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Messages - Lee@Canva
76
« on: January 04, 2015, 23:29 »
If we were to reconsider this policy we'd probably remove sub-$100 payouts entirely. It's only been used a total of 5 times in hundreds of payments.
It was intended to be a way to let people who are changing their circumstances get at their earnings while discouraging the practice in general. We didn't want to be one of those nasty agencies that never lets you cash out your $98 of royalties.
It's higher than our costs as an intentional disincentive.
We actually have WAY more people who've set their payout threshold UP than down.
77
« on: December 30, 2014, 14:59 »
Lee - slightly different topic.
If I wish to delete and existing approved image and replace it with an upgraded and better (hopefully) version, what is the proper procedure to do this?
We have some very fancy plans for this scenario, but unfortunately the functionality hasn't been built yet. For now, just upload the new one and deactivate the old one when the new one passes through review. You can email me the Media ID for a complete deletion if you want (the button for that doesn't work yet). Old un-reviewed images - from next week we'll be working through the backlog from the back, so you'll notice review taking longer overall, but they won't be out of order anymore.
 Happy to hear it. I realize it will all take a while to clear out, but things will be moving.
Thanks Jo Ann, we're counting on your patience.
78
« on: December 29, 2014, 12:41 »
Hi everyone, I understand the pain - it's awesome that we're already so important to you. Thanks for your patience. Here's some updates:
Disappearing images - these are the images affected by the missing watermarks. They'll come back in the next week with watermarks.
Old un-reviewed images - from next week we'll be working through the backlog from the back, so you'll notice review taking longer overall, but they won't be out of order anymore.
79
« on: December 27, 2014, 22:31 »
Cheers thanks Lee, thanks for getting onto it so quickly.
Just a quick update. All affected images have been temporarily 'deactivated' so they won't appear in searches. A separate bug means they still appear on the media detail page, but because it's not obvious to users, that page is very rarely used. This bug has also been found and a fix is being written for it. We expect both fixes to be in place in the next few hours. Once the bugs are fixed, we'll re-generate the affected images *with* the watermark, overwrite the un-watermarked versions, and then re-activate. I'll keep you updated as all this progresses.
80
« on: December 27, 2014, 21:45 »
Hi Lee, I uploaded 15 images via FTP yesterday but they are not showing in my port yet. However, they seem gone from the server as Filezilla shows an empty folder. Is there an issue with FTP? Should I upload again? 4 images of a cross and 11 images of a woman silhouette dancing and jumping at sunset. Thanks for checking. Happy holidays.
Ingestion is still a manual process that doesn't happen on weekends, public holidays and some other days. Images are moved as soon as the upload is complete, so you'll *always* have an empty FTP folder at Canva (at least on our current system). So there's never any reason to panic that images didn't appear, and re-uploading them won't change anything. Happy holidays to you too. Is Canva down right now? I was able to log in to the buyer page, but was unable to bring up my contributor account. Then when I tried to log in again from scratch, all I could get was an error screen saying something went wrong and to try again (error 418), which only resulted in the same error.
Canva has hiccups all the time, but if you can log into your account (there's no such this as a "buyer account", only accounts and brands) then you can access your brand. It's in the menus in the top-right, but you have to click "Personal" and switch to your brand first. If you still can't get in, send me an email with the error you get. Thanks. I was able to get back in this afternoon. Sales both today and Christmas day.
Question for Lee. In my portfolio, there are several buttons on the right side of each image. I know many of these may not be active yet. Two of these are cancel and deactivate. Are these two buttons live and, if so, what would happen if they were selected for those images hung up in the review queue process? Conversely, what would happen if new images were uploaded which are the same as those in limbo due to the old review bug? Just trying to find a way to get images on line that have been hung up for 3+ months.
There's nothing you can do to get images reviewed faster, but deactivating will certainly put them to the back of the queue. Sorry, no good news for you on that one.
81
« on: December 26, 2014, 23:41 »
Hey Lee, just had a bunch of images approved over the last 2 days, but it seems they don't have watermarks?
Also, just to make your day, a few of the titles were changed too!
But the bigger issue is the missing watermark - could you take a look?
We're aware of the watermarking issue and a fix is being rolled out now. Reviewing was halted when we found out but it'll resume once the fix has been implemented and tested. The affected images will be regenerated with watermarks at the same time. Any designs containing the affected images won't be altered - they'll just automatically appear with watermarks. I'll update again here when it's all done. As for the changed titles I'll investigate to see if they were done before or if more heads need to roll.
82
« on: December 18, 2014, 12:49 »
I guess my portfolio must suck big time for these supergiants of microstock as I got a quick slapdown after enquiring about being a contributor for them.
Oh well! 
Actually, you got a polite decline. Rejecting portfolios doesn't imply we think we're giants of microstock, just that we're aiming for a higher-than-typical quality level. We indeed reject portfolios that "suck big time", but we also reject some pretty decent portfolios too. Some rejected contributors ask for advice on what we think they need to improve most. I think that's quite a smart way to respond.
83
« on: December 16, 2014, 17:42 »
Just to chime in Lee, I have had 2 images approved that have definitely had the titles and description data changed by the reviewer. I'm looking at the IPTC as I write this, and can see the difference.
It didn't fuss me too much, as it was the specific place details that were changed to something much more generic. But it was changed.
Leave it with me. Heads will roll!
84
« on: December 16, 2014, 17:20 »
That just gives me the "backstage" look. I want a link to "canva.com/seanlockephotography" - my online "storefront".
That link doesn't exist yet but I'll have it added to the list. There's very little exposure to that page for customers, which is why it's never been a priority. They have to hover over a thumb in the search results, click the little 'i' icon to go to the image detail page, and then click through from there to your profile via your brandname. And there's good reason for why it's never been a priority: if they find an image, there's no way to get it into a design from that page (yet). It's not like a typical agency where they can download it, or add it to a lightbox. In Canva they have to be in the design to add an image. So on Canva, it's not at all a "storefront", but we have big plans for making it more functional and enabling customers to flag images they like from those pages. Stay tuned.
85
« on: December 16, 2014, 16:34 »
What does the rejection reason (S) mean?
Soft reject. The actual reason isn't currently displayed. We'll be adding that soon - it's close to the top of the list.
86
« on: December 16, 2014, 09:03 »
Where all the best bugs are. 
87
« on: December 16, 2014, 08:42 »
Thanks for the quick response.
It's certainly no general problem with Metadata import, I just see some changed titles / descriptions (slight changes, I'm absolutely fine with that) and had the feeling that single keywords are missing (things like specific location information on wildlife shots, which I think are useful), but I'll check the keywords later today and see how much that really is (need to do some comparisons with my saved IPTC data at home).
Anyway, it was mainly curiosity on my part.
Ok, cool. The keywords we're removing now aren't anything that specific. They're mainly commonly-searched single keywords. This time of year everyone puts "snowflake" on every image. Title: Team of Business People Meeting in a Boardroom. Keywords: business, snowflake. It's highly unlikely specific place names have been removed intentionally by us.
88
« on: December 16, 2014, 08:07 »
Now that some of my newer uploads have been approved, it looks like you are changing the metadata (title, description, keywords). Is this true? I have seen a few files where keywords seem to have disappeared...
@Lee: can you confirm?
And if so, why do you delete keywords?
No, we don't change titles or descriptions. If they're not in the IPTC our reviewers will make up some basic ones for you, but you're welcome - even encouraged - to overwrite it with your own. Our reviewers are instructed not to invest too much time in it, so it's always very basic. If you're 100% sure the metadata is embedded and it's coming through as totally different, let me know. To my knowledge we haven't had any issues with IPTC metadata extraction. We have a process where some keywords we consider irrelevant are removed, but this is part of search optimisation, not review, and so isn't happening very much. It'll also just be a keyword here and there, not all keywords. If you're finding that most of your keywords are gone, it's likely an issue with the embedded metadata as above with the title & description. In which case, also please let me know. Just so you know, almost all agencies delete keywords as part of search optimisation. Sometimes they're removed from the list and you can add them back again if you notice. Other times they have a separate 'exclude keywords' field which isn't shown to the contributor, so you'll still see the keyword on the list, but it'll never appear in search results for that keyword.
89
« on: December 15, 2014, 09:36 »
Is it possible to get a filter on our portfolio, as in
Rejected
Approved
Queued
Pending Cut-out
Missing Meta Data
?
Shouldn't be too difficult and time consuming to get that integrated. At the moment the portfolio is hard to navigate. I understand the need to please buyers, but pleasing contributors is as important to the key of success.
Thanks for considering.
It's on the list.
90
« on: December 11, 2014, 16:02 »
I asked Lee something along this line a month ago in an e-mail. Basically suggested that all those images that got hung up in the early processing glitches and are just sitting there be given priority and reviewed ahead of other new submittals as they were all delayed for reasons not of our making, but due to problems at Canva. I've got quite a few in this category with little hope they will be reviewed in my lifetime as the current procedure seems to be to try and work them in from time-to-time with no particular urgency. I've stopped uploading until they get their act together and clear out this old backlog that is just languishing. Lee's response to the e-mail was simply to acknowledge it's receipt, nothing more.
That doesn't sound like me. Please resend it and I'll ensure you get a suitable response.
We don't have any facility to prioritise reviews. If we were to build one, it would take away from what we're building on the front end to help sell more licenses. So the aforementioned priorities come into play and we elect to sell more and just deal with the temporarily disordered review queue. We appreciate your understanding on this. In a month or two everything will be back to regular chaos.
Apart from the same issue everyone seems to agree on (the unfairness of not prioritizing submittals) the question I asked was would it be better to delete those images that have been hung up due to the early system bugs and re-submit them? If new submittals are being reviewed, even if in a random manner, while those hung up are not being reviewed, would this not be a better strategy on the part of contributors to try and get something through rather than leave these early images alone with no idea of when (if ever) they could be reviewed? Note I'm not referring to images that are simply taking a long time to get through the queue, but to those that were submitted back in September and October that were caught up in a system bug that categorized them incorrectly and now they have been moved into some sort of limbo.
I'd love to, but unfortunately it doesn't work that way.
91
« on: December 10, 2014, 10:42 »
I dont understand why the comment Jo Ann made is laughed off, Lee, its a genuine concern.
I dismissed the suggestion, not the concern. We know it sucks that images are not being reviewed in order. As I've already made clear, we considered the alternatives and chose the current path. No offence was intended in dismissing the suggestion, but it's all softs of impractical.
92
« on: December 10, 2014, 08:39 »
I like to congratulate CANVA and all their team for the excellent work.
In the last years almost all the new agencies that I have join were a failure, that I have regretted some months later.
CANVA, have some problems yet, but I agree with their priorities, even that they must find a way to work the long time for "Pending cut-out" images.
CANVA is a success agency in this bad times at microstock industry.
For me CANVA in now number 3 in profits (only with half of my portfolio, the other half are "Pending cut-out" images), and with the latest changes at istock and the performance at CANVA this month, soon CANVA will be number 2 only beaten by Shutterstock.
Lee: I am happy the he have that Skype talk ;-)
Thanks Helder! Ready to Skype when you are. I'm in UTC-3 working 9 - 5 most days. Canva have huge sales potential and by my opinion Canva have to include ASAP more RF licenses, because it would be a shame to not use this momentum
Congratulations Lee and to everybody in Canva
Thanks Deyan. Our other RF and extended licenses are on the priority list and getting closer to the top each day. What's great is they are building a buyer base whose expectation is limited one time use for $1. So an RF license there will get to be very much higher priced.
That was our strategy from the start, though we have to take into account competitive pricing. There's nothing stopping people buying licenses elsewhere and uploading them to Canva (which already happens a lot) other than convenience, so we can't price it too far from the market. ... and only those submitted over the past two weeks remain in the queue. (Submitted is not the same as uploaded) As we start catching up, all images will be re-submitted to the queue (by us, there's nothing you need to do) so they'll be reviewed. The order in which they were uploaded won't have any impact on the position they take in the queue. That's why they're being reviewed out of order, and this will continue until we clear the backlog.
I understand everything you've said, and I appreciate that the site's priorities are not accepting new content at the moment, but in the interests of fairness, I would ask you to halt all reviews until you're ready to put all the older files back in the hopper. I can handle waiting, but the unfairness of reviewing other content that just happened to get uploaded in the last two weeks while my (and lots of other patient contributors') content is in limbo is hard to accept.
"Halt reviewing"?? Ha ha, nice one! I asked Lee something along this line a month ago in an e-mail. Basically suggested that all those images that got hung up in the early processing glitches and are just sitting there be given priority and reviewed ahead of other new submittals as they were all delayed for reasons not of our making, but due to problems at Canva. I've got quite a few in this category with little hope they will be reviewed in my lifetime as the current procedure seems to be to try and work them in from time-to-time with no particular urgency. I've stopped uploading until they get their act together and clear out this old backlog that is just languishing. Lee's response to the e-mail was simply to acknowledge it's receipt, nothing more.
That doesn't sound like me. Please resend it and I'll ensure you get a suitable response. We don't have any facility to prioritise reviews. If we were to build one, it would take away from what we're building on the front end to help sell more licenses. So the aforementioned priorities come into play and we elect to sell more and just deal with the temporarily disordered review queue. We appreciate your understanding on this. In a month or two everything will be back to regular chaos.
93
« on: December 07, 2014, 12:43 »
Hi guys, thanks for your concerns and questions.
Our queuing system has a limit of two weeks, after which images fall out. They're still in the same state in the database, but need to be re-entered into the queue in order to be reviewed. With reviewing being all but stopped over the past few months while we've been changing the systems and processes, all the images fell out of the queue, and only those submitted over the past two weeks remain in the queue. (Submitted is not the same as uploaded) As we start catching up, all images will be re-submitted to the queue (by us, there's nothing you need to do) so they'll be reviewed. The order in which they were uploaded won't have any impact on the position they take in the queue. That's why they're being reviewed out of order, and this will continue until we clear the backlog.
I've mentioned it in this thread already, but it's worth repeating again now. We're very good at selling licenses to your images. We'll continue to focus on that as our priority, and do everything we can to maintain and improve the rapid growth we've had in our first year. However, we are not yet a company that will give you the best interfaces, the fastest review times, nor focus on details like ensuring files are reviewed in order. We have great plans for all those things and many more - and we believe we can improve on the current standards - but for now, this is a distant second priority behind increasing the royalties we pay out each month.
We do hope you'll all understand this choice of priorities and continue working with us, and we do apologise for those who joined us late and didn't get many, or any, files through before reviewing stopped. We'll get to every single file in time, and hope you'll enjoy the strong and growing royalties that have been our primary focus.
If you'd like a database snapshot of how many of your files are in each state (pending review, approved, rejected, etc) just email me directly.
94
« on: November 30, 2014, 22:21 »
Yes, the thumbs take an hour or two when I submit a few days worth of images all together. Lee - just a quick question. As you recall I hit the payout threshold early in the month. Will the payout that's made next month be through the entire month of November or only some portion thereof?
Thanks,
Russ
note for those wondering ... payout in less than 2 months with just over 80 images on line. Others still hung up in the processing/pending fiasco.
The payout is just whatever outstanding royalties were in your account at the end of the month. So the payments going out in the next few days will be for your unpaid royalty balance as at November 30, 11:59pm (although it's never *that* accurate - usually sometime on the 1st of the month). So yes, the payment includes all of November.
95
« on: November 30, 2014, 21:21 »
Wow, you guys really pay close attention! Check now and let me know if all your files aren't up to date. -Lee
96
« on: November 25, 2014, 11:55 »
Thanks Jo Ann, we're aware of these issues and are working on them.
97
« on: November 25, 2014, 11:19 »
Yay, got my 1st image online. Is there any way of editing the description .. when I click the Edit button, nothing happens.
Hi Wendy, I'm looking into that with the engineers. I'll get back to you asap.
98
« on: November 24, 2014, 11:57 »
Ugh, no! Don't use that stupid "gravatar" system to pull an icon for me. Let me upload something.
Easy. Go to your profile (which for you is https://www.canva.com/sjlocke ) and click the "Edit info" button. There you can upload whatever you like.
99
« on: November 24, 2014, 11:41 »
Lee
Something is not working on the site, all I get now is
You dont have any notifications.
Ah, sweet, silent tranquility.
I can't seem to be able to check sales . . . . .
Yes, weve just enabled some new social features which seem to be hiding the contributor menu items for some users. While we work to fix this, you can access the pages via the below addresses. Note that you have to be switched to your contributor brand for these to work. https://www.canva.com/portfoliohttps://www.canva.com/saleshttps://www.canva.com/payments https://www.canva.com/brand
100
« on: November 24, 2014, 11:20 »
Lee will you let us know when you change FTP :-)
Absolutely. There'll be a newsletter go out with all the details. Having 25% of images in backlog is not relatively small imo. Anyway, thanks for the answer. I'll await patiently for my hundreds of files to be reviewed.
I just said "more than a million". Maybe it's 3 million making it 10% waiting in the queue. It's not, but somewhere in between. Lee,
Your company is awesome! Hitting payout fairly fast now! Looking forward to next year!
Bb
Thanks! This is just the beginning!! FTP is working!!! Thankyou Lee!!!
You're welcome. Hopefully we'll be off this flaky system in the coming months and we won't have to reboot it so often. I am wondering if it wouldnt make sense for some of these new agencies to just leverage the other agencies in terms of the review process, meaning when we submit files, we could just include the file ID# from 2 or 3 agencies where the file has already been approved, and then let the new agency just use that as proof the file will pass inspection. Seems like its a lot of wasted review time and money paid to review images that have already been approved by multiple agencies.
A similar idea has been given quite a bit of thought given many of the big microstock agencies use the same supplier to provide their reviewing. But they all review for different things, don't want to share the IP they've paid for, have different preferences of quality vs speed, and different threshold for what's acceptable and what's not. In short, it's not simple when you dig down into the details. that would be an enormous amount of work for anyone with more than a coupla hundred images - one of the best points about canva is just upload to submit - no tagging with categories and other busywork
Don't expect it to be this simple forever.
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