I've been banned two years ago and this guy Lobo sounds like he definitely worked too long in that place, he should better breath some fresh hair and he's clearly unfit for public relations, i've never seen such unpolite and offensive answers from a forum moderator in my life, if these are the standards at Getty it says it all about what kind of company it is, his unprofessionality is simply shocking, he would be fired on the spot in any other decent company, guess he's got his ass well covered ?

Somebody should assemble a list of his wrongdoings and write to istock's CEO in order to get gim booted out.

Seriously, he must have banned even dozens of buyers as well, imagine how much money istock lost because of this psycho.

Apparently he's been there 11 years. Many people have left or been booted out of IS in that time, and he is still there. Therefore, he is giving them what they want.

My hunch would be that the guy who plays Lobo will probably not want to play the role for much longer. Perhaps I'm wrong.

Well, if he bans almost everybody and scares the rest, then I am afraid his position as a moderator may become unsustainable... What's the point in moderating cbarnes's soliloquies?

I think in one year there will be no Mr. Lobo at istock. Either he quits or  they close the forums or he'll become unsustainable...

But you are right, perhaps he is a good guy outside of istock, who knows...

The whole web 2.0 concept is a double edge sword for businesses.

The trend i'm seeing now is forums are usually kept only for tech support questions, anything else now goes straight to the company FB or Twitter page.

I'm sure istock will just close the forums before or later, business-wise they're just a pain in the ass and a face loss.

Quote from: Stocktard on February 12, 2013, 22:30

The whole web 2.0 concept is a double edge sword for businesses.

Nonsense. What is this 'web 2.0 concept' you speak of? It doesn't even really exist, as far as I can tell, let alone be a 'double edged sword' (or any other type of sword) for business or anything else. Explain yourself in words that have some meaning.

I took it to mean that crowdsourcing can make a site, as it did Istock, but it can also bring it down if/when the crowd turns against it, as it has Istock.  Just my interpretation.  Maybe he meant something else. 

I think quoting 'web 2.0' is just one of those silly, nonsensical expressions that people use to make themselves appear clever when they haven't actually got any meaningful insight regarding the issue in question.

web 2.0 is a buzzword universally meaning "social, interactivity".

why is IS web 2.0 ? forums, blogs, each image linked to his author, his author has a personal profile with a list of friends, personal mini blog, you can write to him, he can store and share his lightboxes, etc, it's a virtual community, and technically a barebone social network with e-commerce capabilities.

getty is not web 2.0, all you have is a typical e-commerce web site, no public forums either, just a corporate blog eventually and a FB page, same for Corbis and same for Alamy apart alamy having a heavily censored forum and a silly blog + FB page + twitter.

so, indeed two different worlds but managing such a big community is not easy and it can easily backfire, small startups love web 2.0, big companies hate it as they have too much to lose from discussing in public their biz.

got it ?

Quote from: aspp on February 12, 2013, 16:59

I think that Lobo may actually be one of the good guys. (I know that probably sounds mad and that I will be voted down for saying this ). I think he often stops people from saying stuff which would get them booted from the site.

My hunch would be that the guy who plays Lobo will probably not want to play the role for much longer. Perhaps I'm wrong.

I think you're probably right. Everyone I know who has actually met him seem to like him and he's big buddies with Rob Sylvan too isn't he? I've had countless site mail warnings from him but have no complaints personally. I have been surprised about some folk who have been banned though. I guess he has less patience with some than others, like most of us probably do. Yes, he has been unusually snarky at times recently but I get the impression that they're under a bit of pressure at IS nowadays. I'm sure they'd love to get back to the happy-clappy days of yesteryear but the mothership keeps pulling the rug from underneath them. Note that it wasn't an Istock manager who terminated Sean's account. I think that's very revealing about what's going on.

I think so too. And if you remember the forums way back in the day they were pretty snarky. Back when the inspectors and admins and owners of the site would all chit chat in the forums there were a lot of people who got their feelings hurt.  For me lobo seems almost nostalgic of a bygone era. I personally like his snark and feel he is one of the good guys working for a company who is spreading him way too thin. I think I would be as sad the day Lobo leaves as I am sad that Sean got booted.

ETA: I have met Sean and think he is a great upstanding individual. I really dont like how they handled his departure/google deal and think they could have done a MUCH better job at making allies with Sean and contributors by being more forthcoming with information and transparency with how they deal with our files.

I also believe they are too ban happy in the forums... I just think that Lobo is the face of that and not specifically to blame.

Web 2.0 is a decade plus old term that has pretty much lost all its meaning and isn't really used by anyone anymore, except on the Alamy forum, and now here (yay!)

I wonder why we haven't had Web 3.0?  Is it going to be like Firefox?  They stuck with 3 for years and now their on 18.

It has nothing to do with if Lobo is a bully or not.
He is just another istock asset. - or lack of the same.

It has to do with the messages istock conveys.
Transmitted by Lobo:
"We do not care about you".
"And it is us who write history".

OK, then, fine.
Then we do not care about you either.
And we do write our version of history.

If I were Lobo, I would pay attention to those nightmares that occur early in the morning just before you wake up.

Transmitted by Lobo:
"We do not care about you".
"And it is us who write history".
.

hahaha !
i would like to drink a beer with this guy, is he for real ? must be really a bad job.

Quote from: Beach Bum on February 18, 2013, 07:32

Before reading this thread, I thought nobody could be as bad as Peebert.  I now see how wrong I was.

What are you talking about? Peebert was as sharp as two giant sharp things and very entertaining. It was a shame when he left. The IS forums in those days were a vibrant source of wit, repartee and useful information. Quel contraste.

To an extent I agree with what you are saying as he made me laugh many times but he could also be extremely nasty.