I've just read the description...and confess I wonder why it's there. I presume it still costs the same amount of credits to enter, and for that you gain nothing? Do you get awards...which also seems wrong.
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Posted 5 years ago
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Jasenka, Official Rep
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Award will be issued but there will be no points. Upload cost 10 credits per photo, same as uploading to each of the categories.
You can still, as always, categorize your photos during submit stage and they will be submitted to category you have chosen.
I hope this helps.
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Why don't people want to put their shot in the correct category, , its not hard. All those I have seen so far can easily be put in the right place.
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Jason Kiefer, Official Rep
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Jason Kiefer, Official Rep
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I would love to hear your feedback. Certainly the hope here is that people will use it if they have a lot of images to upload but don't have time to fill out the category for each one. If we find that it is being used in some other way or is detrimental to the Pixoto experience - we will make changes.
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Jason Kiefer, Official Rep
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The uncategorized category will not be moderated for duplicates.
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Jason Kiefer, Official Rep
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And to then award those who don't have to play fair with the exact same award that the rest of us earn legitimately is, frankly, insulting to everyone who plays by the rules.
If someone wants to upload a lot of images but doesn't have the time to categorize them properly, then they certainly don't have a lot of pride in their work and absolutely are doing it only as a lark. That should be discouraged, not encouraged!
This also raises another question: if someone can upload a lot of images, where did they get the credits to do so? If they've got the time to vote in the duels to rack up the credits, then they've got the time to properly categorize their uploads.
I realize that people do struggle over categories. To me, the answer is to make that easier rather than side-stepping and avoiding the category issue by getting them to lump their photos into one big free-for-all. For those who are legitimately fussed over what category to choose, it would have made a lot more sense, in my opinion, for Pixoto to create a category called Pending, which would cost zero credits to upload to, until the actual category is chosen of course, where the photos would sit (maybe for a while) and not duel until they get categorized by either a Pixoto staff member or even create trusted members of the community who could have access to choosing the category for photos in Pending. Heck, you don't even have to go that far -- just create a Pending category that has a field for category suggestions for each photo in it and encourage all of to regularly check the Pending category to help. Encourage staff members to do so as well. The person uploading the photo could read those suggestions to help them make their decision and then spend their 10 credits to upload the photo.
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Please explain the point - "Are submitted as editorial only (Pixoto moderators will make the best market images available as commercial stock)"
Jason Kiefer, Official Rep
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Firstly, what's with this: "....you don’t have to spend hours using tedious drop downs to get them in the right categories and subcategories". Hours? Hours! Exaggerate much? But it gets better. "....the single biggest obstacle for people to upload photos is the amount of time it takes to type, categorize and subcategorize each one". Really, that's the single biggest obstacle? I must have missed the questionnaire. I don't recall ever being sent a survey that asked me what my biggest obstacle was to upload photos. I don't recall that ever being asked in this forum.
And I would contend that it's not an obstacle whatsoever. I just uploaded a photo as a test .... it took more time staring at the screen waiting for the image to upload than the actual process after that -- once it was uploaded, it took mere seconds to get it published. You don't have to type a single thing. I didn't this time -- no title, click on the category, click on the sub-category. Done. Seconds.
Then there is the issue of quality. Early on, the piece states, "Furthermore successful mutli-subject categories like Black & White have shown us that we can get great photographic diversity and bring amazing photos to the top of the leaderboard in mixed subject categories.". So, that sounds like you're expecting "amazing" photos to be in this category. Pixoto has high expectations that the images will be terrific, right? Hold on, not so fast. Read a bit more and suddenly that tone has changed. "We believe it is likely that the overall quality of Uncategorized images will be lower than that of more carefully considered submissions." So, now, Pixoto expects the photos to be lower quality than in the other categories and, perhaps worse, also contends that the choice of Uncategorized is done by those who do not carefully consider their submissions.
Yet, Pixoto wants these same people, who don't have the time or the inclination to "carefully consider" the images they upload, to "choose a few hundred (or thousand) images and try them out." So, let me get this straight. In order to upload a few hundred, at 10 credits each, the member is going to have to already have a bucketload of credits. That's going to require a lot of voting, yet by the article's own words, they are being uploaded without careful consideration. That doesn't leave any confidence that they are going to be voting with careful consideration either.
Then there's the issue of the utilization of staff time. We've been told numerous times that the staff don't have time to act on reports any faster, we've all seen photos that are obviously miscategorized winning awards because the report team just can't work through the reports in time to prevent that, and we've been told that Pixoto can't police its own categories because there isn't enough staff to take the time to do that. Yet, I read this, "Pixoto moderators will go through the best of the Uncategorized images and assign search terms/keywords so that they will appear in the correct stock and art shop searches." And, there's also this, "Pixoto moderators will make the best market images available as commercial stock".
The amount of time that task is going to take, as well as the time it is going to take for Pixoto staff to determine if the images are even eligible for stock (lack of model or property releases, etc.), should be spent policing the boards looking for miscategorized images -- there are legitimate problems on this site and instead of creating new work for staff, my opinion is that the staff should be spending their time fixing the issues that exist instead of taking on the task of something that should be done by the members. If someone wants their photos to sell then they should be willing to invest a little bit of their time to facilitate that. Is Pixoto also going to go through the top photos in each category assigning correct keywords etc? And if not, why not? Why would those members who choose Uncategorized get better treatment than the ones who actually took the time to choose a category?
This whole thing just baffles me. If you want a no-stress, "fun" area, with no moderation whatsoever, then by all means create a free-for-all category and let folks go to town with it -- but there should be no awards and those images should not be in the Market. Leave the Market and the Awards to those with the "careful consideration".
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Jason Kiefer, Official Rep
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To summarize I think your basic arguments against uncategorized are:
1) It's OK to have an unmoderated category - but you don't feel they should get awards
2) It will take time away from the moderation team to add best images to the market - time they can't afford
3) For a variety of reasons you don't think it will work (i.e. we won't get images and we certainly won't get good images).
Is this about right?
Some thoughts on each.
1) They aren't really the same awards. They don't have points and they can't earn money. Furthermore awards in our current categories are not comparable, earning an award in the novice category or the illustration category requires a completely different level of skill than people or landscape. They aren't even comparable. So given this - I'm not quite sure what the objection to giving awards to uncategorized images is. On the other hand - not only are awards fun but because they are shared - they help Pixoto grow.
2) Since all uncategorized images are NOT available for commercial sale by default going through and keywording them and making them available is not a high priority. We will do this only as time allows and when the quality of the images that are available justify this. It is not the same people as the moderation team that works on reports. I don't anticipate even starting this for a couple of months (i.e. once the number of images has increased).
3) You may be right. It may not work for all of the reasons you stated. But on the other hand it might and I think it's worth a shot.
Thanks again.
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With regards to the awards, you say that they are not the same awards and I realize that YOU know they are not the same awards. But how is anyone else expected to know that? If someone takes #1 for the day in Uncategorized and that award appears above their photos, is it going to differ in appearance from the awards earned in the other categories? You have a Rising Star award and it is easily distinguishable from the main awards, for example. If a photographer's skill level is such that they cannot obtain a top-ten finish in the other categories and can only do so in an unmoderated category, it seems quite unfair to offer them what looks like the exact same award you give to those that do earn higher scores in the other categories. You use Novice and Illustration as examples of easier categories than People or Landscape to do well in, and that is absolutely correct, and the winners do get the same award, but the issue isn't the lack of strong competition at all -- those categories are subject to moderation such as the exclusion of duplicates; they offer a level playing field to everyone who competes (and not everyone can compete in Novice, for that matter). This new category is not an equal to the other categories because of this -- it is not a level playing field. Moderate the category and then I would agree that the awards should be the same.
One other thought. If this is supposed to be a fun way to win awards, that seems to indicate that that would appeal to those who are having difficulty winning awards in all the main categories. I get that. In order to make it easier for those folks to win awards, perhaps anyone who has already won a high award at Pixoto (top-10 of a week or month, perhaps) should not be permitted to enter photos into Uncategorized, much in the same way Pixoto prohibits members to enter the Novice category once they have earned one of the higher awards. If already-successful Pixoto photographers dominate this category -- perhaps filling it up with water lilies and wet roses -- it's not going to be fun at all for the others :-)
Jason Kiefer, Official Rep
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I will keep an eye on whether duplication/similar images becomes a significant problem in uncategorized (remember also that you can not resubmit to uncategorized - it has to be a fresh image) and I may change our position on that if it does. If you see it becoming a problem - please feel free to let me know. For now however I would suggest that we all see what happens...
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Jason Kiefer, Official Rep
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1. You have a voting system that doesn't work.
2. You have so many images that are contravening someone else's copyright and despite being given a list of just a handful of them you still refuse to take them down.
3. You have stock images mixed in with what can only be described as point and shoot family snaps and challenges which does nothing for the reputation of the site or the contributors.
4. You have a canvas print service that is only accessible to people who live in the US which makes no business sense at all on a site that accepts contributors from all over the world and deprives contributors of possible revenue.
5. Your target of $75 to be earnt before contributors can get paid is way to excessive and virtually unachievable unless you have 300 downloads, unrealistic and unfair.
6. Now for some reason known only to you, you open a category that defies logic. I'm not sure which planet the Pixoto Team are on but maybe you would like to join us on earth for a while and make the site work.
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I think it's a place where you can put your very similar pix and get an award but without any points and monetary reward
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You asked for feedback in one of the earlier contributrions to this discussion.
well you got it (given all the feed back in this tread) and it's not positive.
You als stated "that in order to make a revolutionary product you have to take chances and try things", This true in itself, but in the world of innovation the wrong way to go is "disruptive innovation”: trying to sell selling cheaper or poorer-quality product resulting in a destroying your market.
Well you took the chance, tried something and it turned out to be a wrong choice (given all feed back).
Might it not be time to reconsider the choice you made regarding "uncategorized" images to avoid destroying your own Pixioto market opportunities....
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Claire ~ Chinchilla Photography
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Jason Kiefer, Official Rep
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