Quote from: jsnover on June 14, 2013, 14:02

I would urge anyone who gets the e-mail to complete the survey - perhaps we have their attention and perhaps some good outcome might result if they hear from enough users?

Even me? I'm going to say nice things though.

If you've already signed on for CC I'm guessing you won't get the survey, but sure, if you love it and think you always will you should tell them that

include the location - beach name if it's well known, country or region. Make sure  you're accurate (some people put all the sorts of places it could be versus where it actually is, and I think that's a very poor approach). Random rocky beach is less likely to sell than somewhere specific in my experience

In addition to the above suggestions, remember synonyms - sea, ocean, water for example; coast, coastline, waterfront, water's edge; sunset, twilight, dusk, evening

Remote, isolated, desolate - it certainly looks it to me.

Woo Yay

I assume you know that Inmagine is the parent company of 123rf and that they instituted an IS-like RC scheme this past January. They sell a lot of subs and are a rock bottom price outlet. I would make sure you know whether or not other Inmagine properties are counted as distribution (assuming you don't want your work offered on 123rf for subscriptions).

Thanks for posting this - I hadn't seen it. Great view of my hometown in another era. Hopelessly romantic view of all the pretty bits and the smart people, but lovely nevertheless.

Look at the caption on this image of "Urilux"

http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-1251598-happy-young-man-swimmimg-in-a-lake-outdoor-vacation.php?st=53d489f

...Whatever you do, you should take responsibility for you actions as anyone saying anything in the past - did. Got a ban? Deleted account? Choose your words wisely and the chat would become much more civil. Also, if you are backing something up, you should know the consequences involved or possible reaction from anyone involved in your comments. People, agencies, groups, anyone...

I think you're making some assumptions here that aren't warranted. People in some cases were not being rude or choosing their words rashly - it was two groups (contributors and agencies) facing off over unilateral power grabs by an agency. As I read what you've written, it suggests that the banned contributors deserved what they got.

I don't believe I have ever conducted myself online in a way that I wouldn't in person. I'm generally very polite although I have upset agencies by pointing out - civilly - the unfairness in what they have done/are doing. It was something of a shock to have Fotolia threaten to delete my account just for trying to stand up for ourselves as contributors. Knowing what I now know about most of the agencies, I realize that I'm swimming in a shark infested sea where ethics, fairness and long term thinking are in dangerously short supply.

It's all very well saying "this will pass" but if I were feeding my family with my stock income (I'm not; it's part time and a supplement), a lot of bad things could happen if agencies did to others what Getty did to Sean Locke (which was petty, vindictive and wholly targeted at intimidating other contributors, IMO).

I'd prefer a setting in which anonymity wasn't needed, but that's not the case.

I'll ignore the trolls and you ignore anyone who's anonymous. No need for making a huge deal out of this.

I have always used the same name here and at all the stock sites (except 123rf because they made my user name for me). I do have pretty strong opinions about forcing people's names to be visible, even to logged in users.

In an ideal world, there would be no problem with contributors expressing their views in public forums, even if they weren't supportive of an agency. It isn't an ideal world. Fotolia, among its flaws, has written that it reserves the right to close accounts for unsupportive behavior in public forums. It has done that. It deleted Bobby Deal's account (and he was clearly rude and negative, but I don't think that in any way justifies what Fotolia did). They threatened to close my account when I was actively advocating that contributors should withhold uploads when they introduced subscriptions (with rotten terms and royalties). I left to become exclusive at IS in August 2008 and some time after that (following a critical post here, I think over their games with payments in various currencies) they closed my account. When I contacted Fotolia on leaving IS exclusivity I was told they no longer wished to do business with me.

iStock has deleted site mail from my account (I think because they realized they'd embarrased themselves) and banned me from their forums for a mildly sarcastic remark about their failure to fix bugs (no personal insults or other poor behavior).

I would not want to give the agencies any more tools to hurt contributors than they already have. If you want to verify accounts, that's fine with me as long as:

1) no names are visible even to logged in users. Knowing that someone's verified as a contributor should be enough

2) Porfolio links are optional

I think you could solve rudeness and trolling problems via other avenues. Ban trolls and blowhards sooner, perhaps?

I'm quite happy to ignore the regular, repetitive trolls. I'd pay to have any quoting of an ignored user's post become invisible too - if you want to increase the premium member fee and make it a premium feature Or perhaps mark on the home page posts with ignored users' posts (with a count of same) - that way I can ignore the threads that become tit-for-tat p*33ing contents.

I find I can gather the useful content and ignore those who contribute more heat than light as things are now. Having a portfolio doesn't preclude someone being argumentative - we have plenty of examples of that here.

How . Jon Oringer manage to convince everyone in the whole world to join shutterstock for a meagre sum of 25 cents per Dl is magical.

What are the dumb contributors around the world thinking at that time?

And now at present, we have someone that offer 50% and everyone is complaining abt this and that.

You have to put Shutterstock's beginnings in context. At that time iStock was still very "young", as were Dreamstime and Canstock. Fotolia and Bigstock didn't show up until 2005. Although iStock had a head start on the other microstock agencies, it hadn't become so huge and successful that new agencies couldn't get a toe-hold. Just by starting an agency that was offering a subscription, it was offering something different from the other micros. No one knew for certain which of the agencies would take off - or if any of them would. The macro folks were busy poo-poohing the whole thing, suggesting all the microstock agencies would fail.

Fast forward to today and you have an agency-wannabe with some notion of attracting content without saying anything about how it will compete with many well-established agencies. This is no longer an emerging market or an experiment. We've also in the interim had several fly-by-night operations that made removing your content or getting paid a real problem, and that's made everyone cautious about where their content is uploaded.

And at the risk of being repetitive, 50% of zero is still zero - percentages are utterly irrelevant if there are no sales. Why would a buyer be interested in this agency? And if you can't answer that question, why would a contributor be interested in contributing?

They assured me I am opted out and yes, that the sale occurred beforehand.

They didn't comment on the price (to be fair, I didn't ask about that as I expected some nonsense answer). I assume any distributor can charge whatever they feel they can get away with. I just don't want to have any part of that sort of customer rip off.

Thanks Liz

This is the search string to look through forum messages via Google

site:istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php subscriptions

You can sort by date but what I was looking for was on the first page, so no need to

Regarding the bees; Rob just purchased 40,000 bees. He's been a bee keeper before, but is starting again. Apparently you buy bees by the pound and a 3lb package is about 10K bees (all info courtesy of Rob, 'cause I asked)

I would give Rob a good bye in the forums but I'm banned, so I can't.

I've said many times that he's a spectacular moderator - keeps things in order with unfailing politeness and a gentle approach. He moved on as moderator because of the awful changes in Sept 2010. The suits moved him out (along with the best selling Christmas tree picture on iStock) because of Stocksy.

All around, iStock's loss - not that Getty gives a rat's a**

I think UGC is user generated content. Old line agency speak for the great divide between "professional" photographers and crowdsourcing. I hate the term (and I don't think it really covers current agency content; it's no longer people selling their vacation snapshots)

They have clearly learned nothing about communication - it would have been trivial to send out something about this in the recent newsletter or an e-mail just about this. Two or three sentences would have done it.

Whether or not this is the case, their attitude conveys an impression that they don't much care about UGC contributors and keeping them informed.