They suspended our account without prior advice. Is this the way dreamstime treats its photographers???

Today I received the following e-mail from dreamstime.
______________________________________________________________
 
Please be notified that following review of your portfolio, we have suspended your account. Your images are no longer online.
 
We advise you to revise the keywords of your images and remove all irrelevant info. Please find three examples of images with Ids 682156, 659939, 680147 that contain a lot of irrelevant info which we would kindly ask you to remove. We would like to mention that there are many more others.
 
Note that we will not unblock your account until you have reviewed it and we have had the proof of you doing so. After you finish removing all the irrelevant info, send an e-mail, we will check your portfolio and let you know if the suspension is removed.
 
 
 
Sincerely yours,
Carmen Pietraru
Quality Assurance and Support � Dreamstime
______________________________________________________________


Yes, there were too many irrelevant keywords. I uploaded this images that they want to be revised at my beginnings at microstock. So I would have revised the keywords if they kindly would have asked me too. What they did know is really shocking. First thing I did was a request of payment of my earnings at dreamstime.

By the way - not too long ago there disappeared about three dollars from my account when I was sitting in front of my computer. I sent them an e-mail asking them what happened. They told me that the e-mail was forwarded to another section. After controlling my images I found out from which image the dollars disappeared and sent them another e-mail. I never received an answer

I am sorry about what happened to your account.but as we all know keyword spamming is a serious issue in stock photography market.I guess this was a serious warning to all spammers and  those who even thinks about it.

I hope you will sort it out with them.
good luck

ArtmannWitte, I hope that you didn't intentionally spam, and can sort through your portfolio easily and make it live again.

Regarding spamming, sometimes the reviewers can make some mistakes.  I'm not speaking about DT here, but today I had an image rejected at IS because the keywords used didn't appear to be fully relevant to the subject.  The keywords in question were "beach, ecology, environment, environmental, power, white ETC..."  I uploaded this picture specifically for the environmental concern on part of the French Atlantic beach, where a few blocks of a village already went into the sea, and this house is the next one to go:

The Ocean is just behind the dune on the left.  I know the place very well and witnessed the drastic changes and the power of the elements over the years.  The house is white, but with the sunset it looks cream.  I always check thoroughly my keywords before submitting.  I thought that the keyword 'white' was appropriate.   The purpose of this shot for me was to convey the disasters happening now due to the sand erosion, but it didn't work out.

Just to say that there can be some keywords that could be considered as spamming by the reviewers, because the angle the picture is shown doesn't convey enough of the reality, which is probably the case for this picture, but in fact are not intentional spamming.  In this case, I consider it my mistake to suppose that the reviewers knew what I saw but unfortunately I couldn't capture enough from one single spot.

I agree wholeheartedly that intentional spamming is a no-no.

Edited to add how the picture was received on the other sites:  FP, LO and SS approved it (they probably saw the concept I wanted to convey), BS and SS still in the pending mode, 123RF refused it without explanation, DT refused it for "Lack of composition", FL for "Your photographic work is excellent but does not meet the needs of the Fotolia customer base", and of course StockExpert refused it for "Thanks, but we are not looking for such image..."

Perrush, I understand.  I included the word 'beach' because if a buyer wanted to do a search on 'beach erosion', I thought that this picture would be appropriate.  For me 'forest' is definitely not an appropriate keyword, knowing that there is quite a cliff with strong waves at its basis just behind this line of the trees you see, and which won't be there soon.

As I said, my mistake was not to convey enough into the pictures what my eyes saw.

Sometimes it is difficult to remove yourself from the photo - because you see the big picture.  The buyer only sees what is in the photo.  They have no use to know that a plane crashed just out of the frame and it will do you no good to add information about it.

I think that keyword spamming is pretty easy to do innocently.  There was a photo on LO this week that was scorned upon for spamming.  It was a gorgeous b&w shot from above of a couple holding hands in the upper right corner of a vast industrial type of walkway.  The (dozens of) keywords mentioned airline, travel, flight, trip, etc.  Innocent, because the photographer must have taken them in an airport - spamming because there was no indication of airport by looking at the photo.  The photographer who was there wasn't keywording the photo, but where he took the photo.

Sometimes it is difficult to remove yourself from the photo - because you see the big picture. ...

I think we're all guilty of this. I make it a habit to regularly revisit the keywording on my IS images. My portfolio is still small enough there and the selling prices high enough to make it worth my time. I can't yet chalk it up to better keywords, but I usually get a few sales on the images I "improve".

I'm not surprised that they decided to  suspend you until this was sorted out as I just read on the DT forums that you had over 200 keywords on a close up of a leaf with dew drops.  I dindn't see the keywords as they were already deleted but I would say that it would be virtually impossible to come up with 50 relevant keywords on that image let alone over 200.
How did you manage to get that many on as the max. is 80?  I have looked at some of your other images and they don't seem to be too bad, maybe you have already edited them or the other photo was a one off.
In all fairness I think that most of us get it wrong at the beginning.  When istock started the wikki programme I went through all my images and cringed at some of the bad keywording that I had to delete on some of my older images.

Hi fotografer and thank you for your advice to the forum of dreamstime. Someone in the forum said that it was still possible to add keywords to my image with more than 200 keywords!!! I myself was surprised of the number of keywords this image had. Unfortunately I�ve never seen them because when I received an e-mail from dreamstime and I wanted to edit them it was blocked. Dreamstime himself deleted the keywords.

My fault was that I never controlled the keywords that were automatically added to my images. This doesn�t mean that especially at my beginning at microstock I added some irrelevant keywords.

I just deleted some keywords that were added today to another image.

Is it possible to avoid the adding of  keywords from other people? I don�t want to spend time and effort to control this. I prefer to take photos outside. 

FFBE, would you please stop making posts that make me laugh - I've just been reading this thread over my morning coffee, and when I came across your 'screw you' announcement I spat the coffee all over my desk!

I see the guys point. If the keywords are wrong, you send a warning, dont you? This is someone's living. We all sometimes put words which with hindsite werent necessary. At the most, the guy should have been given a week to fix his keywords. This is a typical example of dreamstime pushing their weight around.
This site acts in the way that we all hate- they treat us like a bunch of slaves, like theyre the big powerful corporation. They spy on forums that they dont run. They keep images for 6 months after we upload them. Sod them, I say. If they were as big as istock, theyd be a lot more hated. Fortunately for us, the other sites still understand that you have to at least act like you respect your contributors. Dreamstime dont. And Im sure theyre reading this post- so let me take this opportunity to say "screw you".

I completely agree with you and have sympathy for ArtmannWitte.

All of you throwing stones live in glass houses.

You're hypocrites.

I could go to any of your portfolios and find plenty of keywords that could be considered spam.  Anyone want to volunteer?

As a matter of fact, maybe I will.  Maybe I will get on DT and start to use that little red flag and start flagging some of your portfolios.  Then when your portfolio gets locked by DT you will be more considerate of your fellow photographer.

I could go to any of your portfolios and find plenty of keywords that could be considered spam.  Anyone want to volunteer?

I agree with that, all of us(including myself) might have some keyword that may  be considered irrelevant to the photograph and some would call it keyword spam too. I think the point here is to what extend this is happening .if a person has a lot of irrelevant keyword attached to photo you can say it is an intentional spamming but this is not alway the case. for instance a had a picture of fish placed on a plate and I had the keyword marine life ( I considered fish was a part of it,and the term was describing the photo) but this keyword was removed by  the IS crew for being irrelevant (ok I respect that when I consider it now perhaps they were right to do so.but was I  spamming,I don't think so .some could only call it bad keywording but had I had the keyword business for this photo than I'd be called a  spammer.
I agree with some points FreedomFriesnBruisedEgos  made,too like the guy could have been warned first either by the person who pointed his/her finger at him or by DT.
and in my earlier post I was reffering to general keyword spamming problem and I did not have an intention to judge an individual,I hope none of us did either.

Quote from: hatman12 on August 30, 2007, 15:06

FFBE, would you please stop making posts that make me laugh - I've just been reading this thread over my morning coffee, and when I came across your 'screw you' announcement I spat the coffee all over my desk!

Any reason why it makes you laugh? Do me a favour- if you disagree with what I say- at least learn how to debate, and give me a reason. If you have a problem with my language- it isnt relevant at all.

I'm not going to lie, it made me crack up too. It reminded me of the quiting scene in the movie Half Baked. I don't think hatman was attacking you. I very much liked the post and I had the same reaction.

Sure sounded like an attack to me! Maybe you guys should quit listening to the way things are said, and start listening for what is being said.

And in case you couldnt tell: What Im saying is, I very much dislike that company- and I think theyre the worst of the lot.

I'm not listening to the way things are said, I am reading what is written. It was obvious you hate them. I personally don't understand how any of the things they do are evil, but that's just me.  I wasn't laughing at you, I was laughing  because most people aren't that blunt. It reminded me of this scene:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1IEGEs0lIk" target="_blank" class="aeva_link bbc_link new_win">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1IEGEs0lIk</a>

As far as why you hate them:
1) All the agencies read what is written on other forums, or at least they should.
2) Yes they keep photos for 6 months, but everyone knows that when they upload them because it is in their terms. If people don't read the terms they're agreeing to that's not Dreamtime's fault.
3) Kicking blatant keyword spammers off is something everyone should support.