I generally hit the agree if the person said something close to what my comment would have been or if I agree. I "disagree" a lot less, but usually it is when I think they made a wrong statement.

It's not just a number's game. It matters a lot what kind of content you upload. With 600 photos+clips online, I get close to 1k downloads on SS:
May: 941
April: 946
March: 1026

Unless you are deleting files, that is a poor trend. Especially if you are uploading a lot...  I guess deleting files is going to hurt your long term sales trends too.

Still, it does matter a lot what content you have and its placement in the searches.

I am guessing this was a mistake on FT's part. But the way they reacted to it was pretty telling. They have a long history of doing questionable practices and things that are very damaging to contributors and usually they eventually admit it is their policy and tell us to take it or leave it or do a very small back pedal.

Or maybe someone tried to pull a fast one and their lawyer told them that they would lose this time, so they reversed course. Their credibility is long gone and it is going to take a whole lot to get any back.

In any case I bet it is only a matter of time before the next sketchy "partner" or "exciting opportunity" or "glitch" or whatever they might call it.

other than PD which died the 22nd for me this last week has been pretty good for me - Monday was another weekend day, but the rest of the days have been ticking along nicely... This is in comparison to the rest of the year which has been rather poor compared to 2012-2014. Maybe they shook the search snowglobe and a few flakes went my way, or maybe my expectations have been lowered enough that this looks ok.

I think the toxic RC system (I stopped uploading) and then forcing us into PP was the worst. It made me pull most of my port and lowered my income a bit and theirs a lot. It was nice to have all my remaining images in P+ while that lasted though.

Part of it is how do you feel about getting 15% of a sale and .27 (or whatever it is there) for sub sales and supporting the company that treats contributors that way. Unless you get lots and lots of sales at IS which seems unlikely these days you will probably never move out of the bottom tier.

As far as short term $ goes, they probably are in the upper tier (top 3 or 4 at least), but they are also a pain to deal with - both for uploading and just about everything else.

yep, that pretty much hits the nail on the head. Number of images going up faster than number of sales.

Under "Contributors" PP 6-7 or so it is unclear when you are talking about images licensed per year and images licensed per quarter.

Most wildlife photographers are not starving artists only because they have some other source of income. The time and equipment (not to mention skill) required to get top notch wildlife pics do not match up with the return, especially from microstock. Lots of people spend their time and money on things that do not provide an adequate monetary return.

To some extent as long as the conditions are not hidden I think that if you sign up for it, then you have decided it is fair.

When sites move the goalposts and change conditions then that is not really fair - sort of like a bait and switch. Sure, you could just delete everything and leave (at least with some sites), but after all the work, that isn't really fair. I can't think of any major sites that haven't made changes to the detriment of the artists. Some have been quite egregious such as FT, IS.

The other thing is that originally I at least was getting .25 for sub sales that were 4 mp taken with a point and shoot. Technically my images are much better now, but the compensation hasn't increased as much as the quality. I don't know that that has anything to do with fair, but it is a fact.

I just analyzed a collection of all images that I had uploaded in 2014... took the total amount of income, divided it by the number of images, and then by the #of months (16 since jan 2014) and the results were a tiny bit better than my Q1 images R.P.I. 

That's probably not an accurate way of gauging it, but it's something.  For instance, some images were uploaded in January, while others were uploaded near the end of the year.  Some were live in the collection much longer.

Paralysis of analysis.  On a positive note, I've uploaded more images in Q1 2015 than all of 2014.  Time for me to go edit some more and feed the beast before I end up losing my afternoon to youtube or social media.

I have made collections on SS of images uploaded each year. it is interesting. I totally agree that things would be super painful without the income from legacy uploads.

so does it drop site ranking on search from a large screen, or only in the search from a small screen (which makes sense, since you might not want to see a non-mobile friendly page on your mobile device)?

I think I just threw up a little in my mouth...

I hope most photo buyers aren't searching for images from their phones though...