voting low on pictures that does not deserve it, it will affect your trustworthiness. So what I want to say is that if you in someway behave badly, the site will notice that and your reliability will automatically go down and next time your word will be less worth.
So in other words by behaving badly you just destroy for your self.

In other words, the ratings is a small piece of the MPI.

how do you know if a photo "deserves" a bad rating?
what . is "reliability"?
what . does "behaving badly" have to do with selling photos?

c'mon man, stop defending a flawed design. if you guys are in the business to sell photos...then sell photos and don't entertain people's vanity.

I DO like your site (still haven't sold anything but look forward to doing so) but you guys need to get over the "ratings" thing...it REALLY does not add anything to the site inspite of what you think. It is purely a source of vanity and vengance. And by the way, I have retaliated with crap votes on those that did it to me and my rating is climbing nicely...so my "behaving badly" hasn't affected me in the slightest.

run your site like pro's and not cons

Double hmmmmmm

dumdum.com 

Yeah, I've always been leery of that strategy.  I don't understand why an image with a comment should be placed on the front of the main web page.  I mean, what if the comment is, "Your image stinks."   

I suppose I could do this for a few days to see if it reaps benefits.  It really feels like I am scamming the system though.  Images should sell based on quality, search placement, and demand.  I just don't get why LO chooses to do this.

I'm with you...gave them up a year ago....if I don't have time to waste on uploading to low earners, I d@mn sure don't have time to play the "comment" game...

Lisafx, I do not found your comments to be fair.

First, I wan to make it clear that my photo was NOT submitted on the same day that the other photo was submitted. My photo was submitted a few days earlier. If that person was a reviewer, it was possible to shoot the same thing after looking at my photo, and refuse my photo on the same day of his own submission. 

You can always find technical flaws in any photo. One poorly lit photo can be applauded as being "moody" and dramatic. It's very subjective but as long as there is no abuse, I can live with rejecitons. I am not talking about rejections, I am talking about potential abuse.

By the way, my photo was accepted by all other agencies and had sales.

If you have not found any bias or abuse in the stockphoto industry, it does not mean other people have the same experience. It's unfair to discredit other people's findings of bias or suspicion of abuse. Using an inappropriate example, if you have not been beaten up by your husband, it does not mean that other women have never been abused.

I am even more disappointed that you try to dispute other people's rights to discuss issues and improve the industry's standards. You can spend every minute of your life shooting photos and submitting them, other people may find the fairness issue equally important to their sense of justice.

If you are a stock photographer or even if you are a newbie, it does not mean you should be reduced to a submissive technical slave, and only say "yes" to people who may be in the positive of power or even the beneficiaries of the status quo.

I trust this forum was created to offer people an opportunity of free speech, and such an opportunity should be treasured and not discarded.

Quote from: lisafx on February 18, 2008, 09:19

I can certainly understand the concern in theory.  However in practice I have not seen evidence of that type of bias from reviewers.   I am often surprised at how evenhanded they are. 

To the OP, even if the person who reviewed your image was the person who uploaded the similar image, there is virtually no chance they could have run out and copied and uploaded the same day.  More likely it was just a coincidence.  I didn't see either image, so please don't be offended by the question, but is it at all possible that your image had technical or lighting issues that the accepted one didn't?

I have found over 3 years of doing this that my acceptance rates have improved in direct proportion with my technical and lighting skills, and this is across all sites.  Unless there is hard evidence of some sort of bias then it probably more productive to spend time taking pictures and improving skills than theorizing about biased inspections. 

wow...like your fire!!  : )

IMHO...I DO believe that there is and always will be a certain level of abuse when the fox guards the hen house...that being said, I also DO believe that the majority of this stock game is fair. It is not in the best interests of the agencies to have rogue reviewers (it costs them sales as well as us).

It's good to question because there will always be folks ready to take advantage of those who don't. It's also good to take a deep breath and move forward...don't let this incident deter you from persuing the fun.

Good luck!

no sales but lots of silly ratings ...which makes me feel special and successful!

He knows who he is. That's the only thing of relevance.

so are you saying this thread is really a disgruntled, unwarranted slur? After this started, I went and combed the RB forums in search of anything similar and only came up with people complaining that there is no "tally" feature on the sales.

if anyone has any "proof" that this is going on, please pony up...

still dead as a post as of 3:00pm cst... and i was going to cash out my millions today....

9:00am CST, "server cannot be found"

have stopped as well until they put some oil on the gears. I checked their forums about a week ago when all of this was coming to a head, and the few posts concerned with this were dealt with pretty swiftly and with a heavy hand. Makes me wonder if the moderator might also be the reviewer...hmmmmmmm

I AM a Photoshop expert. I teach a summer college course o it each year at a local university and make my living designing web sites for myriad companies (the photography thing is my hobby). However, it's always fun to see how people reach the same results through different techniques.

Keep posting MIZ...I like your "super secret techniques" approach...it's like getting the "private eye decoder ring" in a box of cereal!   

I actually went off a little bit on FT a couple of months ago in an email to them. Between the hours of 11 and 5 (EST) I had a 10% approval ratio.

..was that am or pm? ...if it's am, that's when I've received the weird and goofy rejects...