The general idea is that buyers/designers dont use categories to find images. Agencies should do away with them altogether. But it looks pretty on the site, to offer categories. Its a pain in the hole, thats all categories are.

When Peter at Stockfresh built that site he did away with categories and openly stated in MSG that they don't bring any value. I agree Ponke, they are extra work for no return on our time.....that I know of anyway. It would be really be interesting to hear site owners/key people chime in on categories.

I don't understand why they aren't using categories in the search.

on eBay if you do a search you can refine it further via categories.
on iS all the categories are listed so if you click one - thinking it'll narrow the results - it can result in a 0 items page. then you have to unclick that out of the search terms (once you work out to do that, the first time I just started from scratch). sure, it does refine the search if you click on one that has files in it, but it's unsophisticated.

I'd still vote Fotolia's categories as far more annoying.

Unless things have changed, at fotolia selecting a catagory is not required in order to submit an image.

I havent' found that. And once you select a category you have to keep going and choose sub categories, even when they don't really fit.

It's not needed, but you have to click None. That was put into place a few months ago. Before that, you could ignore them altogether.

I have always thought categories was a waste of time. Only thing that makes me wonder is on DT where they show the words used in a search. What about the ones without keywords. Did they get there via scrolling categories?

If we are talking about iStock rejections... Is it only me having 100% accepted, I mean is it normal since now? It is absolutely first time (joined in 2008 and always had some % rejected), it is big batch, and I just don't know what to think... to be affraid of new coming soon or what??

Does istock send test results on weekends as well ?

Yes.

If we are talking about iStock rejections... Is it only me having 100% accepted, I mean is it normal since now? It is absolutely first time (joined in 2008 and always had some % rejected), it is big batch, and I just don't know what to think... to be affraid of new coming soon or what??

Yes.  Recently the acceptance rate for me has gone up. I thought I had improved me skills and now know what agencies are lookin for till I saw your post.