That is interesting.  My first editorial batch was loaded on March 26.  Still no word but your post is discouraging.  My images also have been online at other sites for two weeks.  And, they are selling.

Depending on the results, this may be my last (and only) attempt to upload editorial at iStock.  They sure are slow?

 

I agree the caption is lacking in detail (for IS editorial criteria) and would include some brief information on what they are protesting against. What exactly is this carbon tax, does it merely tax vehicle emissions or electricity consumption or what does it entail and how would it affect these people? I would also provide more specific location information, such as "Protesters gather in front of the Town Hall in Canberra...". A simple one-liner caption won't usually cut it for IS - especially when half your caption repeats the same information. Basically, caption the images in such a way where someone (like me) living outside of Oz could look at the image, read the caption, and get a basic yet good understanding of what is going on:

Canberra, Australia - March 23, 2011: Thousands of protesters gather near blahblah Square on a Sunday afternoon to protest against the government's proposed new Carbon Tax. Under the new environmental tax, residents would be required to pay additional taxed based on vehicle mileage and blahblah.

Hope that helps.

As far as the caption rejections, it's hard to give you a suggestion without seeing the image, but you need more details about what's going on, exactly where (street; outside a certain building; something about who the crowd was or how big it was. There are tons of examples already on the site and you can ask in the editorial forum if you're unsure about what to include. One thing that has caused rejections for others is copying from Wikipedia for the caption description.

Ok, I'll accept that I haven't provided enough information about what was going on.

The "no celebrities" rule probably has more to do with avoiding treading on Getty's toes than anything else, and I believe they said that big political names fell into that category.

I wouldn't have thought members of the Australian federal opposition, such as Bronwyn Bishop, Warren Truss, Sophie Mirrabella, or even their leader, Tony Abbott, would fit into the category of 'big' political names.  Probably half of the Australian population wouldn't know who some of them are!

I wish I could say Istock is the only Micro that is a pain when it comes to editorial. I am getting very close to saying screw it, and post them all as RM where captions aren't micro-managed.

That said, here is some more heartburn from Istock that I just can not figure out. They want EXIF data in the image, even though I have input everything required (or so I thought) through Deep Meta. I don't put any EXIF data in editorials for the precise reason, that every Micro wants captions, descriptions, and keywords different on these things...and so manual entry seemed to be the way to go. Of course eventually someone was going to scream WRONG! Sigh.

Here is the rejection...

The EXIF data of your photograph is missing and is required for this image to be approved at iStockphoto for editorial use.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The caption information for this submission is either too brief and does not describe the scene successfully, or it is unclear, or both. The caption is where you supply the 4 W's:
Where was the image made? When was the image made? Who or what is in the image?
What is happening in the image? Please provide adequate information, clearly, and entirely in English.

Please provide captions in this format:

City, Country ? Month Date, Year: Caption descriptive text.

Here is what they have on file through Deep Meta...

Harvest Moment Ice Sculpture Close-Up

Caption
Fairbanks, USA - March 5, 2011: Harvest Moment Ice Sculpture, 2011 World Ice Art Championships

Description:
Fairbanks, USA - March 5, 2011: Harvest Moment Ice Sculpture, 2011 World Ice Art Championships

Keywords:
alaska, art, blue, carving, championship, cold, competition, detail, fairbanks, fish, harvest, ice, illuminated, marine, night, outdoor, sculpture, scales, winter, sea, ocean

What . do they think is so important about the Exif data? As far as I can see there is only one fact in it that might interest them and that is the date, which depends entirely on what you tell your camera to say.

Is there anything else?

Archive film photo scans are obviously banned outright.