Thanks for posting - received in the newsletter too.
The same old ahhh's ohhh's on the forum, but there is nothing new :-)
The wrong keyword abbreviation still isn't fixed, however I really expected that this system receives an update...
(Example: cutter - Cutting (Moving Activity) | Cutter Insect Repellant (Insect Repellant); How do I mean cutter = work tool?)

.

I wonder if they will do anything about the spamming, or the files that have been keyword wikied already.

I've suggested giving an incentive for people to wiki keywords, e.g. 20c for wiki-ing correctly (identifying a file which needs corrections) but a fine of e.g. $1 for falsely identifying, to avoid malpractice and timewasting.
That would get rid of wrong nouns at least, which would be a fantastic start.
Probably people wouldn't wiki the more subjective words, although many spammers just write any old rubbish in their keywords. In more generous mood, I'll assume laziness rather than malice, and imagine they have a batch of very varied subject matter and somehow keyword them in Bridge or LR all with the same keywords then upload them without any mental engagement.

(My best keywording story I haven't told for a while. A bloke had a bird photo which had the bird, which was really the only subject of the photo, misidentified. I emailled him really sweetly telling him what it was, and got a reply back more or less saying, "Where's the love? You didn't say you liked the image! [1] What do you think is so great about being better than a nine year old?" (the latter totally flummoxed me, but upon enquiry, he had got his 9yo niece to look up the bird for him).
[1] Which wasn't even true, as I had a formula for when I thought it was a genuine mistake, which was something like (years ago, I can't remember exactly) "I just saw your lovely photo titled X. I see you have identified the bird/animal as a Y but it's really a Z", usually with a reference to show the differences."

Gosh, wasn't I nice in those days? See what iS did for me 

Announced  here and in the newsletter:
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=357600&page=1
Hope keywords are going to be inspected at upload again, but there are so many thousands of images with appalling keywords, it'll be an uphill struggle.

It's too much information for too many people, and there's no interface to implement it. 

First off, meta-data about people should be derived from the model releases attached to the image, or in the case of editorial, some sort of click.  Relying on 200,000 people to remember the difference between mid-adult and mature-adult, is crazy, let alone imagine the buyer has knowledge of these terms.  Buyers don't search on "small group of objects" - ever.   Nor "large group of people".  But they might use a slider or other interface to indicate the number of whatevers they are looking for.  Buyers don't know "directly below", "focus on the foreground", etc.  And contributors around the world aren't going to be able to indicate that kind of meta without a consistent visual interface.

"Day In The Life Series" ?

They're still using keywording for something it isn't meant or able to do, across "the crowd".

For me to go back to put "nobody" into a thousand images will not happen. I think I recall many years ago the community asked for a tool to do such. The tool was promised and then dropped because of fear of to many people would use it for spam instead of doing good.

What I saw, and never have done in my many landscape and travel shots, is to put "nobody" as a keyword. I must be missing out on thousands of dollars of income with that one mistake!
Steve

Oh no, everybody knows my sneaky little secret now!

Quote

Well, you can do it in Deep Meta in about 3 clicks.

I use Deepmeta, but hadn't spotted that. I was looking at it just now - how do I add a single new keyword to multiple files? I think that once it is in there, I can select them all and click on the "Send File data to iStock" option. But what is the process for adding a new keyword to many files?

Steve

Import a new image - any image.  Put "nobody" as a keyword.  Then copy N paste that image (just keywords, no overwriting) to every image you want the word on.  Be careful.  There's no going back!  Well, you can retrieve info back from iStock if you screw up, but once it's uploaded, you'd have to individually go in and remove.

Thanks - I was typing at the same time! Sorry for that

Steve

The only contribs who may gain from this new guide are the ones who are 'honest' in their keywording.  Looking at the amount of spamming going on this would be the minority of contributors.

I've reported some of the most flagrant instances I've come across but no action has ever been taken.  Either iStock doesn't care or can't be bothered due to a lack of manpower.

Quote from: mlwinphoto on November 19, 2013, 00:13

The only contribs who may gain from this new guide are the ones who are 'honest' in their keywording.  Looking at the amount of spamming going on this would be the minority of contributors.

I've reported some of the most flagrant instances I've come across but no action has ever been taken.  Either iStock doesn't care or can't be bothered due to a lack of manpower.

I think people spamming the search aren't gaining much or anything at all on iStock, maybe it works on the sub sites where buyers likely download a few images partly because they already paid for them and they search by newest more often.  For iStock good keywording is important, not because bad keywords mess up the search (they can't too much since relevancy is attached to each keyword in the main searches) but because that's the only way to get your images found, any extra information is useful for people trying to make a living at this.

well, maybe they have fixed things, but back when I actually tried to figure out how the search and keywording worked I found I HAD to spam to get my images found on the logical keywords (not always, but on a few of my best sellers). Otherwise the CV would change the obvious logical keyword searches to something else. Maybe this is fixed, but going on everything else I doubt it.

Quote from: pancaketom on November 19, 2013, 01:03

Quote from: tickstock on November 19, 2013, 00:24

Quote from: mlwinphoto on November 19, 2013, 00:13

The only contribs who may gain from this new guide are the ones who are 'honest' in their keywording.  Looking at the amount of spamming going on this would be the minority of contributors.

I've reported some of the most flagrant instances I've come across but no action has ever been taken.  Either iStock doesn't care or can't be bothered due to a lack of manpower.

I think people spamming the search aren't gaining much or anything at all on iStock, maybe it works on the sub sites where buyers likely download a few images partly because they already paid for them and they search by newest more often.  For iStock good keywording is important, not because bad keywords mess up the search (they can't too much since relevancy is attached to each keyword in the main searches) but because that's the only way to get your images found, any extra information is useful for people trying to make a living at this.

well, maybe they have fixed things, but back when I actually tried to figure out how the search and keywording worked I found I HAD to spam to get my images found on the logical keywords (not always, but on a few of my best sellers). Otherwise the CV would change the obvious logical keyword searches to something else. Maybe this is fixed, but going on everything else I doubt it.

Just looking at your most popular images, the top keywords seem to be relevant.  I don't think you had to spam, although I see you did do some of that too.  Can you point out some cases where you think spamming got you sales?

It seems to be working now - good for them - the 2 files I remember having problems with were the mushroom cloud fireball one and one with a rope loop (since removed).

Quote from: ShadySue on November 18, 2013, 19:01

Quote from: icefront on November 18, 2013, 18:50

Thanks for posting - received in the newsletter too.
The same old ahhh's ohhh's on the forum, but there is nothing new :-)
The wrong keyword abbreviation still isn't fixed, however I really expected that this system receives an update...
(Example: cutter - Cutting (Moving Activity) | Cutter Insect Repellant (Insect Repellant); How do I mean cutter = work tool?)

I've never heard about a cutter, [�]

Seems so... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_cutter
https://encrypted.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=cutter&tbs=imgo:1&sout=1

Do you call it "utility knife" in pure english?

It seems so...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_cutter