That's a good question.  I wish I had kept a copy.  The point I was trying to make, in a respectful manner, was that there seems to be a complete LACK OF COMMUNICATION between IS and it's contributors/customers.  The Twitter feed mentioned that the site was almost back up - posted twelve hours earlier when the site was still down.  A pretty big hole there with no info.  I had also just figured out, by happenstance, that my payment was going to be late by stumbling on a thread in the forum (where I was posting my rant).  In my opinion, an e-mail should have gone out directly to customers.  I was certainly respectful and not rude in trying to make that point. I am firm believer that complaining doesn't help get things fixed any faster.  The point of the "hammer" was that they wanted the thread to only pertain to the specifics of the issue, which was the delay in the payment.  Apparently, my lengthy three paragraph rant was preventing folks from finding the information they wanted.  They weren't getting paid yet, so what additional information was there?  Most of the posts by the moderator were "we are almost there" or something like that- somewhat of a RANT, if you ask me.  Certainly not very much help until the issue was finally resolved.  And exactly what sort of feedback did folks need to provide that I was preventing from being visible?  Not sure?  Anyway, it doesn't matter.  IS seems to be creating enough problems of their own without me pointing it out.  Now part of the portfolio pages is not showing up and you must use a roundabout link to get to the uploads page.  If it's not one thing, it's something else - which perhaps means they don't have enough time to communicate with the little people.
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iStock has had a long history of poor communication with their contributors and customers, and I'm amazed that nothing has ever been done to make efforts to improve on this point. Fixes to important things are routinely buried in threads, no e-mails ever are sent notifying customers and contributors alike of critical updates or news (and no, the glossy e-newsletter doesn't count as it rarely addresses the critical issues plaguing the site). iStock seems to be going further and further down a very slippery slope as evidenced by all that's been going on in the last few months, all of which is of their own doing.

Well, as a result of my 3 paragraph rant about a LACK OF COMMUNICATION and the resulting deletion of that and all the +1's that followed, I'm now registered here.  I hope the communication channel over here is much more open and I don't get slammed all the time!

Welcome to the dark side. 

Quote from: jsmithzz on January 21, 2011, 11:57

Quote from: Caz on January 21, 2011, 11:53

Personally I found the +1 posts irritating and pointless. If you agree with a post, then articulate your agreement and actually add something to the conversation. I honestly think that trying to paint this as some kind of opression is really stretching things.

Irritating or not, does it really warrant an outright ban and an entire thread devoted to the subject? C'mon.  

exactly what I was thinking. But really, these sorts of things keep people connected, even if they only add a "+1" or "woo-yay" to the thread, they are contributing and making their opinion known.  It's part of the community.  Agree or disagree or +1 or -1 -- doesn't matter, by banning the use of that it is just one more nail in the coffin of what once was the great the istock community - the thing that built iStock and the (in my opinion) biggest thing that made iStock stand out among the competition (at least for most contributors).  there was a time when everyone (well, most) wanted to be a part of that great community.  sadly, that's not so much the case anymore as there really isn't much of that spirit left.  

+1

Is ditto OK?

This is my thread, and I don't like that word, so I'm going to ban the word "ditto" from this thread henceforth.  Don't let it happen again.  

Here ye! Here ye! According to Lobo, the phrase "+1" is now banned in the iStock forums, and all instances of +1 have been deleted.

Are you kidding me? Do they not have better things to do than treat their contributors and buyers like children on a playground? iStock is already notorious for having a heavy hand in their forums and locking down threads, but this really does take the cake. It really is like treating us like a group of pre-school kids, not to mention it just smacks of micromanagement at its absolute worst. If this is any indication of how they treat their employees, it's no wonder the site is having the problems is does. Un-f*ing-believable. 

I think I need to go vomit now. 

I used to work in IT and most project failures were due to poor testing of the product prior to delivery. It seems that is the case with some of iStock's releases that don't work in certain browsers or at all. They need to do a more thorough job with testing and/or roll out a beta site to select users to kick the tires.  That's pretty standard in the project management world.  I'm sure there are lots of factors going on that we aren't privy to but that's just what I see as an observer.

With the new royalty system, is there even any point to having cannisters anymore?