reviews

anonymous

« on: January 18, 2008, 12:11 »

#link

Is Zymmetrical still alive? 2 months and 2 days since I uploaded 10 images to give it a try. 5 were reviewed withing the first week while the other 5 have not been touched. I assume if there is no word in a couple of days, I'll just (try to) pull my images and write it off as another micro-bust.


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ZymmMan

« Reply #1 on: January 18, 2008, 13:17 »

#link

Dear anonymous,

Zymmetrical is very well alive and in great shape. We have successful upgraded our servers without a glitch, changed our interface and resolved most of the back end issues we had. We also introduced a new search engine that enhances the relevancy of the result and we are hard at work building tools for an ingenious "intelligent search". We have much, much more on our plate. Keith could tell you more about this.
On the submission side, we have been hard at work keeping up with the increasing flow of submissions. Our approach is two fold :
- Images with keywords have priority.
- We spend more time accepting than refusing: That is, we believe it is more important to make images available as quickly as possible than sending the refused one back.Since we explain in long human terms the reasons for our refusals, they can take more time to process than accepted images. Thus, in general, if an image has not been approved, it is probably in the queue to be refused with a detailed explanation.
I cannot give a status on your images as I do not know who you are but if you contact me directly, I will be more than happy to let you know. Keith and I are available almost around the clock to answer any and all questions you might have about any aspect of what we do. Our members feedback is precious to us and we look forward to discussing any issues you might have. We have absolutely nothing to hide.
I hope this helps and let us know.

best

Paul M.


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sharpshot

« Reply #2 on: January 18, 2008, 14:01 »

#link

I still have 41 waiting for approval, some since mid November. I wont upload any more until they have been reviewed.

http://www.zymmetrical.com/artists/artist-profile/uid/50138/


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anonymous

« Reply #3 on: January 18, 2008, 14:12 »

#link

Quote from: ZymmMan on January 18, 2008, 13:17

On the submission side, we have been hard at work keeping up with the increasing flow of submissions. Our approach is two fold :
- Images with keywords have priority.

Perhaps this is the issue. I do not know how / where to add keywords. I see a little "pencil" icon out beside each image, but when I click it, nothing happens. If this is not the place to keyword, where / how do I do it?

Thx


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zymmetricaldotcom

« Reply #4 on: January 18, 2008, 15:05 »

#link

Quote from: sharpshot on January 18, 2008, 14:01

I still have 41 waiting for approval, some since mid November. I wont upload any more until they have been reviewed.

http://www.zymmetrical.com/artists/artist-profile/uid/50138/

This is fair enough, and a sensible approach to protect your work, however I would hate to see anyone hesitate in participating, based on benchmarking us against other agencies who are in full "production" mode. Paul is the leader of our editorial strategy, and has deliberately set us on a course away from mass-approvals - we are exploring a browsing-based buyer experience as well as a search-based one. While there are tens of thousands of submissions in the queue, we are actively choosing a good mix of new submissions to add daily, instead of mass approvals from the same artists portfolio.

That being said, if you really are eager to fast-track your approvals, and you have a great portfolio (such as yours), we will do our best to get your really overdue ones online sooner than later.


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zymmetricaldotcom

« Reply #5 on: January 18, 2008, 15:14 »

#link

Quote from: anonymous on January 18, 2008, 14:12

Quote from: ZymmMan on January 18, 2008, 13:17

On the submission side, we have been hard at work keeping up with the increasing flow of submissions. Our approach is two fold :
- Images with keywords have priority.

For an explanation of our keywording setup, please see: http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?topic=3077.msg27796#msg27796

For approved, online files, you may add up to 20 additional keywords by clicking 'Update Tags' on www.zymmetrical.com/account/artmanager/. Please note that this system is due for a major update soon, we are not really happy with the ease of use or the thesaurus function in there currently.

Thanks


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ZymmMan

« Reply #6 on: January 18, 2008, 15:46 »

#link

Dear sharpshot,

We ask our editing team to give everyone a chance to be approved so we do not process whole portfolios at once but rather a little of each in parallel. This way image buyers have a variation of style and subject to pick from and no one chances of being approved is delayed because a huge portfolio was just submitted the day before.
You have great images which are also very well captioned on upload so you should not wait much longer before seeing everything approved.
thanks for the heads up

cheers

Paul M


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anonymous

« Reply #7 on: January 18, 2008, 16:33 »

#link

Quote from: zymmetricaldotcom on January 18, 2008, 15:14

Quote from: anonymous on January 18, 2008, 14:12

Quote from: ZymmMan on January 18, 2008, 13:17

On the submission side, we have been hard at work keeping up with the increasing flow of submissions. Our approach is two fold :
- Images with keywords have priority.

So basically, if there are no tags "IN" the photo, you guys have to do them first...maybe THIS is why there is a significant backlog. Perhaps it would be more efficient to let the photographers do this. The current system requires BOTH parties to do it. If Zymmetrical is ever going to compete in the market, they're going to have to seriously streamline the upload/tag/ approval process. I like your "hands on" approach and respect most of your concepts, but at current rate of approvals, it will be 7 - 10 years before anyone could have a portfolio of 200 - 300 images...which means a painfully long time before anyone makes ANY money...which increases the liklihood of the site not succeeding.


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madelaide

Premium Member

« Reply #8 on: January 18, 2008, 16:45 »

#link

I believe most members, at least those who have been in the photo stock sites for a while, have keywords embedded in their images already, so why not just use them? I don't have the time nor the patience to go back on each submission and enter keywords again.

Regards,
Adelaide


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sharpshot

« Reply #9 on: January 18, 2008, 16:54 »

#link

Thanks for the replies from the Zymmetrical team it is good to know that you are getting around to reviewing the rest of my uploads. I will start uploading more soon.


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ZymmMan

« Reply #10 on: January 18, 2008, 20:41 »

#link

we receive a mix of already keyworded images, poorly keyworded images and images with absolutely no keywords. We review them in that order. We are very hands on for now, but have the blueprints for a semi automated approval system that will make the rate go sky high without having millions of editors. It will not require any additional work from the photographers either. That is all I can say for now.
Since we are a midstock agency, allowing members to choose their pricing from $3 to $100, we need to be extra careful about the quality of the content. That includes the quality of the keywording as well as the composition, colors, size and relevance of the images.
Do not forget that at the same time, we are implementing features that make the search and retrieval experience much easier for the buyers. You might not see them, unless if you purchase images, but they are there. And we use the same approach as with contributors, we listen to them, their needs and demands. We do not want to be the fastest to the market without being the best.

Have great week end !!!

Paul M


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rosta

« Reply #11 on: January 18, 2008, 21:06 »

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i must admit to not thinking when I began uploading images. I have since noted that images I uploaded without keywords have keywords that are incorrect for that image. An example is poison ivy being called a tree without reference to poison ivy and a dulcimer being called a guitar. I know that I need to go back and correct these errors, BUt, should I delete my pending images and reupload tyhem with the keywords embedded?
rosta


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zymmetricaldotcom

« Reply #12 on: January 19, 2008, 07:11 »

#link

Rosta, we do the first 18 keywords (plus the 2 extra keywords that define pic orientation and color vs B&W). If there are keywords already embedded in the photos metadata on submission, we will (selectively) use the keywords there.

We want to strike a balance between professional keywording by a trained staff of editors, and the kind of unique knowledge that the photographers bring by keywording their photos. So we do our best to accommodate any existing embedded keywords, while still trying to maintain a core keywording strategy.

For example, while not a professional photo editor, this is my business so I feel pretty competent at the task - I for one would not have know the difference between a 'dulcimer' and a 'guitar'. So, this is why we also allow the artist to add the extra 20 keywords after approval through the web interface in the Art Manager. If you add keywords there, they are moved to the beginning of the set of keywords displayed on the site, and are accordingly given higher search status.

So.. in a nutshell.. we generally don't discard really juicy keywords that obviously show a local, specific knowledge of the subject. The best way to ensure your knowledge is uploaded along with the photo is to embed IPTC keywords. Second best would be to manually add keywords through the Art Manager, after approval.


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sharpshot

« Reply #13 on: January 19, 2008, 07:59 »

#link

Something I think is worth mentioning. I have my monitor set to 1064x768 and using firefox on XP the Zymmetrical website doesn't fit on my screen. I have to scroll to the right to see the right side of the page.


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zymmetricaldotcom

« Reply #14 on: January 19, 2008, 09:39 »

#link

Quote from: sharpshot on January 19, 2008, 07:59

1064x768, while by far the most common resolution of general web users, is pretty small and unusual for most photo producers, editors, and buyers. Can you tell me what the size of your screen is in inches?


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sharpshot

« Reply #15 on: January 19, 2008, 10:01 »

#link

It is a 17 inch screen. Looks like I need a bigger one


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zymmetricaldotcom

« Reply #16 on: January 20, 2008, 09:15 »

#link

Well we don't want to exclude anyone from viewing the site properly. I'll see what can be done about making the site more fluid.

In an ideal world, it would be a 100% fluid design, all CSS-based, but unfortunately there's still too many compromises that have to be made to get an ecommerce site useable. When you make the content all free-floating, unless it's done very carefully, you can end up paradoxically alienating people with large monitors, as they will get annoyed at all the blank spaces between content areas.

We will continue using table-based site design, at least until Zymm 2.0. Wink


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madelaide

Premium Member

« Reply #17 on: January 20, 2008, 15:52 »

#link

Quote from: zymmetricaldotcom on January 20, 2008, 09:15

We will continue using table-based site design, at least until Zymm 2.0. Wink

I'm not an expert in HTML coding, but for what I know we can make tables varying with the screen, using % for the width and a transparent GIF as a spacer to force a minimum width or height when desired. Just a thought.

The other day I downloaded an Excel file from ASME website and wasn't able to see the tabs. It was because my screen at work is set to 1064x768 (I think) and the person who made the spreadsheet, surely using a higher definition, fixed the window view and protected the file.

Regards,
Adelaide


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zymmetricaldotcom

« Reply #18 on: January 21, 2008, 14:50 »

#link

Well it's all pretty dreary really, there's still no universally accepted standardization on the web and things are still a mess. Without going all geek, yes you can set percentages on HTML tables, but your whole design is still 'dumb' - if you have 4 cells in table row on a 30 inch screen, with each cell set to 25% width, the content will naturally end up more spread out than on a 15" macbook screen.

Over the last few years I personally have made great gains as a designer and coder, in separating design from content. CSS is the answer for this in web design right now, with sites like http://csszengarden.com/ showcasing best practices. Unfortunately not everything can be created from scratch, sometimes off-the-shelf commercial software becomes part of the operation due to business needs. For example, our message forum on Zymmetrical is a 3rd party app- why would we spend months programming a stable message system, when someone has already done it? So some areas like that are not in complete control when it comes to being absolutely compliant with the latest trends in web design.

When there's some breathing room, another layout rework is always possible. I often tell Paul 'Anything is possible', it just has to fit into a scope of business value. If enough people tell us the layout is not fitting their screen, we will adapt.


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madelaide

Premium Member

« Reply #19 on: January 21, 2008, 17:47 »

#link

If it something easy to implement, I think you should go this way. The broader the audience you can visually satisfy the better. One of the no-nos in webdesign to me is the "this site is optimized for resolution X and browser Y".

Regards,
Adelaide


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