If anyone ever gets a nasty personal message through this site, please report it.  It is not allowed and certainly not in the spirit of the community here.

As for getting nasty emails through regular emails.  I generally give such emails the respect they deserve.  I just press the delete key.  There is no point is responding as they'll love that and write up a response with double the poison.  A person who slings insults in an email for really, no reason, has problems - don't let them be one of yours.

Quote from: leaf on January 18, 2013, 14:22

Quote from: sharpshot on January 18, 2013, 12:54

I see a post by ClaridgeJ has -10 and has disappeared, so I've changed my mind, this is an excellent idea   I'm sure he will take it well (sarcasm emoticon)

... and just to be clear, the posts doesn't totally disappear or get deleted.  It just get's minimized and you have to click a button to view it.

and where is that button?

in the middle of the grey area where the post otherwise would be.

I see a post by ClaridgeJ has -10 and has disappeared, so I've changed my mind, this is an excellent idea   I'm sure he will take it well (sarcasm emoticon)

... and just to be clear, the posts doesn't totally disappear or get deleted.  It just get's minimized and you have to click a button to view it.

Quote from: jsnover on January 18, 2013, 01:32

Quote from: EmberMike on January 18, 2013, 00:04

I have no ill will towards Google over this deal. They did nothing wrong. They probably didn't know that Getty was orchestrating a shady and potentially illegal arrangement in terms of how this would affect the contributors whose images were included in the deal, but Google really wouldn't have had any way of knowing that.

It's none of their concern what sort of arrangement (or lack there of) Getty had worked out with us. Google needs images, Getty has lots of them, a deal is made. And Google would have no reason to suspect that the images were acquired in any underhanded way.

Google knows what they paid per image - $60 for the first round and with the $6 royalties showing up, I guess some cost them $30 each. Given they get the right to offer these images for free to millions of Google Drive users, they have to know that $60 is dirt cheap even if Getty gave us all the money - and they have to know Getty won't give us all the money.

You don't buy those kinds of rights for that amount of cash - not legitimately anyway.

So google paid $60 per image?? Is that listed somewhere on istock forums?   

That is just a guess.. assuming that $12 was a 20% payment, the original fee would be $60.

And here is the answer from the Colourbox team:

Quote

Yes, it is correct that currently you receive EUR 0.35 per downloaded vector or EUR 0.70 per video, regardless of whether a client purchases it as a single download or though a subscription. By far most of our images are downloaded as part of subscriptions where they pay less than 1 Euro per image - see more details here

Here is my answer:
Wow, just saying for us contributors, it is really the lowest payout seen in the industry for single image download. You make 10 EUR and we make .20 or .35 EUR... This is putting me off. 0.70 EUR for Video subscription when other sites who has more traffic (Shutterstock) gives an average of 18.00$ per video download, no thanks again.

I will send them a thread to this page. They seem like a good agency but a 4% payout on single download and 0.70eur per video is a ripoff.

Colourbox pays as low as 3.5% royalties... I'm not interested in that.

Quote from: EmberMike on January 18, 2013, 00:04

I have no ill will towards Google over this deal. They did nothing wrong. They probably didn't know that Getty was orchestrating a shady and potentially illegal arrangement in terms of how this would affect the contributors whose images were included in the deal, but Google really wouldn't have had any way of knowing that.

It's none of their concern what sort of arrangement (or lack there of) Getty had worked out with us. Google needs images, Getty has lots of them, a deal is made. And Google would have no reason to suspect that the images were acquired in any underhanded way.

I understand your point, but I think you're letting Google off the hook way too easily. If you tell me you have a great deal on a 60" flat screen LED TV for $25, I have to know that there's something amiss.

Google knows what they paid per image - $60 for the first round and with the $6 royalties showing up, I guess some cost them $30 each. Given they get the right to offer these images for free to millions of Google Drive users, they have to know that $60 is dirt cheap even if Getty gave us all the money - and they have to know Getty won't give us all the money.

You don't buy those kinds of rights for that amount of cash - not legitimately anyway.

except we have no idea what Google paid.  Maybe we got 20%, or maybe there is a few million in advertising credits or some other bonus type thing Google had to swap for the images... or a deal where Getty is the exclusive contributor for stock photos for google drive.  This could just be a little sampling to see if customers really want the images and the value of Google Drive is raised.  Once Google sees that customers are interested in using the photos they will be willing to pay 4x the price.  Now we can give away our images for $48....

... where was I now..

... oh yeah, deactivating files.

Here's a nice little talk about using a ringflash ... for those who are interested.

Using a Ring Flash in the studio

I thought the voting could be open to anyone. Agencies could try to send people here to vote for them, but as it will be anonymous it could easily backfire for "bad" agencies.

Also because there are so many contributors any attempt to rig the vote by sending staff to vote should be a drop in the ocean, although in this case how to avoid someone setting up many accounts to rig the vote?

One vote per IP address is one way to at least limit the number of spam votes. 

Thanks for the list.

What should they be called?  I've started a thread talking about it
http://www.microstockgroup.com/site-related/yearly-stock-awards-what-should-they-be-called/

Quote from: leaf on January 17, 2013, 04:30

...If a posts gets enough negatives (it is currently set at -10) it disappears altogether. .. or almost.  It gets minimized and you have to click it to view the post.

I really don't like that idea.  Sometimes people say something very unpopular but it turns out to be correct.  You do a good job of editing and deleting posts and we have the ignore button, isn't that enough?

You are free to choose yourself how you want the posts to be affected.  Greyed out, minimized or nothing.  You can do so on the bottom select box on this page.
http://www.microstockgroup.com/profile/?area=theme

I have yet to see a well thought out post that was simply against everyone else's view that got -10 votes, or even a lot of negatives.  Generally is is the ridiculous troll type posts that receive that many negatives.  If a post is controversial it will get lots of +'s and -'s and probably end up around 0

If your post gets enough hearts, you'll get a nice surprise.  What am I talking about?..... well, you'll just have to wait and find a great post to know what I mean.

Let me know your thoughts. Good idea, dumb idea?

Would some of the people against be swayed if it was only positive awards?

Most official industry awards would only be for the good stuff, then there's non official community raspberry type ones.

So the official MSG awards voted on could all be for the best XXX

Then if the community here wanted to do an "alternative" set of awards just for fun (e.g. biggest cheapskate) that can come down the line.

I am sure we can get some of the sites to display our badges with pride, like manufacturers do with product awards ("MSG stock site of the year 2013")

Yes, I think that's a good idea.  I'd rather foster postive ideas / awards as apposed to raspberry awards as anything 'official' from the site.  If members wanted to run a casual 'worst' vote then that could be something different as you suggested.