Author Topic: spam-o-rama (Read 4154 times)

stockastic · « **on:** September 22, 2009, 09:12 »

I know this topic has been done to death several times, but I have to bring it up again. I think we should keep bringing it up until SS and other microstrocks start to address it.

I just tried, once again, to motivate myself to do some more shots by looking at the 'most popular' images on SS. And once again, I see image after image with what I would consider to be blatant keyword spamming.

I think I will try an experiment. I'll do a nice photo of something fairly generic, spam it as thoroughly as I can, and submit it. If they reject it, I have to wonder what the heck is going on.

cathyslife · « **Reply #1 on:** September 22, 2009, 09:42 »

I agree with you, this is a problem on all the sites. As a buyer of stock as well as contributor, I run across this problem a lot.

I am hoping that with the institution of some of the keyword solutions, like flaggers on Dreamstime, that most of the spammers are going to be weeded out and for the most part photos will be keyworded properly.

On several occasions I have checked keywords of images that have blue flames and have found keyword spam amass (istock). I hope they are cracking down on that with the institution of the CV.

Gannet77 · « **Reply #2 on:** September 22, 2009, 10:11 »

Quote from: cclapper on September 22, 2009, 09:42

I agree with you, this is a problem on all the sites. As a buyer of stock as well as contributor, I run across this problem a lot.

I am hoping that with the institution of some of the keyword solutions, like flaggers on Dreamstime, that most of the spammers are going to be weeded out and for the most part photos will be keyworded properly.

On several occasions I have checked keywords of images that have blue flames and have found keyword spam amass (istock). I hope they are cracking down on that with the institution of the CV.

On iStock, the implementation of the newest Best Match with keyword ranking is supposed to help address this issue - have you, as a buyer, found it to be an improvement?

stockastic · « **Reply #3 on:** September 22, 2009, 10:22 »

As a fairly new contributor, I'm just trying to figure out what to do. It does me little good to look at the "Most Popular" photos if they gained that popularity via a keyword strategy that will no longer get by the reviewers.

On SS, I want to see a collection of "Most Popular Images that meet our current keywording standards". Not "Good examples of how people successfully gamed our system in the past".

sharpshot · « **Reply #4 on:** September 22, 2009, 11:14 »

With most sites you can upload a small number of keywords and add more after the review, so this is still a problem now.

stockastic · « **Reply #5 on:** September 22, 2009, 11:44 »

I don't want to stuff my images with hokey keywords. The main reason is, even if they get by now, I expect that in the future better stock agencies are going to come along, that (among other things) will do a much better job of screening keywords. I'll want to submit my whole portfolio, and I don't want to have to clean up all the keywords at that time.

massman · « **Reply #6 on:** September 22, 2009, 11:55 »

Quote from: Gannet77 on September 22, 2009, 10:11

On iStock, the implementation of the newest Best Match with keyword ranking is supposed to help address this issue - have you, as a buyer, found it to be an improvement?

^^
This is what I would like to know also.

Today I had an image rejected by SS for the first time, for inappropriate keywords. On double checking I found a few that were marginal (copied from a previous similar image), so I removed them and now it's waiting reinspection. It's good to see that they are looking and doing something, but I fail to see how they miss some of the most blatant spamming.

lisafx · « **Reply #7 on:** September 22, 2009, 17:56 »

I agree it is really frustrating to see top selling images by top selling contributors (who should know better) that are full of spam.

I would not consider stuffing your images with spam to be a solution though. Reading the frustration of the buyers in a number of forums would seem to indicate that spam really ticks them off. Eventually the spamming will come back to bite the spammers.

I agree that Istock's method of weighting the search in favor of which words are used to buy an image is the ideal solution. The most elegant solution to the problem that anyone has come up with so far IMO.

Dreamframer · « **Reply #8 on:** September 22, 2009, 18:37 »

This is getting on my nerves too, but even on IS I get rejection sometimes for keywords that are fully relevant. For example, once I had a photo of a cross, and I got rejection because of keywords cross, religion, Christianity.
My friend had rejection for an image of USB flash drive because he used also fully relevant keywords, and few of them were synonyms for term "flash drive"....while some very popular images have spammed keywords.

stockastic · « **Reply #9 on:** September 22, 2009, 19:14 »

I suppose the vast majority of those "most popular" images are far from new. I would just say this: if an image doesn't meet current keywording standards, then it shouldn't appear in the "most popular" images, which are supposed to be an example to new contributors. Instead, show us images submitted after the keyword jihad began, which have done well despite having only reasonable, clearly relevant keywords.

Microbius · « **Reply #10 on:** September 27, 2009, 10:36 »

Shutterstock has never really seemed to care about this.
The only way to make sure that there's no spamming is to ask the photographer to give a detailed description and then have staff at the site do the keywording. Then there's a level playing field.
One problem is that in micro, where volume is king, no one has the time to do this, not the contributor and not the sites. Another is that the sites are largely staffed by competitors with a vested interest in screwing fellow contributors.
Existing solutions cause more problems then they solve. The keyword reporting tools on DT and IS are mostly just abused to beat the competition.

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Author Topic: spam-o-rama (Read 4154 times)

stockastic

cathyslife

Gannet77

stockastic

sharpshot

stockastic

massman

lisafx

Dreamframer

stockastic

Microbius

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