but why are they deleting images and what about editorial images

I just posted this on Shutterstocks "Contibrutor experience"

Dear Shutterstock,

You have recently offended thousands of your contributors, including myself, with a rude e-mail accusing us of spamming titles and threatening us to suspend our portfolios.

Personally I have wasted a lot of time seaching for spammed titles in my portfolio (more than 5000 files) without finding any. I cannot understand why these spammed titles (if they exist) have not been caught by your approval process. Your explanation seems to be that I have edited the titles after the files were approved. That is not true.

If you are serious at all about this, please show that you care about contributors, re-assure us that it was a mistake and that we don´have to worry. If you don´t show us that respect, and keep claiming that all contributors that received the e-mail are spammers that "create poor customer experience", must "edit these titles to bring them back into compliance" and should not "continue to create repetitive or spammy titles" or risk suspension, then tell us so so that we can opt out on all our contents and then leave your site. Since we create such bad customer experience I am sure we will not be missed. Don´t bother to suspend our portfolios, we will happily do it for you.

Thank you.

Quote from: angelawaye on July 01, 2016, 16:09
I can't loose my ss income so I am forced to go through all my images this holiday weekend ...
SS is down right now too which make this harder ...

I can't afford to lose my SS income either but begging on the streets would be more fun than going through almost 5,000 images when I have done nothing wrong.  We shouldn't be made to waste so much time like this and if we all do as they ask, what crazy thing will we be required to do next?

It should be easy for them to send everyone links to the images that they want edited.  If they can't do that, then I'm not confident about their future and wouldn't want to waste any more of my time doing a task that shouldn't be necessary.

JUST GOT THIS EMAIL FROM SHUTTERSTOCK (sigh of relief)

We would like to offer a clarification about yesterday's email regarding the titles of your content. This email was distributed to a broader group of contributors than we intended. We sincerely apologize for the concern caused. We want to reassure you that no further action is required from you.

The vast majority of our community work hard to consistently create powerful and descriptive titles to support their work. Our goal is to create a fair and level playing field for our entire contributor community and we value the time and energy invested into preparing your content for license on Shutterstock.

We have robust compliance standards in place to protect the integrity of your content and we are investing heavily in developing a new platform to improve the contributor experience. You may have seen some of the new pages recently rolled out. Included in this development will be new contributor tools to help with your content submission process.

We are working tirelessly on creating the best contributor experience for our content creators and we apologize for the communication yesterday. You can expect that any further communication from us will be detailed, informative, specific, and actionable.

Thank you,

Jon Oringer
and
The Shutterstock Contributor Support Team

Wow, a reply via e-mail!!!


We would like to offer a clarification about yesterday's email regarding the titles of your content. This email was distributed to a broader group of contributors than we intended. We sincerely apologize for the concern caused. We want to reassure you that no further action is required from you.

The vast majority of our community work hard to consistently create powerful and descriptive titles to support their work. Our goal is to create a fair and level playing field for our entire contributor community and we value the time and energy invested into preparing your content for license on Shutterstock.

We have robust compliance standards in place to protect the integrity of your content and we are investing heavily in developing a new platform to improve the contributor experience. You may have seen some of the new pages recently rolled out. Included in this development will be new contributor tools to help with your content submission process.

We are working tirelessly on creating the best contributor experience for our content creators and we apologize for the communication yesterday. You can expect that any further communication from us will be detailed, informative, specific, and actionable.

Thank you,

Jon Oringer
and
The Shutterstock Contributor Support Team

I got the email too, thought they would get that sorted much quicker but at least I didn't waste time looking at all my titles.

Quote from: Microstock Man on July 01, 2016, 16:45
JUST GOT THIS EMAIL FROM SHUTTERSTOCK (sigh of relief)

We would like to offer a clarification about yesterday's email regarding the titles of your content. This email was distributed to a broader group of contributors than we intended. We sincerely apologize for the concern caused. We want to reassure you that no further action is required from you.

The vast majority of our community work hard to consistently create powerful and descriptive titles to support their work. Our goal is to create a fair and level playing field for our entire contributor community and we value the time and energy invested into preparing your content for license on Shutterstock.

We have robust compliance standards in place to protect the integrity of your content and we are investing heavily in developing a new platform to improve the contributor experience. You may have seen some of the new pages recently rolled out. Included in this development will be new contributor tools to help with your content submission process.

We are working tirelessly on creating the best contributor experience for our content creators and we apologize for the communication yesterday. You can expect that any further communication from us will be detailed, informative, specific, and actionable.

Thank you,

Jon Oringer
and
The Shutterstock Contributor Support Team

Yes, me too. I appreciate the apology. But they still didn't answer my questions...were any of my images deleted or moved to Rejected Photos? If so, which ones?

Yes me too. Ss test us?

Common guys, SS did a mistake and they accepted their mistake. Chill down.

Thank you, Jon, and shutterstock for saving my weekend.

Quote from: 60D on July 01, 2016, 16:57
Common guys, SS did a mistake and they accepted their mistake. Chill down.

I can accept when a mistake is made, we all do that, but the only mistake here might have been the carpet-bomb email. The removing of images was certainly no mistake, and I don't think I will "chill down" until I understand what happened to my images, assuming some have disappeared*. For a company to remove images, with no notice or chance to fix, is not a mistake.

*I have looked through paperwork and I can't confirm or deny that any of my images have disappeared. I can only rely on SS answering my email to confirm that images were deleted, or that no images were deleted.

Quote from: pixmicro on July 01, 2016, 14:01
An hypothesis : it's july, they hired or outsourced a new team of inspectors for summer holidays totally new and unaware to the business, and applying the rules with way too much zeal. Maybe in the admin interface of the inspectors, there is an option "mark this contributor as a spammer" and they use it abusely, which is causing the 'automatic email' we all recieved.

But this does'nt explain the files apparently deleted for some contributors portfolio...

or they just redirected the new uploads to Atilla 's household.

good thing you reminded me of July; looks like i won't be uploading anything for this month.

Hard to be a Company.

I received the "we apologize" e-mail this morning too. It used Jon's name and although it didn't say the magic words "I'm sorry",  it did say that any further communications would be "detailed, informative, specific, and actionable", which is good. It was a bit "mistakes were made", but they're corporate now, so I guess that's just how missives are.

Unless the total number of files in my portfolio is being mis-reported on the contributor home page, they haven't deleted anything of mine. There's the correct number of pages at 100 per page when I look at my portfolio, so I think it's intact. Not sure how those of you with missing files figure out what went away, but Are you going to contact support to complain? It might be another software snafu rather than intentional deletion, but either way, one would hope they have detailed records they could consult...

Quote from: Dumc on July 01, 2016, 17:16

Quote from: cathyslife on July 01, 2016, 17:03

Quote from: 60D on July 01, 2016, 16:57
Common guys, SS did a mistake and they accepted their mistake. Chill down.

I can accept when a mistake is made, we all do that, but the only mistake here might have been the carpet-bomb email. The removing of images was certainly no mistake, and I don't think I will "chill down" until I understand what happened to my images, assuming some have disappeared. For a company to remove images, with no notice or chance to fix, is not a mistake.

*. You uppset about removing images and yet, you don't even know, if they were removed from your port. You're a joke.

When you don't have anything intelligent to say, resort to bad language, name calling and bullying. 

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on July 01, 2016, 17:19
I received the "we apologize" e-mail this morning too. It used Jon's name and although it didn't say the magic words "I'm sorry",  it did say that any further communications would be "detailed, informative, specific, and actionablel", which is good. It was a bit "mistakes were made", but they're corporate now, so I guess that's just how missives are.

Unless the total number of files in my portfolio is being mis-reported on the contributor home page, they haven't deleted anything of mine. There's the correct number of pages at 100 per page when I look at my portfolio, so I think it's intact. Not sure how those of you with missing files figure out what went away, but Are you going to contact support to complain? It might be another software snafu rather than intentional deletion, but either way, one would hope they have detailed records they could consult...

I am not exactly sure that files went away, I just know the total seems off. I did contact support, but not to complain, I just asked them to confirm whether some of my files were deleted, and if so, which ones. It would be nice to have a chance to correct the problems (if there are any).

The best part of the "apologies" email from SS today (apart from a sigh of relief) is this one:

"We have robust compliance standards in place to protect the integrity of your content and we are investing heavily in developing a new platform to improve the contributor experience. You may have seen some of the new pages recently rolled out. Included in this development will be new contributor tools to help with your content submission process."

Seems like they plan to introduce new tools for contributors. Frankly, the SS uploading process is the best for me personally, so I'm curious to see what else they can introduce.

Anyway, congrats to all of us with justice and TGIF!

I will take it! I can enjoy my holiday weekend now!

Good, so no work to take home for the weekend

Today's email from Jon started with "Dear Lana", thanks for that, coz yesterday it was just Spammer Lana 

Sorry to have interrupted your Independence Day weekend ,Jon !

but it's a good sign, and i won't be grouchy over the missing "i'm sorry",
because at least, Jon was brought in to go full damage-control, if i know my business protocol.

which hopefully means the idiot-good-for-nothing who had been ruining   running the
office has been sacked or moved to some position where less damage is likely eg sanitation management (ie washing toilets)

Shutterstock's forums have a post from an admin saying that no images were removed as part of this title spamming exercise

http://forums.submit.shutterstock.com/topic/88687-shutterstocks-position-on-repeated-words-and-phrases-in-titles/?p=1555859

I see someone has reported other removals (Harley Davidson content was mentioned here on MSG), so perhaps they're doing other cleanup?

I'm glad they got it sorted out before the weekend, but have a few problems with it. First, it's not really a 'clarifcation.' This same email was posted on their forum, so does that mean that none of the people that got it should have? in that case, who was supposed to get it - everyone who didn't?

And yeah, there was an apology of sorts, but going from calling us spammers and threatening to suspend our accounts to, "this went to a broader audience than intended."

I wonder how many people, besides the ones who posted here and on SS wasted hours going through hundreds or thousands of images because of the accusation and threat.

SS needs to knock heads and clean house. And someone needs to be in charge

Got the same email where they apologized... At least this is over for the moment..

Yes, and to make up for the needless panic that most of us experienced over the last 24 hours, an awesome gesture for freaking us all out would be a nice little bonus in this month's payout.
I mean seriously, many many people were in distress over this, feeling like they had just lost their income. lost countless work hours trying to figure this out and many, I am sure lost sleep as well and a nice bonus to make up for the near heart attacks would be a sweet gesture :-)

Move on people, show is over