Author Topic: Bizarre CV logic (Read 7477 times)

BaldricksTrousers · « **on:** October 29, 2011, 05:03 »

I see that iStock's bizarre CV system continues to grow. The word "Orange" now produces: colour orange, fruit orange, Orange City (Texas), Orange City (California) and Orange (France Telecom).

This limitation makes it difficult for people photographing Orange, Connecticut, or Orange, New South Wales, to place their photos in appropriate categories, since they are not included, so presumably these two towns will eventually be added to the list, too.

But what is the logic of this? For the CV to work properly, eventually every single geographical place-name in the world has to be added to it, just as every single definition of every noun needs to be included.

Half the tags now have a drop-down menus offering you either a random and incomplete scattering of options which despite its inadequacy is often an absurdly long list. The keyword "sauce (food)" for example, lists about 35 sauces from the bizarre (vodka sauce) to the ordinary (bechamel), but no White Sauce or Supreme Sauce or Bercy or Bordelaise or ... a complete list would probably run to thousands of sauces, certainly hundreds.

Once it is complete (if ever ... but it is an impossible time-wasting task) what it will have achieved will be the replication of the system it was meant to replace, where people just typed whatever keywords they liked and those words were found in the search.

Meanwhile, those who ticked "Orange, colour" because "Orange City, California" used not to be available, will continue to spam the colour search while buyers who want their images will now be directed away from them to the severely limited number of files that have the Orange, CA, tag because they have only just been uploaded.

What's more, they seem to slide these CA changes through on the quiet, so even if people wanted to re-keyword they will only find out by accident when a new option appears.

How long is it going to take Getty to realise just how stupid its system is?

FD · « **Reply #1 on:** October 29, 2011, 05:54 »

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on October 29, 2011, 05:03

How long is it going to take Getty to realise just how stupid its system is?

Who cares.

elvinstar · « **Reply #2 on:** October 29, 2011, 08:39 »

I would imagine that contributors who care about their images being found in the search would care...

Slovenian · « **Reply #3 on:** October 29, 2011, 08:50 »

The system is also stupid because it limits the variety of keywords. It happened that I typed 5 synonyms and they were all reduced to one keyword (for instance geek, nerd, dork...all came out as nerd)

klsbear · « **Reply #4 on:** October 29, 2011, 09:22 »

It's also highly subjective when it comes to images illustrating a concept. I had an extended e-mail discussion regarding a request to expand on the range of options for disambiguation on a word based on my experience from other sites where you can see what word or words were used to search for the image. It was ultimately denied and consequently those photos are downloaded much less often at IS.

traveler1116 · « **Reply #5 on:** October 29, 2011, 09:28 »

Quote from: Slovenian on October 29, 2011, 08:50

The system is also stupid because it limits the variety of keywords. It happened that I typed 5 synonyms and they were all reduced to one keyword (for instance geek, nerd, dork...all came out as nerd)

What does a nerd look like compared to a geek or a dork. By the way the definition of "synonym" is "A word or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word or phrase in the same language" so you would expect synonyms to map to the same thing.

gaja · « **Reply #6 on:** October 29, 2011, 09:28 »

There are no terms for minke whale, only dwarf minke whale. Usually I guess most buyers don't care, but I had a big problem with it when we uploaded some pictures of whale beaf ready for cooking. The minke whale population is legally hunted in some areas of the world, the dwarf minke is totally illegal to hunt.

We once prosessed and uploaded one picture to Istock just because of the weird results in the CV: http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=234802&page=1

Sean Locke Photography · « **Reply #7 on:** October 29, 2011, 09:31 »

Quote from: Slovenian on October 29, 2011, 08:50

The system is also stupid because it limits the variety of keywords. It happened that I typed 5 synonyms and they were all reduced to one keyword (for instance geek, nerd, dork...all came out as nerd)

That's what it is suppose to do. Save you from entering or search on words that mean the same thing.

traveler1116 · « **Reply #8 on:** October 29, 2011, 09:45 »

I do think something should be done though. I live in Richmond, VA and to find that keyword in the search is a pain. The drop down menu only shows 8 options so by the time I type "richmond" the list only shows a few possible options none of them the city of richmond virginia. Instead there is the option of the "richmond spiders" a college sports team from this city, "richmond coliseum" which may be from here and the "richmond riverdogs" which was a hockey team from this city that hasn't existed for 5 years. In order to get my city, the capital of the state, I have to type richmond space hyphen "richmond -" which a buyer who is not familiar with the site would never do. At least they should order the options by popularity, there are no images for any of these keywords in the search, what they are doing there clogging it up I have no idea.

lisafx · « **Reply #9 on:** October 29, 2011, 10:00 »

Traveler's Richmond, VA example illustrates the problem perfectly. Ultimately, we are expecting a small group of human beings to be able to replicate language that took many hundreds of years to develop. It's no wonder that no other site has adopted a similar system. The CV is a classic case of why "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

Sean Locke Photography · « **Reply #10 on:** October 29, 2011, 10:12 »

The problem is not the cv, it's that the programmers are not competent enough to add an "other" option where current options do not apply.

Artemis · « **Reply #11 on:** October 29, 2011, 10:20 »

I never got the finesse of it either.
My treasure map couldnt be found on istock when searching for 'treasure map' because i had the keywords treasure and map separately, but not 'treasure map' , which seems to be a separate term in the CV.
It's a non-intuitive, annoying system.

KB · « **Reply #12 on:** October 29, 2011, 10:30 »

Quote from: traveler1116 on October 29, 2011, 09:45

In order to get my city, the capital of the state, I have to type richmond space hyphen "richmond -" which a buyer who is not familiar with the site would never do.

This is a very recent development. I happened to just notice it today with another city name. Apparently all city names are being transitioned to this format. I have no idea why.

I think the idea of a CV is a very good one, but the implementation and compliance has been less than stellar.

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #13 on:** October 29, 2011, 10:42 »

Great examples gaja and traveler. West Bay in Dorset is another pretty obscure one that they include.

Sean, it is the fault of the CV because it hardly works at all. With or without adding "others" it is still trying to recreate not only the entire language but also every phrase and place name within it. Any landscape shooter is scuppered by the limited number of places. So is any food shooter who photographs something in basic White Sauce.

There are, actually, very few true synonyms and the CV frequently defaults to an inappropriate word. For example, cassia defaults to cinnamon, which is precisely what cassia is not. It is like having saccharine default to sugar or turmeric default to saffron. Tactics defaults to strategy, which is equally ignorant.

Meanwhile, "flavoring" (US spelling) goes to spice, while "flavouring" (UK) offers the choice between spice and seasoning, and seasoning has three sub-categories (including, bizarrely, pepper mill) but fails to mention mustard. There are several others where the UK and US spellings of the same word give different results.

"Indian" gives a range of tick-boxes for ethnicity and culture but now, weirdly "Indian motorcycle (Polaris industries)" has been thrown in. Apparently the only industry one seventh of the world's population has is the production of motorbikes (Tata Industries might be displeased and haven't they heard of Indian tea?).

I could go on for ever. Every single upload is plagued by this nonsense.

bunhill · « **Reply #14 on:** October 29, 2011, 11:10 »

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on October 29, 2011, 10:42

"Indian" gives a range of tick-boxes for ethnicity and culture but now, weirdly "Indian motorcycle (Polaris industries)" has been thrown in. Apparently the only industry one seventh of the world's population has is the production of motorbikes (Tata Industries might be displeased and haven't they heard of Indian tea?).

I requested the inclusion of Indian - as in motorcycle. Indian is a famous/classic US brand of motorcycle. Nothing to do with India the country.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #15 on:** October 29, 2011, 11:19 »

Most of the flaws being discussed here have already been discussed, sometimes many times, in the iStock forums. The last big round of overall discussions (as opposed to those about particular keywords) was when they introduced editorial. What is the logic of adding brand names - which aren't translated - to the CV? As the size of this list, if you took all brand names world wide, is unmanageably large, and the value (in translating names) is zero, what on earth is the point of taking that direction.

The addition of "other" to every single branch of the CV tree is a reasonable thing to do - although as Sean points out, the substandard state of iStock's IT efforts has denied us even that - but it isn't the whole solution.

I'm not a huge fan of Corbis' CV-like system either, but in discussions with support once, they pointed out that when their system sees two keywords they know go together - in the case I was asking about it was Georgetown and Grand Cayman - they automatically put two and two together and disambiguate the Georgetown for you. Intelligent code versus the brute force approach of Getty putting a ridiculously large pile of terms into a system that is guaranteed, all the time, to be out of date. It will always have sports teams that don't exist and be missing the new hot products - Nest, the cool programmable thermostat that ends up hotter than iPods.

traveler1116 · « **Reply #16 on:** October 29, 2011, 12:31 »

"Other" doesn't seem to be necessary because I can (and normally do) type "richmond" in and wait for the results then go to the check box on the results page to narrow it, the CV would work better if it listed "richmond" by results:
richmond - virginia (900+)
richmond park (468)
richmond tigers (0)
richmond riverdogs (0)
richmond spiders (0)

Slovenian · « **Reply #17 on:** October 29, 2011, 12:36 »

And what's also important, but no one mentioned it, is that it's ultra time consuming. No site has such a terrible, time consuming UL process. What a joy it is to UL to sites like SS, which has a great editor or to the agencies without categories and overall speedy, simple UL process. And what a pathetic addition is Deepmeta, so complicated to use and it really doesn't make ULing that much simpler, there's still CV and everything (some are asking are u still uploading the old fashioned way, suggesting DM makes uploading process as easy as on other sites)

KB · « **Reply #18 on:** October 29, 2011, 12:44 »

Quote from: Slovenian on October 29, 2011, 12:30

Indeed, but someone searching for geek or dork won't find my photos, unlike they would have without the stupid CV.

Why not?

Larry · « **Reply #19 on:** October 29, 2011, 13:16 »

To me it seems like a religion run amuck, rather than a practical tool to help you describe images and let people search for them. It is hopeless for geographic names. You can't put things in there that would help the image be found.

Allowing the search to extend among descriptions, and/or titles, would solve a lot of these problems. It is a reasonable option to give people so when the system is fighting them instead of helping them they have an alternative. But like religions, this system is dogmatic and reasonable alternatives are not allowed.

Slovenian · « **Reply #20 on:** October 29, 2011, 13:41 »

Quote from: KB on October 29, 2011, 12:44

Quote from: Slovenian on October 29, 2011, 12:30
Indeed, but someone searching for geek or dork won't find my photos, unlike they would have without the stupid CV.

Why not?

So it converts the search terms as well? For example if a buyer is looking for geek, it'll find photos tagged only with nerd, or headache as migraine?

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #21 on:** October 29, 2011, 13:57 »

Quote from: Slovenian on October 29, 2011, 13:41

Quote from: KB on October 29, 2011, 12:44
Quote from: Slovenian on October 29, 2011, 12:30
Indeed, but someone searching for geek or dork won't find my photos, unlike they would have without the stupid CV.

Why not?

So it converts the search terms as well? For example if a buyer is looking for geek, it'll find photos tagged only with nerd, or headache as migraine?

That's my understanding of it.

stockastic · « **Reply #22 on:** October 29, 2011, 14:10 »

The system was so complicated, so tedious, and so limiting, that to be honest it's the main reason I stopped submitting to IS. My shots are mostly of unusual objects, and the CV just seemed like a filter intended to prevent people from finding them.

There are two ways to look at microstock: it can be profitable, or it can be fun, both are ok. But at IS it's neither.

Sean Locke Photography · « **Reply #23 on:** October 29, 2011, 14:35 »

Quote from: traveler1116 on October 29, 2011, 12:31

"Other" doesn't seem to be necessary because I can (and normally do) type "richmond" in and wait for the results then go to the check box on the results page to narrow it, the CV would work better if it listed "richmond" by results:
richmond - virginia (900+)
richmond park (468)
richmond tigers (0)
richmond riverdogs (0)
richmond spiders (0)

"other" would address situations like if "box" only had "box (container)" and you wanted "box (fight style)" instead. You can't add it as an unregistered term, because there is already one there. Adding it with an "other" option would flag it as coming up for that term, but not translatable. Or something. I'm not a ui designer.

KB · « **Reply #24 on:** October 29, 2011, 15:52 »

Quote from: Slovenian on October 29, 2011, 13:41

Quote from: KB on October 29, 2011, 12:44
Quote from: Slovenian on October 29, 2011, 12:30
Indeed, but someone searching for geek or dork won't find my photos, unlike they would have without the stupid CV.

Why not?

So it converts the search terms as well? For example if a buyer is looking for geek, it'll find photos tagged only with nerd, or headache as migraine?

Yes, exactly so. That's the main purpose (and benefit -- there has to be a benefit!) of the CV.

All you have to do is try it yourself and see. Your photos should be found.

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Author Topic: Bizarre CV logic (Read 7477 times)

BaldricksTrousers

FD

elvinstar

Slovenian

klsbear

traveler1116

gaja

Sean Locke Photography

traveler1116

lisafx

Sean Locke Photography

Artemis

KB

BaldricksTrousers

bunhill

Jo Ann Snover

traveler1116

Slovenian

KB

Larry

Slovenian

BaldricksTrousers

stockastic

Sean Locke Photography

KB

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