Quote from: cobalt on July 22, 2011, 03:48

"The Istock forum will never again be the place it once was.Sad for some but of no concern to the majority.The negatives have outweighed the posatives these past 18 months.They will be further developments this year.I might of inadvertly mentioned some of those in the Istock forum and a slight panic ensued along the line of me being a whistle blower.That was never going to be the case..."

The forum is a business tool, how can doing business be negative??

The customers are not going over to Shutterstock because they like the Shutterstock forum more. There is very little forum traffic compared to before but that is not bringing the customers back.

Are you trying to say that they are planning to close the forums down???

I would take just about everything shank is saying with a big big grain of salt...in London, at one seminar we all had a brief discussion about the tone communication (or lack of it) has taken in the forums. a few contributors expressed their frustration with forum communication and TPTB responded with feedback about their perspective, and that was that. Shank seems to think he was privy to all sorts of big secrets...guess the rest of us must have been snoozing during those disclosures  

+1

I'm guessing things that have a 'code name' are not supposed to be talked about?

subgroup, huh? I think you may wish to get an atlas. If you're referring to the term "The Americas" that is not the same as saying part of America. "America" refers to one nation, the USA. Canada is not a 'subgroup' of anything, it is one of the nations making up the continent of North America.

Columbus stumbled upon what is now Central America, a subcontinent of NA.

Maria: I see you're in Brazil....it seems that in North America and most of Europe, we go by the 7 continent model. If you are living in South America or other parts of the world, it seems you use a 4 or 5 continent model. so I apologize for being so snarky if this is simply a regional thing. Though your comments about Canada are fairly inflammatory. I suppose according to our respective locations and education, that explains the difference. In north America, we use a 7 continent model and it is the 7 continent model that is used by the global scientific community FYI.

and as JoAnn pointed out, we're digressing. I wouldn't want to take away from this important discussion any further.

When the Nuclear Reactors in Japan broke down I found myself with all kinds of nuclear fanboy engineers on the internet. When you come with real facts they immediatly disappear but until then it was all"oh nuclear power is soooo safe, this is just a little bump and it can never happen in the usa...the germans are all hystercial...ups, Angela Merkel is a physicist...oh...eh...and gone..."

But still compared to any other time in world history we all have amazing access to information and communication. The truth gets out a lot faster than it used to. If people want to hear it....that�s a different thing...

<Sigh> There's no such thing as the totally safe megawatt. No more than a handful of people have ever been killed or maimed by nuclear power. That's probably about how many Chinese coal miners died today, not to mention the environmental damage.

Germany is simply planning to import a higher proportion of it's future electricity from French nuclear power stations instead. Very laudable.

"No more than a handful of people have ever been killed or maimed by nuclear power."

You�ve just conveniently ignored 700 000 Russian soldiers who were sent in to deconatminante the area around Tschernobyl. Many dead or ill today. All the additional cancers in greater Europe from the fallout estimated to be over 1 Mio cases, notable spike in birth defects 9 months after Tschernobyl. Oh and in Japan the situation is still so bad that many areas cannot be entered by humans. The heroic Fukushima techies they are sending in know they are dying live on TV.

And if health isn�t an issue for you - how about economics. Radioactive waste contaminates areas for decades, making products grown in this area unsellable as you are watching in Japan right now - beef, vegetables even green tea from plantations more than 400 km away from the plant have to be  destroyed.

Real estate that is contaminated has to be evacuated and obviously has no market value, no matter how big your house was. How many thousands of people are living in shelters in Japan today?

And then the general damage to the industry when in Japan several atomic plants cannot be used. Japan is having a huge loss across all industries that need a lot of power. Power cuts are being scheduled, work shifts moved to nights and week-ends.

And long term economic outlook for contaminated areas? Who on earth is going to build and invest in businesses around radioactive plants. etc...etc...just because you cannot see or smell radioactivity doesn�t mean it can�t be devastating.

Germany is not planning to live of French power (would be pretty stupid). There is a huge, clean energy industry thriving here. Solar, wind, thermal, fuel cells - we have it all. And we will happily export it which will continue to grow jobs locally.

In Japan the situation hasn�t even been brought under control yet. They are HOPING to cover the damaged buildings so they stop emitting nuclear waste by January 2012. The dismanteling of the reactors is estimated to take 30 years or more.

But if you are looking for a job I am sure there are a lot of very well paid clean up positions available in Japan today.

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Well, now this thread is really off topic :-)

Quote from: shank_ali on July 18, 2011, 14:28

Sorry for being so blunt but what ** happened...
When i joined Istock in 2007 the forum was a hive of activity.It was bustling with new threads and lots of comments posted by the community of artists and staff.
What's caused its demise?

Maybe it is due to people (like you) continually spouting pointless drivel? Looks to me as if you are now having the same effect over here too. It just becomes hard work wading through all the nonsense to read the posts of people who actually have something to say. Sorry for being so blunt ...

I can only speculate but it may have something to do with slash in commissions, massive clawback of royalties, the large numbers of people who have been banned and even larger number of locked threads - preventing contributors from getting answers to some very real questions.

subgroup, huh? I think you may wish to get an atlas. If you're referring to the term "The Americas" that is not the same as saying part of America. "America" refers to one nation, the USA. Canada is not a 'subgroup' of anything, it is one of the nations making up the continent of North America.

^^ This is my understanding too Stacey