MicrostockGroup

Recently, I decided to try a few editorial submissions.   One was rejected because the date I put in the caption was two days different than what was in the exif.  It was just a background photo, and hardly newsworthy.   (And how do they even know if I have the date set correctly in my camera.)   Another one was rejected because I put the date first, instead of the name of the city.   

Their regular rejections are bad enough, for nearly imperceptible noise, but their editorial rejections for details in captions are beyond belief.  Oh, and they don't let you edit the caption once it's in the queue, in case you notice there's something wrong with it.

Not only are they treating their contributors like dirt, but they are wasting their own resources by having their reviewers look at the same thing over and over again.  However, I will spare them the trouble, since I'm not resubmitting anything to them for the pleasure of getting 19 or 26 cents per download.

Right now, it appears to be even longer than for regular images.  It appears to be about 3 weeks or more.

You know, you'd think since they are so incredibly picky about it, they'd at least make sure they've got it right in their examples, wouldn't you?

From the Rules thread:
Location data - date data: caption descriptive content data

(Location data might be "City, County" or "City, State, Country" etc. Date data might be 'month date year" or "date month year" or in rare circumstances where the specific date isn't known just "month year".

1. Does "City, County" really mean city, county? Or more likely that's a typo meant to read "City, Country"?

2. The last example in the example link Jo Ann provided has this caption:
Las Vegas, Nevada - January 4, 2011: New ...

I don't see a county or a country mentioned there.

3. The example above the last one has this caption:
Ouidah, Benin, 8th September 2007: Voodoo ...

Where's the '-'? Is that too picky? Do you think there haven't been rejections for a missing '-'? (In case it isn't clear, 'you' is certainly not meant to refer to Jo Ann!) I know there have been.

4. The example above the previous example has this caption:
Ithaca, New York, USA - October, 23 2010: Cornell ...

This time it's a mis-placed comma. So, 3 examples in a row, and 3 errors in a row.

So I repeat, if they can't get it right, how do they expect everyone else to?

They do if it is just generic travel shots or isolated objects, which is the sort of stuff iStock is after (and where the exact date is hardly a key issue). Editorial news is a different matter, since you won't get a fair return before the picture becomes dated.

You won't get any argument from me that IS is truly hopeless at communications, including updating wiki's, setting out the rules for new procedures, etc.

However, I've uploaded a bunch of editorial images over the last week or so and to date, none of the captions has caused a rejection. I'm using Deep Meta, I'm just entering city, state, country (leaving out state where not applicable) and it seems pretty straightforward using that workflow.

I have been considering submitting Editorial. Not sure if it is a new great opportunity or just a hassle. Guess I will need to dive in and find out. Seems like lots of folks are jumping on it. Lotta Coke cans showing up.

ox

That quote wasn't actually from me, but from Jen.

As far as tiny mistakes, they do the same with keyword rejections for independents. I won't argue that they try on purpose to make certain things difficult to encourage (as they see it) submitters to be very careful.

However, rejections are a part of uploading. You either make your peace with them, warts and all, or move on and stop uploading there. Getting mad about it doesn't help your blood pressure and IS has shown itself virtually impervious to contributor complaints in this area, so it makes no sense to hope they will change.

Unpleasant perhaps, but that's just how it is

Sadly, true.
And total inconsistency makes it that much more difficult.
(I probably posted this in another thread. New readers start here)
I got loads of rejections because my date "should have been month-date-year". My first couple of appeals were overturned, but since than, hard cheddar. One I got a month-date-year rejection, and they told me it was because I had put London, England, UK, and England and the UK are the same. After I'd counted to ten, I pointed out that a) that wasn't the rejection b) England is not synonymous with 'UK' and c) I'd already had lots accepted as Glasgow, Scotland, UK and Edinburgh, Scotland, UK and one accepted as London, England, UK. No dice, had to resubmit.
The next time I got a 'should have been month-date-year' rejection, I again queried it and was told it was because I didn't have a comma between the month and the year. Again, not what the rejection said. I pointed out that I have over 140 acceptances without the comma, and that I had followed an official exemplar date format, I got a snippy note back that I should follow normal English language convention for dates. While it was true that we were taught to put a comma between the month and the year in Primary School, that was back in the days when you put your home address on a letter over at the right hand side, indenting every line, as you did with addresses on envelopes, with a comma after each line. Sometime before 1970 (I can be very, very precise about that, because that's the year I started Secretarial Studies at High School) that had gone completely. Fully left-justified letters/envelopes, no commas in the date (or address).
Icing on the cake: I had an editorial image 'pending executive' for weeks. It was accepted sans comma.
My acceptance rate has dropped over 2% since editorial started, mostly for caption problems (and some for my usual 'flat light').
Trouble is you can only Scout outright rejected images (sidenote: I doubt if I've Scouted ten images over 4+ years, and now I have my 3 Scout tickets in for this month) so you have no other right of appeal.
JoAnn's right - you just have to play their game, no matter how stupid. I'm just trying to remember to stick in that stupid comma, though as I'm fighting years of muscle memory, and you can't edit captions after submission (that pat answer about how 'just like you have to get the photo right at submission you have to get the caption right' is codswallop, of course. They could easily lock the caption at inspection) I've had to cancel and resubmit a lot of pending files.
( A propos of nothing, I see the queue shot up c1500 overnight,)

Isn't it odd that it's still the description, not the caption which shows when you hover over an editorial image? Someone posted about this in the editorial thread and got no replies that I noticed.
So essentially, you have to insert mostly the same (expanded, contracted or slightly tweaked) information three times: title (for Google), Caption (for when it's wanted) and description (for hovering over).
All this, and they won't allow buyers who really need the accuracy (caption and unedited image) to filter on editorial alone, and it seems that editorial files are right in the middle of any search.
Usual iStock lack of joined-up thinking.

That one really tickled my funny bone

I submitted one as a test yesterday.  If that works them I will upload more.  It's a bit more time consuming to prepare editorial because of the specificity required.

It's totally arbitrary.
Here's the official sticky thread with the examples:
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=300292&page=1
From this, the officially sanctioned date formats would seem to be:
February 2, 2011;  January 13, 2009;  & some more in this format (comma between date and year)
January 22nd 2011; no comma
October, 23 2010  Note, totally bizarre positioning of comma.
8th September 2007 - no comma

And in this thread:
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=310782&page=1
The same inspector gives as an example:
Alicante, Spain, 21st April 2009 (a comma, not a hyphen between Spain and the date, no comma between April and 2009)
Zat valley, High Atlas Mountains, Morocco - 26th January 2011 (no comma between the month and the date)

I've had over 140 acceptances with the date given the way I would normally give it:
1st January2011.
However I've also had several rejections, telling me to "put the date in the format month, date, year", and when I've questioned it, I've been told, by the admin who gave all the examples above, that I MUST put a comma between the month and the year.
I truly don't understand why I'm getting rejections for following an official format given by the editorial lead.

Example of rejected date - West Kilbride, Scotland, UK - 31st July 2010
Rejection reason: "++Please write the date in the required format Month/Day/Year. Thank you!++"
H*ck - where did these forward slashes come from?                              ^   ^

Same thing happened to me... I saw the "auto" date which was March 26 and wrote that down, but when I actually say the real exif data, the date was March 25... maybe that is not a "bug" but a "feature" as has been said in other forums... and now I have to wait another 10 days or so for inspection