Review times

Hey guys, as always, thanks for bringing this up.

And as always, the best thing we can tell you is that we hear you and we are addressing the issue of the long wait times.

The queue has been shortened over the past 2 weeks, and we're seeing improvements overall in wait times. It went from over 30 days to right around 26-27 days in that time. This may not seem like much, but it's a start (you can't clear the queue overnight, basically). In the coming months we should see the queue get back down to a more reasonable wait time. I know some of you have heard this a million times before, but I can say with confidence that we've hired more curators to tackle the queue and it will be improved.

Thanks again for your concern, and we appreciate the critical feedback.

Ryan
Pond5 Crew

Thanks Ryan,

Sorry to offer more critical feedback, but I feel sad that the review times are so long, yet things (that I should have caught too) make it apparent that curators don't actually watch the clips. A recently approved clip of mine turned out to be barely half of its length (this has happened before) because of internet problems, and because of those same problems I couldn't play it when tagging, so didn't notice this.

WHY?! did not this get get caught in curation?

@ODesigns: while other (well known artist unfriendly) agencies remove limits you propose P5 to put limits. Do you work for competitors?

Limits may feel "unfriendly" to newbies or binge submitters, but I think it does two important things:

1. It encourages (forces?) producers to slow down, step back, and only submit the "best of the best." I feel some submitters (mostly newbies) feel they should upload practically every frame of what they shoot. This type of portfolio growth isn't healthy, it's borderline cancerous. Reasonable limits would curb this behavior. (I think we all remember the fractal guy.)

2. It eases burden on the curators. I can't imagine their workload, and the growth isn't stopping. Probably for every 10 clips they review, 100 more get submitted. This never ending task of reviewing clips most likely leads to curation mistakes. I've actually come across actual MOVIE clips here up for sale. How did THOSE get approved? Probably because some poor reviewer, late at night, got a little careless after a long day of hitting the "approve" button. It will only take one high-profile lawsuit and this little oasis of ours changes forever.

And yes, I do work for the competition (IS, SS, RS, ME, CC, DP, VC, and P5).

I'll take slow review times over hasty reviews without a proper look, but recently it's been both. 26 days to review, notes to the curator over-looked and 4 days since approval and they still aren't in my portfolio.

I love this place, nicest staff and I always upload here first. But I'm definitely hoping for a revamp of the review process.

@ODesigns:

1. Only because newbies upload too many files, we should all be limited? What do you mean by newbie, a person/company just starting to upload on P5 or a person starting to shoot/edit/upload? How could you differentiate? Could you define 'best' and 'reasonable'? What about good footage? Should P5 reject good footage and accept only 'best of the best'? What about clients? You do not mention them at all.
2. As far as I iknow curators are not slaves but free and paid people as the rest of us. Do you have any direct information related to the work volume of curators and their failure rate? Do you have knowledge of any 'high-profile lawsuit' or at least a 'low-profile lawsuit' involving P5?
3. Submitting files does not mean you work for any of the mentioned agencies(that's underlined in the TOS of each one). By working for a competitor I meant: are you employed by any of them?

IS was long time ago a good place for both submitters and buyers. Now it is just a dusty rusty corner shop with a very limited and expensive offer and is raising limits(even to the photo side-the most crowded market) in a desperate gesture. Try and do a comparative search on both P5 and IS. P5 has a huge offer and the buyer has plenty to choose from. When I buy from P5 I have the feeling I am in a huge hypermarket with lots of merchandise - of course, there is some garbage too, but that is not that much and not that disturbing. As a buyer I want to have where to choose from. I am seek and tired of creativity limited to shallow dof, tripod, croped details and a big saturation.

The only starting point of such a debate is the market. Market is a very complex and living organism and I would not venture to make suggestions that affect all involved parties unless I have reliable market information.

Instead of limiting uploads, I would rather sugest that the agency should make all the keywording/tagging job, for all files as the keywords are the real big issue.

God bless you!

I realize limits might not be a popular policy, and it probably won't ever happen here, so don't worry. But if it did happen, I would suggest new submitters be kept on a much shorter leash than us seasoned contributors. I wasn't suggesting a "blanket" limit policy. Not even IS does that...

This business of video on Pond5 is barely 5 years old, and look how far it's grown. Like it or not, this exponential growth can't last forever without some intervention or natural evolution of policy, however.

Something will change at some point. Just be prepared.

And no, I know of no law suit. But if Hollywood happened to stumble across those movie clips before I did, then I'm sure something bad would have happened. At the very least, Pond5 might have been put under an even bigger magnifying glass than the one that is probably already over it now.

A simple fix, limit new artists sign-ups and or limit the number of uploads like IS until they have a proven track record. Old artists who have proven sales and quality should not be limited at the expense of new artists.

Love this thread. You guys raise some great arguments.

@Mizamook, there will always be the possibility of human error during our curatorial approval process because we do not have an automated system. Our curators closely inspect every one of your submissions, but occasionally there will be inadvertent approvals. It's very possible that one of our trainee curators may have missed this clip of yours and we will do our best to make sure it does not happen again.

We apologize if this has caused you any inconvenience. The best thing is that you point out the errors and we will fix them as soon as possible (and if we can't fix them immediately then we'll do it as soon as we can!). That's what I'm here for!

Ryan@pond5.com