Good move Leaf.

I have just removed a thread that (I felt) was calling another member out.  I feel the culture of this forum is degraded a bit when we start to pick on each other and point fingers (whatever the reason)

Sure, if an image or images have wrong keywords they should be taken care of, but a message direct to the photographer themselves is perhaps more appropriate.  making a public spectacle of it.. less so.  I'm sure I have some mistakes in my images as well.  If anyone ever finds one, I'd be happy to have it pointed out to me but I'm not sure a public discussion about it is going to help.

I agree with this, but I read the deleted thread, and think that perhaps this case could be an exception. This isn't just any member. He is the self-proclaimed leader in microstock. And I don't believe the keywords in question can be considered "mistakes". They simply are not appropriate. You don't tag a bird as "flying" when it is clearly sitting on the ground.

I'm not saying he should be held to a higher standard, but I think it does seem to indicate the cavalier attitude that too many contributors have towards keywording, when the #1 microstocker keywords so poorly. I count myself among those that are far from perfect, including my own keywording which is not great at times. But I hope that I don't have any files keyworded as poorly as many of the recent examples I've seen from this and some other contributors. Yesterday I wiki'd a file where more than half of the keywords were totally inappropriate for the image (and it wasn't a mistake, as looking through the contributor's port showed similarly awful keywording in their entire port).

Have to agree with KB.  Keyword spamming is dishonest and, while I'd be personally be slow to call someone on it, I don't think someone who does this has a legitimate complaint if it happens.

Maliciousness and incompetence and all that, I guess.

Let us not forget that keywording is outsourced to the masses as a part of the microstock concept.

The agencies could do the keywording themselves, but they want to have the expence outsourced to the contributors.
And by the nature of things, keyword spamming occurs because of several reasons:

Competition: see me, see my picture.
Contributors trying to reduce time consumption: How accurate are you going to be when you mass keyword with semi automatic keyword tools, - and for 38 cents?
Language problems. Many contributors do not understand the keywords they apply.

Keyword spamming could easily be avoided if the agencies took responsibility, but they dont, and therefore they get what they pay for.
Let us not make it a moral problem, it is not, it is a result of the business concept.

Leaf, I support your move.

Fair call - however said entity isn't beyond the "law". I could go on; in the interests manners I won't on this occasion.

Suffice to note that I hope this forum remains completely open as long as we conduct our conversations professionally.

Yes. Information entropy.
They are trying to weed out the weeds in a field of weeds.

Symbiostock could have that big chance, if they could agree on a keyword standard.

- but they cant-

Shutter has come up with a rather intelligent keyword machine that might help in the long run.

When I started microstock in 2006, my keywording was horrible.  It was not "malicious spamming", but many keywords were absolutely far fetched.  Correcting the keywording for several hundreds of files on 10 agencies would be a complete nightmare, so I won't do it, but still, I'm really ashamed of my old keywording.  But I'm sure I'm not the only one.  Could it be possible that the files mentioned in the closed thread were also very old files, that the photographer would really be ashamed of?  ... not that he'd admit it of course! 

As for the agency doing the keywording, I wouldn't willingly submit to any agency which did that, unless it was very specialist. I've seen too many wrongly-keyworded files on Getty; and indeed some of my own which have made it over have 'acquired' some very 'odd/questionable' keywords in the process.

I'm all for removing that thread, but not because of the content of that specific discussion. Just because I don't see why anyone is wasting time talking about that guy anymore. He made his dramatic transition and let us all know how he feels about us and the companies we work with (aside from the obvious one he now feels is the only truly professional company). I don't get why anyone wants to bother bringing him up at all.

Quote from: EmberMike on December 08, 2013, 22:07

I'm all for removing that thread, but not because of the content of that specific discussion. Just because I don't see why anyone is wasting time talking about that guy anymore. He made his dramatic transition and let us all know how he feels about us and the companies we work with (aside from the obvious one he now feels is the only truly professional company). I don't get why anyone wants to bother bringing him up at all.

You might feel different if his spam was messing up best match in the areas in which you're active, and more seriously, hacking off buyers.
Of course, the way things are now, it happens a lot. But not everyone vaunts their 'professionalism'.

I wonder if his images even get inspected. I mean, what if part of his deal was "upload at will and bypass any inspections"? I got a recent rejection for a keyword that was totally appropriate, but I bent over took it up the kazoo and reupped without the word, then it was accepted.  So if inspectors are still vetting images for keywords the example Liz put up opens a new line of thinking around his upload privileges. Not that I care but I thought I'd mention that possibility.

Quote from: EmberMike on December 08, 2013, 22:07

I don't get why anyone wants to bother bringing him up at all.

Jealousy, most likely.

Don't think so.  Didn't you read the points about the poor professional keywording?