MicrostockGroup

I see that iStock's bizarre CV system continues to grow. The word "Orange" now produces: colour orange, fruit orange, Orange City (Texas), Orange City (California) and Orange (France Telecom).

This limitation makes it difficult for people photographing Orange, Connecticut, or Orange, New South Wales, to place their photos in appropriate categories, since they are not included, so presumably these two towns will eventually be added to the list, too.

But what is the logic of this? For the CV to work properly, eventually every single geographical place-name in the world has to be added to it, just as every single definition of every noun needs to be included.

Half the tags now have a drop-down menus offering you either a random and incomplete scattering of options which despite its inadequacy is often an absurdly long list.  The keyword "sauce (food)" for example, lists about 35 sauces from the bizarre (vodka sauce) to the ordinary (bechamel), but no White Sauce or Supreme Sauce or Bercy or Bordelaise or  ... a complete list would probably run to thousands of sauces, certainly hundreds.

Once it is complete (if ever ... but it is an impossible time-wasting task) what it will have achieved will be the replication of the system it was meant to replace, where people just typed whatever keywords they liked and those words were found in the search.

Meanwhile, those who ticked "Orange, colour" because "Orange City, California" used not to be available, will continue to spam the colour search while buyers who want their images will now be directed away from them to the severely limited number of files that have the Orange, CA, tag because they have only just been uploaded.

What's more, they seem to slide these CA changes through on the quiet, so even if people wanted to re-keyword they will only find out by accident when a new option appears.

How long is it going to take Getty to realise just how stupid its system is?

I would imagine that contributors who care about their images being found in the search would care...

It's also highly subjective when it comes to images illustrating a concept.  I had an extended e-mail discussion regarding a request to expand on the range of options for disambiguation on a word based on my experience from other sites where you can see what word or words were used to search for the image.  It was ultimately denied and consequently those photos are downloaded much less often at IS. 

There are no terms for minke whale, only dwarf minke whale. Usually I guess most buyers don't care, but I had a big problem with it when we uploaded some pictures of whale beaf ready for cooking. The minke whale population is legally hunted in some areas of the world, the dwarf minke is totally illegal to hunt.

We once prosessed and uploaded one picture to Istock just because of the weird results in the CV: http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=234802&page=1

I do think something should be done though.  I live in Richmond, VA and to find that keyword in the search is a pain.  The drop down menu only shows 8 options so by the time I type "richmond" the list only shows a few possible options none of them the city of richmond virginia.  Instead there is the option of the "richmond spiders" a college sports team from this city, "richmond coliseum" which may be from here and the "richmond riverdogs" which was a hockey team from this city that hasn't existed for 5 years.  In order to get my city, the capital of the state, I have to type richmond space hyphen "richmond -" which a buyer who is not familiar with the site would never do.  At least they should order the options by popularity, there are no images for any of these keywords in the search, what they are doing there clogging it up I have no idea. 

The problem is not the cv, it's that the programmers are not competent enough to add an "other" option where current options do not apply.

This is a very recent development. I happened to just notice it today with another city name. Apparently all city names are being transitioned to this format. I have no idea why.

I think the idea of a CV is a very good one, but the implementation and compliance has been less than stellar.

I requested the inclusion of Indian - as in motorcycle. Indian is a famous/classic US brand of motorcycle. Nothing to do with India the country.

"Other" doesn't seem to be necessary because I can (and normally do) type "richmond" in and wait for the results then go to the check box on the results page to narrow it, the CV would work better if it listed "richmond" by results:
richmond - virginia (900+)
richmond park (468)
richmond tigers (0)
richmond riverdogs (0)
richmond spiders (0)

Why not?

So it converts the search terms as well? For example if a buyer is looking for geek, it'll find photos tagged only with nerd, or headache as migraine?

The system was so complicated, so tedious, and so limiting, that to be honest it's the main reason I stopped submitting to IS.  My shots are mostly of unusual objects, and the CV just seemed like a filter intended to prevent people from finding them.  

There are two ways to look at microstock:  it can be profitable, or it can be fun, both are ok.  But at IS it's neither.

Yes, exactly so. That's the main purpose (and benefit -- there has to be a benefit!) of the CV.

All you have to do is try it yourself and see. Your photos should be found.