant spamming is like the examples they gave prange,prange,prange

This is what happens when a code is written to filter certain criteria and no sensible human checks it over

Mass confusion and anger
Usually happens when you try to do things in a quick way without thinking it through
 run by ijits

At this rate they may not be a Multi Billiondollar company for very long.

« Reply #215 on: July 01, 2016, 09:01 »
+5
dozens of images deleted and have no clue which or why. thought the email said to change titles, why delete images instantaneously without giving us time to correct. harsh

« Reply #216 on: July 01, 2016, 09:47 »
0
An hypothesis : it's july, they hired or outsourced a new team of inspectors for summer holidays totally new and unaware to the business, and applying the rules with way too much zeal. Maybe in the admin interface of the inspectors, there is an option "mark this contributor as a spammer" and they use it abusely, which is causing the 'automatic email' we all recieved.

But this does'nt explain the files apparently deleted for some contributors portfolio...

I havent uploaded for several weeks and I still got the message. Why are these inspectors going through old stuff? I guess they started a project with some temporary staff to tidy up the portfolios. Nothing wrong with that, except that it went horribly wrong.

The fact is that almost each summer, I have strange files rejections with totally unjustified reasons. But true I do upload on a regular basis (30 i/m).

As you say maybe they have hired some staff to tidy up the portfolios, but probably the same people who are doing strange rejections...


« Reply #217 on: July 01, 2016, 09:49 »
+1
Along with others I can only think of those editorial images where I have London,England in the place and then London again in the actual description sentence e.g. Fleet Street, London

Anyway, I wrote back asking for clarification. Have to say the e-mail read like it was written by some keyboard mashing oik in the lower echelons with poor communication skills....but probably came from the higher ups.

« Reply #218 on: July 01, 2016, 09:52 »
+3
With such large companies it is very naive to think that this was just a mistake in all chain of administration. What could happen? Somebody ordered automation, somebody probably outsourced his own work to unknown village using any freelancing site, somebody didn't verify, somebody approved, and finally how often you saw that companies apologize? No, they try to take a benefit even from disgusting situation. Or not the whole company, but related to the events employees or shareholders. Such people will care about current short time benefits, shaking the basement and allowing their people to come. Companies start, grow, and finally become thick and old. Treatment is not always return to a previous state, sometimes amputations happen.

Sending of such type of e-mail it is really spitting to faces of all who worked hard for this business.
Automation from one side, but the text of the e-mail was written by a human! Not surprised that it was not signed.
Somebody above mentioned how the time of sending was choosen - just another proof that in total there was no mistake.
Who is familiar with the laws regarding crowdsourced businesses - please post your comment about this e-mail and last events.
Direct offences make people angry and emotional, yes, it is known and it works.
SS have to come here with explanations, not leaving us too suspicious.

angelawaye

  • Eat, Sleep, Keyword. Repeat

« Reply #219 on: July 01, 2016, 10:09 »
+1
I can't loose my ss income so I am forced to go through all my images this holiday weekend ...
SS is down right now too which make this harder ...

H2O

    This user is banned.
« Reply #220 on: July 01, 2016, 10:10 »
+3
Somebody called Kate at Shutterstock is responsible for these emails she posted on the Announcements section, loads of people are worried about it as the views on it are 36k+

THP Creative

  • THP Creative

« Reply #221 on: July 01, 2016, 10:12 »
+2
Shutterstock is down, and according to one site, has been down for 2.5 hours

Thats a long time to be down without warning, and nothing I can see on their twitter account?

Related to this image spamming fiasco?

« Reply #222 on: July 01, 2016, 10:15 »
0
C r a p I cant even log in the the contributor side.  If all I get is two weeks and the site is down how on earth do they expect us to fix our illegal, horrible, intentional phantom spammy titles?

H2O

    This user is banned.
« Reply #223 on: July 01, 2016, 10:16 »
+2
Perhaps they have an outage caused by the massive amount of contributors accessing the site to find out what is going on.

Maybe they emailed every contributor with this Repeating word email

« Reply #224 on: July 01, 2016, 10:21 »
+1
Tried to log in this morning and all I get is a page with this text,

"Something went wrong"

Well, they are right about that.


 

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