MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: leaf on December 07, 2013, 17:51
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I have just removed a thread that (I felt) was calling another member out. I feel the culture of this forum is degraded a bit when we start to pick on each other and point fingers (whatever the reason)
Sure, if an image or images have wrong keywords they should be taken care of, but a message direct to the photographer themselves is perhaps more appropriate. making a public spectacle of it.. less so. I'm sure I have some mistakes in my images as well. If anyone ever finds one, I'd be happy to have it pointed out to me but I'm not sure a public discussion about it is going to help.
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The culture of this forum has long been degraded.
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Good move Leaf.
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Good move Leaf - thanks for all you do to try to keep this place relevant and helpful.
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I have just removed a thread that (I felt) was calling another member out. I feel the culture of this forum is degraded a bit when we start to pick on each other and point fingers (whatever the reason)
Sure, if an image or images have wrong keywords they should be taken care of, but a message direct to the photographer themselves is perhaps more appropriate. making a public spectacle of it.. less so. I'm sure I have some mistakes in my images as well. If anyone ever finds one, I'd be happy to have it pointed out to me but I'm not sure a public discussion about it is going to help.
I agree with this, but I read the deleted thread, and think that perhaps this case could be an exception. This isn't just any member. He is the self-proclaimed leader in microstock. And I don't believe the keywords in question can be considered "mistakes". They simply are not appropriate. You don't tag a bird as "flying" when it is clearly sitting on the ground.
I'm not saying he should be held to a higher standard, but I think it does seem to indicate the cavalier attitude that too many contributors have towards keywording, when the #1 microstocker keywords so poorly. I count myself among those that are far from perfect, including my own keywording which is not great at times. But I hope that I don't have any files keyworded as poorly as many of the recent examples I've seen from this and some other contributors. Yesterday I wiki'd a file where more than half of the keywords were totally inappropriate for the image (and it wasn't a mistake, as looking through the contributor's port showed similarly awful keywording in their entire port).
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Have to agree with KB. Keyword spamming is dishonest and, while I'd be personally be slow to call someone on it, I don't think someone who does this has a legitimate complaint if it happens.
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Have to agree with KB. Keyword spamming is dishonest and, while I'd be personally be slow to call someone on it, I don't think someone who does this has a legitimate complaint if it happens.
Maliciousness and incompetence and all that, I guess.
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I read that thread and didn't see it as a personal attack, I guess because the user in question is more of a company at this point than merely an individual contributor. But I definitely see your point and your reasons for removing the thread.
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Let us not forget that keywording is outsourced to the masses as a part of the microstock concept.
The agencies could do the keywording themselves, but they want to have the expence outsourced to the contributors.
And by the nature of things, keyword spamming occurs because of several reasons:
Competition: see me, see my picture.
Contributors trying to reduce time consumption: How accurate are you going to be when you mass keyword with semi automatic keyword tools, - and for 38 cents?
Language problems. Many contributors do not understand the keywords they apply.
Keyword spamming could easily be avoided if the agencies took responsibility, but they dont, and therefore they get what they pay for.
Let us not make it a moral problem, it is not, it is a result of the business concept.
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I appreciate your move Tyler. Personal attack(if any) should be avoided.
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Leaf, I support your move.
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I agree with you Leaf.
But in this case it was not about a normal member, but about a special one most of the times considering (by) himself as an example.
These "special" professionals deserve a "special" treatment.
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Fair call - however said entity isn't beyond the "law". I could go on; in the interests manners I won't on this occasion.
Suffice to note that I hope this forum remains completely open as long as we conduct our conversations professionally.
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What JPSDK said: the micros are getting what they deserve for not taking responsibility for keywording. Today they're paying big bucks to software engineers, trying to develop effective search facilities based on poor quality data; success will be limited. And only the big agencies have the money for this sort of development.
The future belongs to some new agency that starts over and builds a big archive of properly keyworded images - including a description of what is actually IN the photo, so buyers can search for a photo OF something and not get a garbage barge heaped with unrelated stuff.
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Yes. Information entropy.
They are trying to weed out the weeds in a field of weeds.
Symbiostock could have that big chance, if they could agree on a keyword standard.
- but they cant-
Shutter has come up with a rather intelligent keyword machine that might help in the long run.
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What? Keywords for things that are actually in the image? Radical concept.
How about correct plurals.
Maybe that red dot in the background is an apple, maybe not, so people will add red, apple, tree, when it's an image of a field of green and sky of blue.
I'd agree, some agency, some day, will get it right and steal a big share of the market, because buyers will not be wasting time finding bad matches and spammed keywords. So simple, isn't it. Give the customer what they want and you have a winner.
What JPSDK said: the micros are getting what they deserve for not taking responsibility for keywording. Today they're paying big bucks to software engineers, trying to develop effective search facilities based on poor quality data; success will be limited. And only the big agencies have the money for this sort of development.
The future belongs to some new agency that starts over and builds a big archive of properly keyworded images - including a description of what is actually IN the photo, so buyers can search for a photo OF something and not get a garbage barge heaped with unrelated stuff.
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When I started microstock in 2006, my keywording was horrible. It was not "malicious spamming", but many keywords were absolutely far fetched. Correcting the keywording for several hundreds of files on 10 agencies would be a complete nightmare, so I won't do it, but still, I'm really ashamed of my old keywording. But I'm sure I'm not the only one. Could it be possible that the files mentioned in the closed thread were also very old files, that the photographer would really be ashamed of? ... not that he'd admit it of course! ;)
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Having looked at several very different files uploaded recently by said contributor, I now suspect he's outsourcing keywording, and no-one is checking the result. That's only surmise on my part. These are certainly not 'honest mistakes' of the type all of us can easily mis-tick.
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As for the agency doing the keywording, I wouldn't willingly submit to any agency which did that, unless it was very specialist. I've seen too many wrongly-keyworded files on Getty; and indeed some of my own which have made it over have 'acquired' some very 'odd/questionable' keywords in the process.
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Yup. I remember the "wiki-warriors" earning their badges by getting correct keywords deleted and replacing them with incorrect ones, which iStock then approved. It happened to me. I don't know why anyone would think that someone who has never been near a place where a photo was taken would know better about what it was of than the person who was there and took the photo.
Then there is the local knowledge. I shot some Saudi kabsa today, which is also known as machboos or majbous in Bahrain and Qatar. I doubt if one in a hundred Canadians have heard of it, so how is a Canadian company going to get the correct keywords? Agency keywording is OK for girl, beach, sea, sunglasses, bikini, happy, smiling - but it's not going to work for more complicated stuff. Istock CV proves that, it almost forces people to spam keywords by being so inadequate.
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I'm all for removing that thread, but not because of the content of that specific discussion. Just because I don't see why anyone is wasting time talking about that guy anymore. He made his dramatic transition and let us all know how he feels about us and the companies we work with (aside from the obvious one he now feels is the only truly professional company). I don't get why anyone wants to bother bringing him up at all.
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I'm all for removing that thread, but not because of the content of that specific discussion. Just because I don't see why anyone is wasting time talking about that guy anymore. He made his dramatic transition and let us all know how he feels about us and the companies we work with (aside from the obvious one he now feels is the only truly professional company). I don't get why anyone wants to bother bringing him up at all.
You might feel different if his spam was messing up best match in the areas in which you're active, and more seriously, hacking off buyers.
Of course, the way things are now, it happens a lot. But not everyone vaunts their 'professionalism'.
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I'm all for removing that thread, but not because of the content of that specific discussion. Just because I don't see why anyone is wasting time talking about that guy anymore. He made his dramatic transition and let us all know how he feels about us and the companies we work with (aside from the obvious one he now feels is the only truly professional company). I don't get why anyone wants to bother bringing him up at all.
You might feel different if his spam was messing up best match in the areas in which you're active, and more seriously, hacking off buyers.
Of course, the way things are now, it happens a lot. But not everyone vaunts their 'professionalism'.
I wonder if his images even get inspected. I mean, what if part of his deal was "upload at will and bypass any inspections"? I got a recent rejection for a keyword that was totally appropriate, but I bent over took it up the kazoo and reupped without the word, then it was accepted. So if inspectors are still vetting images for keywords the example Liz put up opens a new line of thinking around his upload privileges. Not that I care but I thought I'd mention that possibility.
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I don't get why anyone wants to bother bringing him up at all.
Jealousy, most likely.
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I don't get why anyone wants to bother bringing him up at all.
Jealousy, most likely.
Don't think so. Didn't you read the points about the poor professional keywording?
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I don't get why anyone wants to bother bringing him up at all.
Jealousy, most likely.
I'm jealous because someone can't/won't keyword properly?
Maybe that would be logical on Planet Tickstock, but not on Planet Shady.
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I wonder if his images even get inspected. I mean, what if part of his deal was "upload at will and bypass any inspections"? I got a recent rejection for a keyword that was totally appropriate, but I bent over took it up the kazoo and reupped without the word, then it was accepted. So if inspectors are still vetting images for keywords the example Liz put up opens a new line of thinking around his upload privileges. Not that I care but I thought I'd mention that possibility.
I think only Keywordzilla is even looking at keywords nowadays. I was just checking recent submissions on another species and some newbie has about ten images of the same bird, properly titled and described, but with four different other species in the keywords.
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I don't get why anyone wants to bother bringing him up at all.
Jealousy, most likely.
Don't think so. Didn't you read the points about the poor professional keywording?
Were there helpful suggestions for where to get better keyworders or were there conspiracy theories about no one inspecting his work, sarcastic remarks about 'professionals' and 'special' agreements, etc... ? I have no problem with people trying to be helpful, wiki the files, contact an admin, send him a sitemail, suggest better keywording services but that wasn't the point of the thread. (Before it got deleted I even saw someone trolling me in that thread.)
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I don't get why anyone wants to bother bringing him up at all.
Jealousy, most likely.
Don't think so. Didn't you read the points about the poor professional keywording?
Were there helpful suggestions for where to get better keyworders or were there conspiracy theories about no one inspecting his work, sarcastic remarks about 'professionals' and 'special' agreements, etc... ? I have no problem with people trying to be helpful, wiki the files, contact an admin, send him a sitemail, suggest better keywording services but that wasn't the point of the thread. (Before it got deleted I even saw someone trolling me in that thread.)
That doesn't indicate jealousy. It indicates annoyance.
It isn't the forum's job to help him improve his work.
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I don't get why anyone wants to bother bringing him up at all.
Jealousy, most likely.
Don't think so. Didn't you read the points about the poor professional keywording?
Were there helpful suggestions for where to get better keyworders or were there conspiracy theories about no one inspecting his work, sarcastic remarks about 'professionals' and 'special' agreements, etc... ? I have no problem with people trying to be helpful, wiki the files, contact an admin, send him a sitemail, suggest better keywording services but that wasn't the point of the thread. (Before it got deleted I even saw someone trolling me in that thread.)
That doesn't indicate jealousy. It indicates annoyance.
It isn't the forum's job to help him improve his work.
Him improving his keywording helps everyone doesn't it? That's the argument, bad keywords mess up the search and make it worse for buyers thus everyone suffers. If the job of the forum is to attack anyone that you are annoyed with rather than help then it's even worse around here than I thought.