^Send a mail to contributor relations.  

Different note, I just had some files rejected as editorial that said I should remove logos and resubmit as regular RF but the photos were of paintings that I think are not nearly old enough to be public domain, what am I supposed to make of that?  It's funny after all the images of things in the public domain being rejected for copyright I get this.

I got one of these. I wrote to Scout explaining why I thought the image should be editorial, and am awaiting a reply since 13th Feb.
I believe there was someone who wrote early on in the editorial forum about an image he'd had rejected from the main collection because of IP a while back, which he submitted as editorial and was told to place it in the main collection.
I had another editorial submitted rejected saying that 'set up' photos should go to the main collection. Well, firstly, it wasn't a set up photo, essentially it was a grab shot, in that I was photographing a friend casually (I guess consensual candid' would cover it) when her husband, who was also photographing her, shouted her name and she turned and smiled. She is happy for her photo to be used in editorial, but not for other uses. Thirdly there are three Cessna planes in full view in the photo. I guess I'll need to get it released by Support and send it to Alamy.

I'm still trying to work out what it means when he says they are aiming to restore trust but not the same kind of trust as before.
How many kinds of trust are there?

On iStock, editorial is really editorial-lite (TM, sjlocke)
So maybe 'Stock trust = 'trust-lite'.

That's always been what's been said on the iStock forums, hence the constant obsessing over Best Match.
Always surprised me, because when I was teaching, I spent hours (of my own time!) scouring e.g. Microsoft clip art for images for my presentations and worksheets, as did most of my colleagues.
On Alamy only today, I saw someone had viewed almost 9000 images, and zoomed on 185 on a very broad search term. I often see broad searches there go into the thousands, but of course others that look only on the first page (usually on narrower searches)
Maybe people working on tight budgets or deadlines presumably do view fewer files.
Interesting that they would move to another agency rather than keep going on the file.
The new iStock best match (as it currently stands) is going to h*ck them off, majorly.

Quote from: Susan S. on March 17, 2011, 05:48

Try searching for baby foot. You get 400 images of table soccer, presumably some weird CV translation of foosball as none appear to have baby foot as a keyword. To get what you want you have to search for baby and foot, explicitly putting in the "and"

Wikipedia - Among French-style players it is known as baby-foot. Foosball is also known as "fu�ball"

And of course, it is really 'table football'. :-)

This Best Match is horrible.  My brick wall picture that has sold over 2000 times, 44.3 times per month, is #2 in overall sales for the keyword "brick wall" is now in 1945th place on the best match page 10 with 200 images per page.  The one right before mine in 1944th place by someone else also exclusive has sold over 1200 times.  How can the two most relevant images for "brick wall" be buried so far back.  Our two images are the two best sellers featuring just a brick wall, this is crazy.  I'm sending a sitemail now but since I can't post in the forums there maybe someone else can post some terrible results for them to look at.  Anyone else noticing other crazy results with the Best Match??

Oh yes.
According to RogerMexico, they have moved from 'high keyword relevance' to 'median keyword relevance', though why this was thought to be a good idea, he didn't mention.
Results are quite different, even more than before, if you use the keyword relevancy slider.
Also, on the iStock thread which is discussing this, there seems to be some sort of geographical factor built into your search, so that if other people from your area preferred certain pics, they will show higher, so your results may not be the same as mine. If that worked, it would be good, as all these popular US-style images aren't as popular in the UK. I guess in reality, it'll be like Amazon's 'suggestions' of what "other people who bought this also bought ..." - some relevant, some crazy.
I've noticed that some 'median relevancy' searches are just totally, totally wrong, i.e. some keyword spamming is being rewarded. This makes me furious.
On one search I did on 'young woman' (can't remember where my slider was!), I noticed that Sean had one photo on the first page, about 3/4 down the page of 200 results.
Oddly one of my images seems to be favoured in the best match for at least two of its keywords, but my other 'usual tests' are many pages down.
They seem to have put editorial images in the middle of results, which for me at least is better than right at the end, because until the situation is resolved, I can't opt my editorials into the EL program, which previously automatically dumped them at the end of best match.

Oh, and because for some reason, as RM explained, they've biassed the best match towards 'median kerword relevancy' rather than 'high keyword relevancy' (the reason for that decision would be ... ?) there are some really bad results, with spammed or irrelvant images coming before relevant images, sometimes even in the first position.
Is there really any point in anything at iStock any more?

Quote from: lisafx on March 16, 2011, 17:58

Quote from: ShadySue on March 16, 2011, 17:52

Seems to be a huge bias against exclusive files.
Is that a heavy hint?
Update: not on all searches.
Seems to be very random overall according to the search term/s used. I've just tried a different search and most of the top were Exclusive.
Seem to have listened to the buyers re Vetta. I have a Vetta with 19 dls several lines below my similar non-Vetta with 2 dls.

FWIW, my sales today are in the toilet.  If the bias was really heavily against exclusives I would have expected to see some benefit.  

I tried several searches (e.g. Glasgow) where I have files, all of which pushed exclusive files right down.
I then tried 'young woman' and that was heavily weighted towards exclusives.
Didn't the change just happen within the past couple of hours?

Seems to be a huge bias against exclusive files.
Is that a heavy hint?
Update: not on all searches.
Seems to be very random overall according to the search term/s used. I've just tried a different search and most of the top were Exclusive.
Seem to have listened to the buyers re Vetta. I have a Vetta with 19 dls several lines below my similar non-Vetta with 2 dls.

new files are buried - best match sort is more like by downlaods.

It seems weird. One of my 'test files' has moved up to position 1 for a particular keyword combo (it was 6th at the weekend).
However, my second best seller overall has moved below another 10 I have with similar keywords (in fact, to 887 out of 918 for the main keyword), even the one with no sales, and below some badly DAd images which don't even show the main keyword - and many by non-exclusives, even older and with 0 sales.. Hey, wooooo, that's been a big-seller, iStock - benefitting you more than me. And oddly it's way higher in my own port's best match than it was this morning. i even checked in case the EL option had become unchecked, as it's not an editorial, but it was still opted in.

Is it possible that your file has been hotlinked by someone/s very popular? That's easy to sleuth from your own website, but not from iStock.
I've got a file with some sales but a huge number of views, and since then sales have tailed off. I don't suspect internal sabotage, as there isn't really a 'similar' file, so I'm going with the hotlinking theory.

Just a thought:
Assuming you've got models, I don't see anything in the photo in the top shot that would mean it actually had to be shot in an actual doctor's office.

From this thread by Istockphoto's Inspector:
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=314232&page=1

"Yep, if us "eagle eyed" inspectors get a glimpse of an identifiable title, author, publishing house logo, or cover artwork
we will send it back for retouching, sorry. Remember that some publishing houses also have a readily identifiable "corporate style and layout"..."

Dorling Kindersley publishers http://www.dk.com/ seems to have very identifiable style illustrations.
Just wandering how these illustrations can be exclusive then?
http://www.istockphoto.com/Dorling_Kindersley

Funny handshakes.
That, and the sound of bawbees hitting the bucket.

IS better hope this call satisfies all the participants or it will backfire on them.  Basically they'll be able to come back and say "No, I'm not satisfied" but won't be able to explain why.

I'm imagining (but who can say with iStock?) that on this issue alone (the fraud) they feel they are in more of an 'in the right' position than most of us have been willing to concede.
But we will see what the five have to say, and we'll all be told in the fullness of time. I hope.