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Extra long wait for QC


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There is a backlog at the moment. Most likely due to the manage images issue a week ago. I uploaded last Sunday, would normally have gone through Tuesday/Wednesday, went through this afternoon (Friday). I had expected tomorrow morning.

 

John, I've had a couple of real "cock ups" go through before now!

Emailed MS to let them know and they just said "set them for deletion", which I did, they dropped off three months later. Which just goes to prove that, sometimes you get lucky!

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"I even deleted three myself - not happy with the noise. Who needs QC, when I can be my own taskmaster?!"

 

This is an interesting point. It would save Alamy a lot of time if they removed the QC requirement for longtime -- say over two years -- contributors with good pass records.

 

From a true quality assurance perspective, this will never happen, and neither should it.

 

Folks, as in any quality assurance process which is not related to the absolute need for zero errors (e.g. certain aeroplane components), sampling is THE accepted strategy. For what possible reason should Alamy compromise its quality assurance methodology, whatever it is (and despite much speculation, not one of us knows the exact parameters they apply to their sampling)?

 

I'm sure Alamy know much better than us how their QA resources match their QA goals, and there are almost infinite ways to micro-tune such balances well short of totally abandoning all sampling for any particular group of contributors.

 

And for me the bottom line is, knowing my submissions are going to be sampled to some unknown (to me) degree constantly underlines for me the importance of my own intense QA.

 

dd

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spacecadet:

Passed this morning. No email so time unknown.

Just a backlog then.

 

(the quotation disappeared)

 

Yep. Saturday morning is my friend. This time only a bit more than 24 hours waiting time, though, and I received the e-mail this morning telling about the last week's passing / bypassings. E-mail sent tonight 02.10 CET.

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I made a submission on 2nd September, and it has been flagged "Awaiting QC" since then. I contacted MS the morning, and received the following response.

 

 

Please note that a longer wait time for a submission awaiting QC is an indication that one or more images in the media have failed.  In these circumstances your submissions will be stored in our batch fail process, where you will have to wait up to 28 working days (excluding Saturdays and Sundays) to receive a notice of the submission failure and details of the corresponding failure reason.

 

Previously we have found that giving a longer notice period to contributors with a poor QC history encourages them to check their submissions in greater detail before resubmitting them.  This avoids contributors sending in submissions unchanged (or with the failed images removed) the day after they have failed which is what used to happen.  The result of this was that workload increased considerably and this had an impact on all contributor's QC waiting times.   

 

It is important to note that the batch fail procedure only applies to failed submissions, for submissions which have passed QC contributors will be notified immediately.

 

We will inform you of your failure reason by email when 28 working days has expired.

 

 

Over the last 12 months I have made 20+ successful submissions, is this a "poor QC record"? Prior to that I have had rejection notified within 2 weeks.  I guess there is nothing else I can do but continue waiting......and waiting.....

 

Paul

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You say 20+ submissions- did you have any fails? If not you are a bit unlucky. I don't know if the policy has changed recently I've had 2 fails in the last year which were notified in 1 and 3 days respectively, and in each case the resubmission sans offenders was passed in a day or two, but before that I hadn't had a fail in nearly 3 years. Did this record limit my time in purdah? I don't know.

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That was actually 25 straight passes. Prior to that I had a failure last August, then 20 straight passes before that. I would have said that wasn't too bad.   Just feeling very frustrated.

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Alamy said:

 

 "Previously we have found that giving a longer notice period to contributors with a poor QC history encourages them to check their submissions in greater detail before resubmitting them.  This avoids contributors sending in submissions unchanged (or with the failed images removed) the day after they have failed which is what used to happen."

 

With all due respect, but am I missing something here? How are contributors supposed to effectively reexamine their images during the waiting period if they don't know which images have been rejected? I haven't had a lot of QC failures over the years, but when I have, I've never been able to identify the image that has failed -- i.e. it never turns out to be the one that I think it is. Consequently, I now wait out the full "punishment" period before wasting my time rechecking submissions. So, in my case, anyway, this policy does exactly the opposite of what it is intended to do. If Alamy alerted me right away as to which image or images in a submission had problems, it would be much more productive all around IMO.

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It encourages you in future. You're right that it doesn't help the current batch so it is more like pure punishment.

I've always been able to identify the offenders. Occasionally it's a matter of opinion but it's more often a mistake.

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It encourages you in future. You're right that it doesn't help the current batch so it is more like pure punishment.

I've always been able to identify the offenders. Occasionally it's a matter of opinion but it's more often a mistake.

 

Exactly, we're all adults here (hopefully). So why make us play a silly guessing game. It's counterproductive IMHO.

 

End of min-rant.

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It encourages you in future. You're right that it doesn't help the current batch so it is more like pure punishment.

I've always been able to identify the offenders. Occasionally it's a matter of opinion but it's more often a mistake.

 

Exactly, we're all adults here (hopefully). So why make us play a silly guessing game. It's counterproductive IMHO.

 

End of min-rant.

 

I'm assuming Alamy figures if they just failed you within the standard 23 hours (or longer these days) and there was no "punishment" for bad choices, then some lazy photographers would simply upload almost everything, letting Alamy check their pictures for them and just delete the ones Alamy failed.

 

There are those out there that would if they could. This in the long term would cost Alamy more money in checking QC submissions as there would be a lot more submitted if there was no punishment for submitting crappy content.  And unless everything is checked, Alamy knows that some of the crappy content would slip through.

 

There should certainly be a sliding scale for those that have had excellent QC records over a number of months. And there probably is.  I haven't had one fail yet (although I would have if they had checked that one terrible out of focus shot I accidentally submitted last week).  I would like to think that if I should have a fail after quite awhile and lots of images, that I wouldn't end up in the 28 day dog house. 

 

Jill

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It encourages you in future. You're right that it doesn't help the current batch so it is more like pure punishment.

I've always been able to identify the offenders. Occasionally it's a matter of opinion but it's more often a mistake.

Exactly, we're all adults here (hopefully). So why make us play a silly guessing game. It's counterproductive IMHO.

 

End of min-rant.

I'm assuming Alamy figures if they just failed you within the standard 23 hours (or longer these days) and there was no "punishment" for bad choices, then some lazy photographers would simply upload almost everything, letting Alamy check their pictures for them and just delete the ones Alamy failed.

 

There are those out there that would if they could. This in the long term would cost Alamy more money in checking QC submissions as there would be a lot more submitted if there was no punishment for submitting crappy content.  And unless everything is checked, Alamy knows that some of the crappy content would slip through.

 

There should certainly be a sliding scale for those that have had excellent QC records over a number of months. And there probably is.  I haven't had one fail yet (although I would have if they had checked that one terrible out of focus shot I accidentally submitted last week).  I would like to think that if I should have a fail after quite awhile and lots of images, that I wouldn't end up in the 28 day dog house. 

 

Jill

 

Jill, I'm not talking about the up-to 28 day waiting period for official failure notification. That's another issue altogether. I'm expressing an opinion about the fact that Alamy doesn't let us (or at least most of us) know within a reasonable amount of time exactly which images have technical problems so that we can effectively recheck our submissions and correct  errors during the waiting period. Personally, after almost six years with Alamy, I'm not about to waste my time trying to second guess QC, and I don't think anyone else should.

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It encourages you in future. You're right that it doesn't help the current batch so it is more like pure punishment.

I've always been able to identify the offenders. Occasionally it's a matter of opinion but it's more often a mistake.

Exactly, we're all adults here (hopefully). So why make us play a silly guessing game. It's counterproductive IMHO.

 

End of min-rant.

I'm assuming Alamy figures if they just failed you within the standard 23 hours (or longer these days) and there was no "punishment" for bad choices, then some lazy photographers would simply upload almost everything, letting Alamy check their pictures for them and just delete the ones Alamy failed.

 

There are those out there that would if they could. This in the long term would cost Alamy more money in checking QC submissions as there would be a lot more submitted if there was no punishment for submitting crappy content.  And unless everything is checked, Alamy knows that some of the crappy content would slip through.

 

There should certainly be a sliding scale for those that have had excellent QC records over a number of months. And there probably is.  I haven't had one fail yet (although I would have if they had checked that one terrible out of focus shot I accidentally submitted last week).  I would like to think that if I should have a fail after quite awhile and lots of images, that I wouldn't end up in the 28 day dog house. 

 

Jill

 

Jill, I'm not talking about the up-to 28 day waiting period for official failure notification. That's another issue altogether. I'm expressing an opinion about the fact that Alamy doesn't let us (or at least most of us) know within a reasonable amount of time exactly which images have technical problems so that we can effectively recheck our submissions and correct  errors during the waiting period. Personally, after almost six years with Alamy, I'm not about to waste my time trying to second guess QC, and I don't think anyone else should.

 

 

Sorry misunderstood I guess. It would seem to be smarter to let us know quickly which image(s) have failed and why.  But I guess it works for them, so we just have to live within the system.

 

Jill

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It encourages you in future. You're right that it doesn't help the current batch so it is more like pure punishment.

I've always been able to identify the offenders. Occasionally it's a matter of opinion but it's more often a mistake.

Exactly, we're all adults here (hopefully). So why make us play a silly guessing game. It's counterproductive IMHO.

 

End of min-rant.

I'm assuming Alamy figures if they just failed you within the standard 23 hours (or longer these days) and there was no "punishment" for bad choices, then some lazy photographers would simply upload almost everything, letting Alamy check their pictures for them and just delete the ones Alamy failed.

 

There are those out there that would if they could. This in the long term would cost Alamy more money in checking QC submissions as there would be a lot more submitted if there was no punishment for submitting crappy content.  And unless everything is checked, Alamy knows that some of the crappy content would slip through.

 

There should certainly be a sliding scale for those that have had excellent QC records over a number of months. And there probably is.  I haven't had one fail yet (although I would have if they had checked that one terrible out of focus shot I accidentally submitted last week).  I would like to think that if I should have a fail after quite awhile and lots of images, that I wouldn't end up in the 28 day dog house. 

 

Jill

 

Jill, I'm not talking about the up-to 28 day waiting period for official failure notification. That's another issue altogether. I'm expressing an opinion about the fact that Alamy doesn't let us (or at least most of us) know within a reasonable amount of time exactly which images have technical problems so that we can effectively recheck our submissions and correct  errors during the waiting period. Personally, after almost six years with Alamy, I'm not about to waste my time trying to second guess QC, and I don't think anyone else should.

 

Sorry misunderstood I guess. It would seem to be smarter to let us know quickly which image(s) have failed and why.  But I guess it works for them, so we just have to live within the system.

 

Jill

 

Well, it seems that some contributors do get these e-mails but most don't. Perhaps Alamy can clarify their policy in this regard.

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Based on feedback I got back when I first asked about this, there is also the erroneous assumption on the part of Alamy that all images submitted in the same set of batches are all from the same shoot and all underwent the same QC. Therefore, if one image failed QC, then they would all fail, so they don't need to look any further. This is almost word for word what I got back from support when I originally asked these questions several years ago. I typically submit a wide variety of images shot over several months with no relation to each other. 

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Anyway, I e-mailed Member Services yesterday asking them to please let me know which image(s) of mine might have failed in a batch that I submitted over a week ago. I explained that knowing this would help me make more constructive use of my time during the "awaiting" period. The answer I received today was totally unrelated to my question and not even worth quoting here, so I'll run along now with my tail between my legs.

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I've only had one failure in the recent past (which I put down to failing eyesight and the need for my first reading glasses) and it had a positive effect in that I put all my effort into news coverage - uploads to the live news feed bypass QC altogether, even if you are in the sin bin. As a result I am now the major supplier of Len McCluskey pictures to the Guardian.

 

It also had the effect,of course, of rebooting my post-production routine, which is what the system is designed to do. 

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In case anyone's worried about 'processing- average wait 24hrs' as against 23 signifying a stuck batch, I had one of those yesterday and it's gone to 'awaiting QC' overnight.

Me too.  Possibly the downtime this morning got it fixed.

 

Pearl

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In case anyone's worried about 'processing- average wait 24hrs' as against 23 signifying a stuck batch, I had one of those yesterday and it's gone to 'awaiting QC' overnight.

Me too.  Possibly the downtime this morning got it fixed.

 

Pearl

 

Me three!

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