Is there an "or else" statement?

They always try and keep up their game face even when the walls around them are crashing down. Not surprising at all coming from iStock. Arrogance will get them nowhere.

Which keywords? For which of my thousands of images?

That is a general "warning" message and applies to your submissions overall. They have sent out these messages for many years now.

Is there an "or else" statement?

The "or else" comes with the 2nd or 3rd warning they send out. And the "else" is that your approval to upload images will be revoked.

I don't see anything strange in their effort to keep keywords accurate.

I agree. Technically their controlled vocabulary and the keyword accuracy is far superior to the others. When I look at my images (keyworded by me in English) on Shutterstock in German, the translation is often really ridiculous as they turn any term into any possible translation. And when I see how others keyword their images on Shutterstock or other sites, I just shake my head. Fotolia search results are really bad for many terms because everyone is spamming with their keywords.

iStock's way is actually the far better one. If I was to run an agency, I would go with accurate keywording rather than "as many as possible" approach of the others.

It's a good idea poorly executed with many keywords missing from the system. If I was to start an agency I would employ professionals to do the keywording. Photographers are terrible at it.

I know Dreamstime will keyword for you at a price ;-) wonder if its any good/  I think to maintain a controlled vocabulary would be very expensive the answer I think lies in better search technology.

When they accept my images they send ne an email which advises that certain keywords are not appropriate I would use this for guidance except more often than not they are in my opinion the MOST relevant.

Technically their controlled vocabulary and the keyword accuracy is far superior to the others.

I don't know, what do you call accurate. Here's the examples of rejected keywords from last upload:
Branding - they know only agricultural branding, that's why they reject it in any business-oriented context. It's 383 pages of "business branding" vs 10 pages of "agriculture branding" and no agricultural theme on first page by keyword "branding". Why?
Blue - they rejected this keyword for one isolated big blue object
Vector - rejected for vector files
Waving (Oscillation) - constantly rejected for sound wave, which is an oscillation, actually.
I have no idea, how do they keep their vocabulary working. Really.

I just uploaded some editorial photos and found that the term "Governor Cuomo" only had "Mario Cuomo" as an option, and not his son Andrew who has been governor of New York for the past 6 years now; it also only had 2 towns and Bill Clinton for the term "Clinton" and not "Hillary Clinton" as an option. A tad outdated to put it mildly! I sent them a support ticket. Hard to believe, however, this hasn't come up before now.

However, Andrew Cuomo is in the CV, as is Hillary Clinton, with even an allowance for mis-spelling as Hilary:

good advice actually

Quote from: wordplanet on June 03, 2016, 14:32

it also only had 2 towns and Bill Clinton for the term "Clinton" and not "Hillary Clinton" as an option.

Huh?

Could be the language setting, you get different options for English uk and english US in deepmeta. 

Some of the anomalies are really strange, it seems they run the two dictionaries separately so some entries just haven't made it to the US or UK version irrespective of whether there is any difference in usage between the two countries. I thought it was a problem with DeepMeta to begin with until it was pointed out that all it does is pull the info straight form IS. It just makes it easier to spot the differences because you can more easily switch language for individual keywords.