Odd Curation

Over the years of submitting to Pond5, it has been pretty clear that curation was pretty relaxed, meaning, lots of clips that probably shouldn't make it through, did. 100% acceptance, every time. Now, something has changed and it appears that odd, incoherent methods have been adopted from other agencies. Pond5 can reject anything they want, its their company, who am I to argue? But, if it's time to tighten up and crack down, shouldn't the effort be spent going through all the "less than perfect", badly keyworded content already flooding the search results, and not by finding non-sense reasons to reject clips that wouldn't otherwise be rejected?

I submit 2 clips of the same subject, one in 1080 and one in 2K (because that's how we do multiple formats here, last I checked). And they are NOT duplicates of any clip I have already uploaded. Both clips are rejected, with the reason given: "Thanks for the upload, your clips are great - but please avoid uploading duplicates."

If my clips are great, why reject BOTH of them? PLEASE don't start going down this path, curation is a REALLY important step that I hope gets taken seriously. Instead of total acceptance regardless of quality, now we've moved to total rejections regardless of quality?!?!? Again, if it's time to clean up the content on Pond5, lets go back and remove the really poor shots that got through in the past, not rejecting the "great" (your words, not mine) clips that are being submitted now. This is the 2nd batch in a row I've submitted with an odd total rejection, by 2 different curators. The trend worries me.

Just my suggestion.

By the way this it not a expression of hate for Pond5, I still love this place and it's my top stock agency. I'm just concerned with some curation choices lately. I truly just want this site to remain the best that it is.

I wonder if this is one of the things to come out of the recent P5 "meet up" in New York?

If it is a change in policy it would be nice to know!

As an aside I suggested to Chris at NAB that maybe P5 should have a process that re-curates clips that have not sold after a period of X years (as P5 is around 7 years old maybe X should be 7 or 8?) or even, more controversially, takes them off-line after this period so people need to re-submit them for curating.

I am sure buyers would rather have 1 million good clips than 3 million of which 1 million are good! No doubt a number of my clips might not pass a second time (hopefully not too many!)

Both clips were rejected? I could see one or the other but both is pretty weird if the only rejection reason is duplicates.

I would also disagree with taking anything offline because it hasn't sold. Just because it hasn't sold doesn't necessarily mean the clip is crap (although I agree there is a lot of that here). I'm continually getting sales on very old clips, just means the right person hasn't seen it.
And to say if it hasn't sold in 7 years would only affect the people that have been here the longest.

If you want to put an age on it, to be fair it would be a percentage of time any one person has been here and something hasn't sold.
Dreamstime has a thing that if a photo hasn't been sold in 2 years it gets deleted. Or you can put it in the "free bin" which is bull.

Hi kk5hy

I did say it was more controversial to take it off line! I actually think curating older clips again, along with more rigour in the current curating process would eventually weed out the real junk. I agree that just because something hasn't sold it doesn't automatically mean it isn't any good.

Having said that they don't seem too bothered when obvious keyword spamming is pointed out to them - go figure!

TE

Totally agree with the keyword spam, no question on that. As Jake says I completely agree. Age and no sales in not necessarily an indication of quality. To start at oldest to re-curate is not the right thing to do. I sell regularly some of my oldest clips that have never sold. Maybe look at a ratio of views compared to sales is where the keyword spam problem should be addressed. All of this is a concern to everyone. I believe if the quality is acceptable then spam is far more important. Yes Dreamstime deleting non selling products is BS. They feel that if it isn't good enough to sell it has value as free?? Value is value and every buyer has different needs. A thousand views and no sales is an indication of spam and or quality.

I am not suggesting that "re-curating" means deleting! I simply mean they look at it again and if it would pass curating today then it can stay. If however it is something that would fail today then it could either be rejected until the fault is fixed (such as really bad not relevant audio) or rejected as no longer suitable.

Not wanting to pick on any artist but I specifically remember this clip from when I uploaded a NY shot (I sometimes like to search to see if similar shots are already available):



If the curators decide it can stay then it stays.

Hey Atomazul, thanks for posting this.

I'm looking at your rejected clips and I can see right now that they are both the same file size, dimension (1080p), duration, and codec. I have set the regular 1080p clip as "needs edits" so that you may re-submit the clip to us, but you'll need to add the full 2k version and include a note to the curator about the association. As always, email me at ryan@pond5.com with any questions/issues you come across.

We take keyword spam seriously, but we aren't going to get the clips right 100% of the time. We are humans, and we make mistakes, as I've said many times before.

As far as old/irrelevant/non-selling clips, we addressed this at the summit and it is a big priority that we will begin to try and fix as soon as we possibly can.

Thank you for your concern, and thank you all for posting in the threads and on our feedback page, and if any of you have voted, we really appreciate it!

Ah, that makes sense.
Error in uploading the same size twice.

Thanks for the update Ryan.

Last week the curators caught a duplicate of mine, I appreciated them catching it. Great work and sorry for my duplicate.

Thanks for checking in on it Ryan, and yes, totally my mistake. Great communication with the curator as well, and it's all been straightened out. I won't be making that mistake again!

Sorry for the mis-understanding and thanks for the support guys. I just have this fear that one day Pond5 will become more like all the other agencies and less like it is, the best. So far, my fears have proven uncalled for.