Incentive for Self Curation

One of the potential problems with collections as large, and with curation as accommodating as Pond5's, is the abundance of "lower quality" clips flooding the search results and slowing down the process of finding the "better" stuff buried down deep. Of course, everyone has a different standard and opinion on the subject, especially regarding their own clips. I can imagine how the prospect of Pond5 staff going through and trimming the fat being a massive and fairly controversial undertaking. And no one wants to delete their own "low grade" clips, because of the faint hope of someone "needing" that shaky, blurry clip of a seagull's silhouette flying overhead on a cloudy day.

It would be interesting to offer a promotion, a simple draw contest or something to Pond5 artists aimed at cleaning up the collection. Something like for every clip you remove, you get an entry. The more you remove, the better the chance of winning. The "prize" could be a piece of gear, a few bucks, a Pond5 T-shirt, whatever. Just give the people some kind of incentive to self curate. Maybe restrict it to clips uploaded before a certain time, but let individual contributors decide if they want to participate and if so, which of their own clips. Then, maybe tighten up curation, just a smidge.

I also have no idea how simple or complex this would actually be to pull off, or even if it's a good idea at all. Just a thought I had while deleting crappy songs from my iTunes, shuffle works so much better now.

Atom, from my limited understanding the collection self curates automatically based on the crowdsourcing model from either end. It's not broke although it appears to need fixing at first and last glance with all the junk to sort through. It's a hands off free for all model. That is why Pond works and is not iStock. Not curated. Clips gets ranked via sales, views, etc. and works it's way up or down. (Storage capacity more the issue and it's costs, I understand. Apparently, storage pricing gone way down.) I think, an incentive or an http://www.stockvideoseller.com/public_html/topics/1-how-to-keyword-your-stock.html would provide everybody better results. I see lots of great shots with bad or mis-understood key-wording - as in how to make your clips get found and sell or still there dead after all that work. We all could use some learning. Me particularly.

I understand what you're saying, and I don't think the search is necessarily broken at all. I'm very happy with sales here.

But in my opinion, trimming out the weakest clips could benefit the search experience much like taking excess weight off a race car would.

I say, cheaper to keep her. Pond5 seems to be successful crowdsourced model, painful as it is. I read complaints from buyers bemoaning sorting thru vast amounts of visual trash. At least the guy submitting 30,000 version of fractals is gone! Remember him? Culling non-performing clips apparently boosts your search ranking - as in having lots of dead clips pulls you down. So what's the real formula for making the horse run faster? I don't know. Better horse breeding. I do know that tending your own clips, as you recommend, will boost your results and put your work in front of more eyeballs. Which is the ultimate goal.

Agreed on all points. Especially the fractals.

I am really sick of my own clips (getting sick of scenery), and I need to get into being more creative, as in get off my arse and start really working on properly fleshing out some of my ideas, like this year, not whenever...and that, for me, will likely result in more action.

Meanwhile, a lot of my older clips keep popping up as sales, not only here on P5, but especially on SS, where suddenly clips that were either total non-performers and/or what I consider low quality start selling, and multiple times.

Even my absolute worst, "Dieter's fridge" has sold a couple times! Weird. So if I delete clips, they can't sell. That's a really hard hurdle to get over, even though I do agree that it is better to be able to hold one's head high when someone else sees every clip, rather than hope they don't see THAT one!

I don't know man. Dieter's fridge is a pretty solid shot. Brings back memories.

I think the major flaw with my dream of self curation is that most of the people that should do it, won't. And some people's worst is better than other peoples best. Back to the drawing board. This is why I don't run a stock site. Keep up the good work Pond5!

And you gotta stop wasting time with those eagle shots. The future is in half-baked concepts and poorly executed green screen puppets.

Thanks for the comment - the dieter's sparse fridge was one that had me convinced I was really lame. And the eagle is not selling anymore....but it was a fun ride. I love your crazy Mexican marionette though. Makes me feel kinda funny, and no, I don't think it's the grapefruit gin. That's one wacky shot with a lot of character....just might need a special needs buyer. Oop - just watched it again, and yep, it's still making me feel funny. That's a good sign....

Love the marionette! I collect puppets from around the world. Got him twenty years ago in Mexico City. Does he have the plastic or paper mache head? Moving the topic on a bit. Last year I spent a week or two re-keywording my files with my little system. First I did all the files that had ever sold. Then I did all the files which have had views, in descending order. Then I just did one's I thought should have sold but I was an idiot keywording them. I managed to do about half the portfolio - the rest I deemed not worth the effort. The process has yielded very good results so far. Any file with a view not selling should be re-keyworded in the mad order of results here.