Maybe could be better worded, but that's just something that has been asked for hundreds of time: more keyword control. Looking at Recent Downloads you often find awfully extra-spammed files. Now, spammig would be a motive for rejection, but exclusives will have the extra-service of being re-keyworded in house. Maybe it's not enough to convnce those in the fence, I don't know, but it's good news.

Quote from: bittersweet on June 19, 2008, 22:50

I for one do not appreciate the generalizations being made which imply that all exclusives are lazy conniving keyword spammers who plan to purposely monopolize the inspectors' time. It's ludicrous.

Said who?   

Are you asking who said these implications are ludicrous? Or are you asking who made these generalizations? I assume it is the former and not the latter since you yourself said:

So Let me see if I understand this right. Exclusives can fill in all the crap they can get up to  ... That's a lott of extra manpower for all the lazy exclusives.

I don�t know if this is good news or not, may be good for spamming, but this give me the feeling that istock is trying to drive non-exclusive out of their site. They are very hard on rejections, photos that sell real well in other sites they reject for stupid reasons, now this is another excuse to reject your non-exclusive images even more. Sales have dropped very much for me at this site and I don�t see them coming back at the level I was before. As a matter of fact after being my second best selling site has gone to be the worst.

I would edit this: it's not only feeling, i's a fact.

Almost the same here. I'm with IS from the beginning and long time IS was my No1 earner, now it's No7, even BS earns more...

They should write very clear about rejections: "We don't like nonexclusives so all your images have been rejected" instead of stupid reasons..

Here's a link to the full text of the e-mail

http://recp.rm05.net/servlet/MailView?ms=MTExMjEyOQS2&r=NzQxMjQ5NTQ3MgS2&j=MTEyMTcyMTMwS0&mt=1

Could it be that they are a bit strict about keywords  last few days , cause I got few strange rejections , like rejecting rosemary plant for keyword "spice" etc.

There is nothing wrong with extra advantages for exclusives.
But this looks like they do it the other way around, bullying the non exclusives!
I first thought that this new service would require extra manpower. But come to think of this; reviewers have to spent time checking keywords anyway, so why not deleting one or two irrelevant keywords if there is no blatant spamming involved? The sooner the image appears online the sooner the image brings in money for both parties. I wonder why all stocksites are not doing this already. Rejecting the image means more work for the contributor and more work for the next reviewer as well. So actually I think this is a wise business move.
BUT... denying this service to non exclusives and even announcing to aggressively reject more non exclusive images is very unprofessional in my opinion. Punish the real spammers, give them warnings, no matter if they are exclusive or not.
Istock makes me feel like a dope dealer who is doing business at the backdoor of a pharmaceutical factory.
They don't make me feel like a worthy contributor anymore. How should I be motivated to become exclusive this way?
I made the top 50 twice on SS last week, SS is my nr 1 earner again.
StockXpert is doing great, several credit sales every day, receiving 50% commission.
Had an XXL sale the other day--$7,50 for one download.
My last few uploads which are doing great everywhere, are doing miserable on Istock.
Is all this due the non-exclusive search ranking? Can Istock reassure more steady sales if I become Exclusive?
I can find enough exclusives with less sales than I do, so why should my sales increase so spectacularly?
I don't need business cards because I don't do commission work.
I don't need higher upload limits because I don't work so fast.
I don't need lotteries ( again very unprofessional, you're dealing with professionals here, not with Cola drinking-teenagers watching Mtv !)

Now give me a good reason to go exclusive Istock!

They have a unique faculty to indispose people toward themselves and mischief contributors between istockers and others. It's a spirit, not only business. Kind of religious sect.

It seems the longer and harder iStock works to make independent content on their site rare, the larger the advantages of looking elsewhere for images will be. I for one have at least double the images elsewhere than at istock, and I imagine that many have much larger imbalances. Instead of trumpeting the exclusive content, they will have to try to hide how many great images they don't have.

I did get one Keyword rejection in my last batch, but since they rejected it for artifacts and light or miscolored pixels or something else like that, I won't even bother looking at what keywords they didn't like. probably something they keyword mapped to something rediculous and I didn't catch.

Rather than an added bonus for exclusivity, this latest "offer" is more of an added stick for independents.

They do get points for trying to fix ambiguous keywords and spamming, but they are doing a rather poor and annoying job of it as far as I'm concerned.

A thought ...

Does anyone know, or is it Written anywhere ... will the exclusives be told what keywords have been kindly removed from their images?

I know they'll be able to check by comparing what they've submitted with what's accepted, but that's kind of unwieldy and not many people will have the time to do that.

What if a relevant keyword is removed and they don't know anything about it?

Sounds like a disadvantage to me.

Does anyone know, or is it Written anywhere ... will the exclusives be told what keywords have been kindly removed from their images?

There has been absolutely NO official statement made on this subject. There is a ton of wild speculation and the ranting responses to go along with it.

The announcement said that bad keywords would be REMOVED. There was NOTHING stating that good keywords would be added. Yet there are plenty of people ticked off because now "lazy exclusives" can just add the "minimum 5" and let the inspectors do the rest of the work. Then there are others who are ticked off and ranting because they don't want any keywords added to their files. THEY HAVE NEVER SAID THAT KEYWORDS ARE GOING TO BE ADDED.

I'm with everyone else in thinking this whole announcement is absurd, but I don't understand why people get all up in arms based on some random person speculating about their worst case scenario.

Hi Gregor,
While we are clarifying, let me say that my comments in reference to negative generalizations being made were not referring to a single comment, nor a single person's comments. It is pretty obvious that there is plenty of animosity towards exclusives, and I'm not sure why that is. We have absolutely zero to do with what policies are put into place.

I personally respect everyone's right to make their own choice as to whether or not exclusivity is right for them. I just wish there was a little more reciprocity in regards to others respecting my right to make that choice for myself. I don't feel the need to "convince" anyone that they should become exclusive, and I don't like being characterized as stupid, foolish, crazy, whatever because I have made that choice. Why do you care and why so much energy being put into such negativity when my choice does not concern you in the least? (And by "you", again, I'm being very general in my reference. I do not mean you personally.)

So your comment was partially based on past experiences, and not entirely on the contents of that thread. I understand. When I read that thread (yes, all 11 pages of it) I see more anti-exclusive comments coming from independents than the other way around. That's why I was confused.

I know what you mean about the divisive nature of these types of policies (I think I mentioned that somewhere in this thread). Still, I didn't really see too many exclusives saying that they agreed with this latest issue. I think it is productive to focus on the issue at hand, rather than bring any unnecessary baggage to the table. I guess it's human nature though.

Cheers.