This is in addition to the persistent failure warning message and the too many similar images. One guy had is uploading privileges removed because he mashes the shutter button and shoots bursts of famous people, then from what I saw, uploads 44 of the same basic shot. 

Here's what's new:

In order for us to continue to offer this service and to speed up QC waiting times we've made some changes to the way our QC queue works.

    * Submissions are no longer processed in strict chronological order, instead they are prioritised by your QC rank which is derived from your QC history. Contributors who have a good QC history will see their work QC'd sooner.

    * A contributor with a poor QC history will see the time spent waiting for submissions to be QC'd increase from an average of 37 hours to a possible 7 working days. We are introducing this as an incentive for contributors to address any QC issues they might have, rather than regularly submitting sub-standard images which fail QC.

    * Another major factor which influenced this decision is that it is both time consuming and non-cost effective as a business to look at submissions which do not make it on to the site and that hold-up the good quality submissions we get from a vast majority of our contributors.

http://www.alamy.com/Blog/contributor/archive/2009/07/07/4769.aspx

Personally my QC times have always been 2-5 days so I don't have any complaints. Since I have one rejection is 1200 files, I don't really worry too much about this effecting me.  However if I suddenly see that I upload files and they are always passing in one or two days, I'm going to be happier. Many of my photos have a timely nature which may affect sales if they are active in less time.

I think Alamy should look into one's sales records, too. What's good if one submits many technically passable images which have no marketable values??

 

Alamy is so harmless when it comes to approvals.

Once you get the hang at the Micros I don't understand how you can get rejections at Alamy.

I think it's always good to weed out contributors that don't really contribute but clog up the system.

Those people should just leave it to the photographers who take it seriously.

Alamy does not sell many images as often as you get in micro, but anyone who has successfully contributed to them will tell you it's not often you get rejected.
So, when I hear this cleanup implemented by Alamy, I applaud them. You really have to be bad (example: upsizing and losing clarity and definition, over processing to make up for the bad upsized image,etc) to repeatedly fail QC.

Like many here, I did not get notice of this . My upload percentage has been consistently 100% and reviewed promptly by Alamy standards. I think it will be the best for all of us.

I totally agree. It should really be straight forward getting good acceptance rates into Alamy.

I thought they do not inspect whole batch. If somebody uploads batch of 3000 images that are identical it would be rejected after inspecting few of them. It is because they reject whole batch if one image is wrong I am uploading only 4 at once. More over I was told not to upload more than one batch in the same day cause everything with the same date is treated as one. It should not cost them more to inspect 1 or 100 images in batch.

This has always been the rule, and it's not by day, it's "one fail, all fail" for everything waiting in QC. So if you upload on Friday, then Monday and some more on Wed. and the first batch finally gets reviewed on Thursday, and one photo fails, all pending batches will fail.

The idea is if you can't edit yourself, and don't know what a good photo looks like, they aren't going to spend time going through each image and doing it for you. They spot check. If one fails they assume that others will fail. Click, done, they move on to someone else's photos. This isn't grade school and people are supposed to be professional photographers. If someone can't produce a quality image and know what they are doing, Alamy isn't going to baby them.

Now something new, besides repeated failures potentially getting a warning or vacation, you will also be moved back in the review process so they can streamline work from people who know how to evaluate their own submissions before they upload. Alamy is also blocking accounts with too many similar images that waste server space.

I've submitted a single photo, because I wasn't sure if it would pass. That way I know it's going to get looked at. My largest single group upload was over 200 photos in one batch. Usually I keep it around 40 or 50. Yes I did have one photo fail last year. I hope that doesn't go poorly on my rating against the other 54 batches and 1200 photos I've submitted to Alamy and had accepted?  

The link in the first message is to the Alamy Blog - http://www.alamy.com/blog/contributor/default.aspx - where they make announcements to contributors. It's all there for everyone to read.

"You can send up to five similar frames although it�s recommended to send in one or two at the most."

Here's the dunce who had his account locked and he wanted to know if he should open another Alamy account. This is an example of one of his shoots.    Bad enough that it's Gene Simmons!    http://tinyurl.com/llr3px  They should have been rejected for lighting in the first place.

Frankly for those who assume that only bad photos will fail Alamy's inspections, your assumption is one-sided.

There are different reasons why a photo fails.

Alamy's traditional strength is in the editorial market which need you to capture the moment. For photojournalistic photos, the standards cannot be the same as the commercial RF because you have to go with the available light. However after the introduction of the commercial RF collection, the standard is tightened and some inspectors demand almost the same perfection as the commercial RFs. Good or bad? It is good because Alamy will look more clean and edited, it is especially important if it wants to attract commercial RF buyers. Bad because it will miss some good and marketable contents for the editorial buyers.

You can pass inspection very easily if you stick with the optimal lights and conventional technical standards to maintain the perfect sharpness and so on. You can also achieve that easily in a studio or controlled environment. If you have a few years experience with the micros, you know how to achieve that.

However if you challenge the convention and try to experiment the new frontier, you must test and fail to know what your limits are, or the agency's limits. So it's not that a good photographer will never fail any inspections, I'd rather suggest that a timid photographer are not likely to fail the inspections. Because they do everything by the book. Then evolution will not likely happen. We need changes and mutations.

I believe Alamy does pay attention to contents now. I uploaded a batch last week and one failed and the rest passed. Why didn't they fail the whole batch? I assume Alamy liked the contents and didn't want to threw the baby out with the bath water. After that one failure, you'd assume that my following batches will get penalized? No, all my subsequent batches passed within 24 hours.

Another issue I'd like to raise again. I feel uncomfortable about this photographic culture where some photographers tend to jump at other photographers with judgemental comments. Remember we are all good at somethings and can improve in others. I am not targeting at anyone. Does it happen?

The competition is tough, but the cream will always rise to the top. It's better we pay attention to improve our own work and be sympathetic and helpful to our colleagues. It will make the working environment better for everyone.