MicrostockGroup

Does anyone know if IS assigns value ratings to individual contributors other than what comes with Exclusive status (which may just be an image rating).

For instance, if someone is selling many images and maxing out their uploads, will the system assign that contributor preferential algorithms in regards to file placement, faster inspections, foot massage etc?

Or are all contributors treated the same according to status?

I *think* 'monthly uploads' is a pretty important factor on iStock.When i stopped uploading on istock after sept '10 my sales dropped like a stone to about 1/4th of what they were, and sales picked up remarkably when i started uploading again, despite the new images not selling.
This is probably also one of the reasons why our dear 'Ed' is doing so well, having constant uploads .
(being arteficially protected by keeping all inhouse competition away from Edstock's playing field helps too i guess)

Exactely! *IF* as i suspect monthly uploads plays a decent role in best match ranking 'they' have a big advantage as they're not limited by the upload limits and have stellar upload numbers each month, resulting in this high best match ranking.

(i think its only part of it though... im sure there are other artificial ways to get the wholly owned and thus most profitable content in front of the best match)

It's only speculation of course, but from what i experienced (with a non-exclusive port) it really looked like its a factor playing along.
I dont know the upload limits for exclusives, if they're pretty limiting, like the non-exclusives are, it doesnt matter whether you're a team or not because of the constant backlog of images waiting for new slots to open. If they arent limiting and are more than one person could fill up weekly it indeed wouldnt make sense profit-wise for istock (one could argue it does make sense to reward hard working, constant uploading people or teams more, but we all know PROFIT is the one and only bottomline there nowadays)

You have more faith in the iS programmers than I do   

When an inspector approves a file, the also assign a "rating" from 1 to 5 to the file (not to be mixed up with the regular "user rating" which don't affect anything).
This rating has a great affect on best match placement.

I've always had the upmost respect for iStock inspectors, they are the hardest working, highest skilled and nicest bunch of people you could ever want to meet 

inspectors can still and do give initial rating, but I don't think they have anything to do with best match placement.

I don't believe for a moment that that's true, but I suspect you were just being facetious as to any attempt to 'guess' the best match., but forgot the smiley. 
My evidence for that is thinking it's wrong is one of my pics which was on the top line of a particular search last week is now 411 for the same search.
My evidence for thinking there's a 'person' weighting is slightly difficult without calling someone out, but for example there is a high diamond contributor whose usual work is the general high key studio and isolation work, which sells very well. He happened to go on safari, and although his safari files (which are large series of near-identicals, all accepted) have low sales, they have been consistently appearing above other people with much higher 'safari' (i.e. better sales in the relevant searches) sales but lower 'overall' sales - through all the best match iterations of the last eighteen months, even the recent crazy bouncings.

Again, several years ago there was a thread about a new best match. Several people who had been doing OK suddenly found themselves not doing so well. "Bitter" came on the forum to calm things down. His comment to one contributor was along the lines of "We'll see what we can do about that" I've often wondered whether they can weight individual results, but ultimately that would kill sales of new files from new contributors. . .

Vetta, since the original ingestion which had different parameters, isn't about 'best', it's about a style, often dark, sepia, vignetted and/or with flare or other lighting that would normally be rejected.

True - its almost like a consolation prize.

One of the nice things about inspections at IS is that they sometimes do go out of their way to include personalised messages, and you get some clues like this that the whole thing isn't just robotic.

Incorrect

A file given an initial 5 rating does not automatically go into Vetta, it does go for Vetta editor review but it can still be rejected for Vetta