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Author Topic: Tattletell - or not?  (Read 9145 times)

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« on: March 14, 2009, 17:42 »
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I usually do a couple of searches when I plan to upload new photos. To check if the subject is well covered, if it's selling, and if there are any keywords I've forgotten. And every time I get a lot of pictures that are completely off topic.

I'm sure most of you've seen the same thing. What do you do? Click the report-button, leave a message for the photog, or move on and forget about the whole thing?


« Reply #1 on: March 14, 2009, 17:51 »
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It's quick and easy to click on the button so if it is blatant spamming rather than just a stretch of imagination then that is what I do.

vonkara

« Reply #2 on: March 14, 2009, 17:53 »
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I usually get fair result at Dreamstime because the search is relevent by title and description. If there's bad results it have to be something with the images title I guess. What was your search terms?

« Reply #3 on: March 14, 2009, 18:13 »
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I usually sort by descending downloads. But try e.g. "peony isolated white". The first hits are good, and then you get a bunch of sunflowers.
Or "anthracite". That can either be a dark grey color, or high quality coal. I don't see how timber, or pressed brown coal fits into that keyword?

vonkara

« Reply #4 on: March 14, 2009, 18:58 »
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Ah ok you sort by downloads. I guess you won't see this in the relevence order, but it's true then that sorted by downloads, some weird results could came up. Still those files have bad keywords. Report them as you will, but I think that one or two bad keywords could be only a "copy and paste" mistake, when they batch upload.

Sorting by downloads will push all those mistakes up, without affecting the more common way to search. But I agree to report when it's necessary

« Reply #5 on: March 14, 2009, 20:39 »
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I stay the heck away from reporting spam.  For example, I have a photo of a bull elk.  No there is no bull (as a farm animal) in the photo but it is technically a bull elk, ask any hunter and they will say "I shot a (male) bull elk" or "I shot an (female) elk cow".  It is wrong though when you do a search for elk and you bring up moose or muledeer.   But I think that I would give the city slicker the benefit of the doubt, and guess that it is an honest mistake.  Also, you don't know why the keywords are there, they may be a required word for some esotaric reasoning.  If you feel there is a problem, you should inform the photographer before reporting it to the agency.   You can destroy their ranking, but I am sure that is the intention of many who report bad keywords. 

WarrenPrice

« Reply #6 on: March 14, 2009, 21:20 »
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I'm sort of in the corner with Pixart on this one.  I'm not so sure one can know what the photographer is thinking.  Let the buyers sort it out.  If there is a problem ... a lot of problems ... with a contributor, it will eventually catchup with them.

Also, it's good to see that I am doing things the same way more experienced contributors do.  I like to search first too ... sometimes even before going to the trouble of setting up an idea.   :-X

tan510jomast

« Reply #7 on: March 14, 2009, 21:53 »
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that makes 3 of us. i am with Pixart on this tattletale no no.
you really don't know until you asked the photographer. and yes again on Pixart's final point,  "You can destroy their ranking, but I am sure that is the intention of many who report bad keywords. "
why else would another contributor be looking at someone else's work. isn't your time better spent creating more images of your own? 
like the old movie snide remark, "who died and made you the thought police?"
so, best to let it be, and avoid the bad karma  ;)

« Reply #8 on: March 14, 2009, 21:59 »
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I can only say that as a buyer I HATE SPAM because it is a massive waste of my time and feels like cheating to me. As sellers I would be concerned about it too because I can tell you I keep a list of submitters I refuse to purchase from on principle because they spam their keywords. And we buy a lot of photos everyday.

m@m

« Reply #9 on: March 14, 2009, 22:31 »
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I'm with you hoi ha 100%, if I'm looking for a photo of a cow, that's what I spec to find in my search as a buyer...people that think they're being smart by keyword spam, have not stopped to think that all they're doing is driving the buyer away from the site with a very bad impression, not only of the site, but of the smart ass desperate photographer that's trying to push a photo on the buyer that he/she is not looking for...I can see this happened once, as someone mention before, because keywords sometimes can give you the wrong lead unintentionally, but the second time I do see it, I'll report . out of the cheater...if your photos have the quality that are supposed to have you have no need to resort to those dirty options just to make a buck...mind you, I'm a contributor as well as an EVERYDAY BUYER for my freelance business as an art director and Sr. Graphic Designer for over 25 years...I would NOT! buy anything from any photographer that's trying to be a smart ass and not a good photographer. And by reporting it, by no means, my intentions are to take away their precious rank ( I could not care less about that), it's just wrong to destroy everyone else's chance to make a decent sale, at least not with low class tactics like spam:-*
« Last Edit: March 14, 2009, 22:46 by m@m »

« Reply #10 on: March 14, 2009, 22:56 »
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I can only say that as a buyer I HATE SPAM because it is a massive waste of my time and feels like cheating to me.

This could all be solved easily by limiting the number of allowed keywords per image to 15 or so. In a more relaxed mode, one could add more keywords but the ones beyond 15 would just be marginally relevant in the search. I defy anybody to claim she/he needs more than 15 keywords per image. Any girl is "sexy, attractive, young, female" right? It's implicated in the term "girl". Nobody submits images of dull and unattractive "girls".

I have some shots of an isolated stethoscope in the pipeline and I'm going to try an experiment with just 3 keywords, which are stethoscope, isolated, medical. Any other keyword would be "spam". I totally disagree with Keith from Zymmetrical who is OK with the use of "doctor" in an isolated stethoscope image with nobody (specifically not a doctor) on it.

Blatant spam is very easy to identify but there are many cases where the thin red line becomes a large gray area. I remember having a long discussion with BigStock about my waterfalls. Searching on "waterfall", there was a series of images at the top that had an isolated champaign glass with pouring liquid in it. Obviously, the tag "waterfall" was somewhere in the meta. You could eliminate these gray cases by limiting the (relevant) keywords to the first 10 or 15.
« Last Edit: March 14, 2009, 23:22 by FlemishDreams »

tan510jomast

« Reply #11 on: March 14, 2009, 23:04 »
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FlemishD, doesn't Fotolia limit it to 7 keywords ?
and going with what you said about girl.. attractive... and NUDE ! that's a favourite one. even for not so nude ones. ;)
« Last Edit: March 14, 2009, 23:07 by tan510jomast »

« Reply #12 on: March 14, 2009, 23:12 »
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I'm with you hoi ha 100%, if I'm looking for a photo of a cow, that's what I spec to find in my search as a buyer..

Spam works as a detracting and flagging factor. If spam (as all blatant commercials we have to endure in daily life) didn't work, nobody would use it.

On DT I observed that 50% of my images is downloaded without any relevant search terms. That means buyers rely heavily on visual search and start to browse around till some image catches their eyes as totally fit to what they need. Fitting your needs and what you want is not to objectivate in keywords totally. Seeing still is believing and you might end up (at least I did sometimes) with an image you weren't looking for in the first place.

We all experience this phenomenon when setting off to a journey to a mall to look for a tripod and we came home with this totally cool PC gadget. Window shopping, getting detracted, browsing and finding something cool and neat we weren't looking for in the first place is one of the rules of shopping. It's even true in commodity shopping. Who claims going out to the food supermarket and sticking 100% to his shopping list?

« Reply #13 on: March 14, 2009, 23:18 »
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FlemishD, doesn't Fotolia limit it to 7 keywords ? and going with what you said about girl.. attractive... and NUDE ! that's a favourite one. even for not so nude ones. ;)

I have some images online with mostly skin visible. They get huge view counts but no sales. That's it. They are just useless for commercial stock.

Fotolia always has been said to value the first 7 keywords higher. Some posters here tested that assumption recently and they found out it isn't true. Maybe they abolished that feature in one of their remakes or it has been an urban legend all the time. Maybe Matt could tell...

m@m

« Reply #14 on: March 15, 2009, 00:14 »
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Flemish, I can understand your point, and your very correct, but I think that when you have the time to visually go shopping, is fine to get out of your shopping list and buy something that was not your intention to buy in the first place (just because it caught your eye) I've done it a million times myself, but when you're on a deadline for a project, I find nothing more frustrating and aggravating that having to go thru 5+ pages of unrelated products (pictures) before you can actually get to what you're looking for...I don't know but, I find, something very wrong betwen something that catches my eye, to feel like I'm being lure or lead into something I'm not looking for or want...sorry guy but I still find that to be dirty tactics...
« Last Edit: March 15, 2009, 00:31 by m@m »

« Reply #15 on: March 15, 2009, 01:57 »
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Flemish, I can understand your point, and your very correct, but I think that when you have the time to visually go shopping, is fine to get out of your shopping list and buy something that was not your intention to buy in the first place (just because it caught your eye) I've done it a million times myself, but when you're on a deadline for a project, I find nothing more frustrating and aggravating that having to go thru 5+ pages of unrelated products (pictures) before you can actually get to what you're looking for...

It's equally aggravating for a contributor to see his images burried under piles of irrelevant ones, but I'm not so sure that all those are blatant keyword spammers. The blatant ones are obvious (they even add irrelevant keywords after the picture comes online, avoiding any reviewer scrutiny), but there is a large gray area of conceptual and related keywords that spoil the searches. How strict should one be in keywording? Is it spam for instance when you add "meteorology" to a sunset with a very flamboyant cloudscape?

The simple reason for search engines fooling up is that all tags are valued with the same weight in a search. In databases of over 5M images, that's heading for disaster by design. The vast majority of contributors are honest keyworders but they might have different degrees of relaxedness about conceptual and related keywords. A fundamental solution would be only to allow like 10-15 keywords, or to have a limited class of essential keywords and an additional class. As it is now, it's just too easy to blame contributors for spamming when the sites (except iStock) don't make any effort to differentiate between keywords as to relevancy.

vonkara

« Reply #16 on: March 15, 2009, 08:46 »
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I guess without having the Istock CV, the Alamy example is great. Can only add 50 charachters for the best relevent words and then sub keywords. But there's so many ways to avoid spam. Like the Dreamstime title and description method

WarrenPrice

« Reply #17 on: March 15, 2009, 10:25 »
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Do you really think spam is intentional?  I wonder if searching is an exact science?  I was thinking about how "inaccurate" the English language can be. 

Range ... range rover, open country, a cooking stove, wander,
Eye ... a human organ, eye on a cooking stove, storm, center, to look, to consider

No need in making a long list.  It is difficult to use a search term with a very specific meaning.  Maybe limiting the number would help, but don't the sites themselves encourage extensive keywording?


tan510jomast

« Reply #18 on: March 15, 2009, 16:54 »
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I guess without having the Istock CV, the Alamy example is great. Can only add 50 charachters for the best relevent words and then sub keywords. But there's so many ways to avoid spam. Like the Dreamstime title and description method

Alamy maybe, but last time i looked IStock is not "godly" either.
try looking for "necktie" at Istock and see what you get. rabbis, business people, objects, ...
for the first few pages. no necktie as in isolated . not until quite a few pages.

RT


« Reply #19 on: March 15, 2009, 18:31 »
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Alamy maybe, but last time i looked IStock is not "godly" either.
try looking for "necktie" at Istock and see what you get. rabbis, business people, objects, ...
for the first few pages. no necktie as in isolated . not until quite a few pages.

OK I did, and the first five pages (I stopped after 5) were absolutely fine, every single images featured a necktie in the image somewhere, if however I had wanted an image of just a necktie I would have searched for 'necktie AND isolated AND single' which is how search engines are meant to work. Your example is not spamming, many people may want a photo of a businessman wearing a suit and necktie and as such these images are correctly keyworded. Using the word 'NOT' also works on many search engines for example 'businessman NOT necktie'.



m@m

« Reply #20 on: March 15, 2009, 20:48 »
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Alamy maybe, but last time i looked IStock is not "godly" either.
try looking for "necktie" at Istock and see what you get. rabbis, business people, objects, ...
for the first few pages. no necktie as in isolated . not until quite a few pages.

[/quote]

An oldtimer once told me "If you have nothing productive to say, say nothing"
 ::)
« Last Edit: March 15, 2009, 20:52 by m@m »

tan510jomast

« Reply #21 on: March 15, 2009, 21:01 »
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An oldtimer once told me "If you have nothing productive to say, say nothing"
 ::)

::)

tan510jomast

« Reply #22 on: March 15, 2009, 21:04 »
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An oldtimer once told me "If you have nothing productive to say, say nothing"
 ::)

who was that? george bush?

m@m

« Reply #23 on: March 15, 2009, 21:08 »
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No, poor George like some other people, never had anything productive to say ;)

tan510jomast

« Reply #24 on: March 15, 2009, 21:13 »
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oh, i thought it was really manson, or henry the 8th


 

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