Regaining 4/5 stars

[geogphotos]

Having images stuck in QC is a real pain so I want to get back to 4 or 5 stars ASAP.

 

Is it best to submit lots of small submissions to build up  record of QC passes? 

 

Any advice very welcome as am finding this a real nuisance in terms of workflow. 

 

Thanks

Edited December 14, 2020 by geogphotos

[Alan Beastall]

Don't worry too much about it. I was once 5 but now I'am 3 for about a year. My images are usually only in Q.C. for about a day and in most pass over night.

 

Alan

[geogphotos]

8 minutes ago, Alan Beastall said:

Don't worry too much about it. I was once 5 but now I'am 3 for about a year. My images are usually only in Q.C. for about a day and in most pass over night.

 

Alan

 

 

I miss not being able to send a frequent stream of images. 

 

Just curious whether the best strategy is lots of small submissions or is it the total number of images that counts?

[Ed Rooney]

Ian, I've had five stars for some time. I usually submit around 6 to 10 images at a time. The answer to your question, which you won't want to hear, is be more careful in your editing. Sorry about that.

Edited December 14, 2020 by Ed Rooney

[geogphotos]

24 minutes ago, Ed Rooney said:

Ian, I've had five stars for some time. I usually submit around 6 to 10 images at a time. The answer to your question, which you won't want to hear, is be more careful in your editing. Sorry about that.

 

Thanks Sherlock! 

😃

I am being so careful that I am holding back perfectly good images. 

 

But is it best to have lots of small subs or doesn't it matter?

Edited December 14, 2020 by geogphotos

[Mr Standfast]

Ian we don't know the details of the qc sampling plan but the more they see of your work the sooner they can form an opinion.  You will get there.  Must go, I have to write up a story for Strand magazine...

 

 

Edited December 14, 2020 by Mr Standfast
Ytpo

[meanderingemu]

based on when i got it, it seems to be based on how many times you actually go through QC, understanding that from a QC standpoint all images from one review to another is One batch 

 

as for having 5 stars, recently it hasn't helped getting your image for sale faster, just faster in the server reset waiting game. 

[Cal]

I don't think anyone knows and I doubt Alamy are going to let us have the ingredients to the secret sauce any time soon.

 

All I can do is offer my own experience. I have been on longer than my forum join date suggests (going on 2.5 years now I think). I have only failed QC once, very early on at something like my 10th submission. I've made over 100 submissions since then, mostly between 5 and 30 images, only once have I made a sub of around 100 images. I was given three stars very quickly after joining, but have never seen anything higher so far. Perhaps I have too many "marginal" QC passes, who knows. Since about May of this year I have been submitting around once to twice weekly. 

 

I agree though, it would be nice to go through instantly. Particularly with things like Christmas markets and themes at the moment that have a finite lifespan, any time spent not on sale is detrimental. But it is what it is and it could perhaps be years before you get back to 5* or it might happen tomorrow. Who knows.

[meanderingemu]

44 minutes ago, Cal said:

 

 

I agree though, it would be nice to go through instantly. Particularly with things like Christmas markets and themes at the moment that have a finite lifespan, any time spent not on sale is detrimental. But it is what it is and it could perhaps be years before you get back to 5* or it might happen tomorrow. Who knows.

 

but that's an issue, not only related to 5 Stars. My christmas trees took 4 days to be up for sale, even with 5 Stars direct through QC.   The real big advantage is for Late Thursday to Saturday update if you stay in QC until Tuesday, but that still happens to me once a month.....

  

Edited December 14, 2020 by meanderingemu

[Cal]

9 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

 

but that's an issue, not only related to 5 Stars. My christmas trees took 4 days to be up for sale, even with 5 Stars direct through QC.   The real big advantage is for Late Thursday to Saturday update if you stay in QC until Tuesday, but that still happens to me once a month.....

  

 

I get you. I uploaded a single image Friday before last. I then added another sub on Sunday night. Didn't get the pass until Thursday. By Weds morning I honestly thought I was in the sin bin. Luckily search updated by Friday. Thankfully nothing particularly topical or seasonal. But yes, the search engine seems to run low on coal a lot these days and I'm wondering, if I get the usual QC pass today how long it will take until those images are on sale. We shall see!

Edited December 14, 2020 by Cal

[Matt Ashmore]

You could probably email  contributor services and ask.. it would be useful information for people to know generally. It's probably even something that warrants a blog post.

Edited December 14, 2020 by Matt Ashmore

[Cal]

36 minutes ago, Matt Ashmore said:

You could probably email  contributor services and ask.. it would be useful information for people to know generally. It's probably even something that warrants a log post.

Perhaps worth trying, but I suspect they would refer to the contributor guidelines, which do outline the criteria. The underlying message is: it is at our (alamy’s) discretion. 

[spacecadet]

7 minutes ago, Cal said:

Perhaps worth trying, but I suspect they would refer to the contributor guidelines, which do outline the criteria. The underlying message is: it is at our (alamy’s) discretion. 

Matt isn't suggesting they restate the criteria, but that they clarify the star rating policy. The argument against that was always that it would allow gaming of the system. Experienced contributors don't need to do that but I doubt an exception would be made; Alamy has never revealed any details of the rating algorithm.

My promotion to five-star general came out of the blue so I can't offer any insights beyond not having a fail for four years. But I doubt it takes that long to regain the state of grace.

Edited December 14, 2020 by spacecadet

[Allan Bell]

35 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

Matt isn't suggesting they restate the criteria, but that they clarify the star rating policy. The argument against that was always that it would allow gaming of the system. Experienced contributors don't need to do that but I doubt an exception would be made; Alamy has never revealed any details of the rating algorithm.

My promotion to five-star general came out of the blue so I can't offer any insights beyond not having a fail for four years. But I doubt it takes that long to regain the state of grace.

 

You might be able to give Ian some guidance in regaining his star rating then. All he needs to know is:-

1 How many stars were you 4 years ago.

2 How many batches did you upload in that time,

3 How many images in each batch on average.

That might give him some idea.

 

Allan

 

[Matt Ashmore]

54 minutes ago, Allan Bell said:

 

1 How many stars were you 4 years ago.

 

Has the QC star rating even existed for 4 years?

[John Mitchell]

Interesting question, but you may have to take it to the Supreme Court. It's one of those unsolvable Alamy mysteries. I'd say that submitting small batches frequently is probably the best way to go. But who knows. Best of luck.

[spacecadet]

The QC stars haven't been around for more than a couple of years, and the 5-star generals got their batons late last year or early this, I think. I won't be doing any number crunching. The only way to get up the ranking is to stop failing QC- as I found out 5 years ago with my bit of bother.

[Sally]

10 hours ago, geogphotos said:

 

Thanks Sherlock! 

😃

I am being so careful that I am holding back perfectly good images. 

 

But is it best to have lots of small subs or doesn't it matter?

I really don’t think that it matters how many images are in each submission. There seems to be a complex algorithm which means that every so often my images are in QC (with a 5 star rating). Just upload whatever you like IMHO as long as they won’t fail QC.

[meanderingemu]

6 hours ago, Allan Bell said:

 

You might be able to give Ian some guidance in regaining his star rating then. All he needs to know is:-

1 How many stars were you 4 years ago.

2 How many batches did you upload in that time,

3 How many images in each batch on average.

That might give him some idea.

 

Allan

 

the issue is there is no place to get number of batches from a QC standpoint.  I can upload 4 submissions in a row in QC queue and this appears treated as "one batch" (which is good, as opposite would allow gaming) 

[geogphotos]

10 hours ago, meanderingemu said:

the issue is there is no place to get number of batches from a QC standpoint.  I can upload 4 submissions in a row in QC queue and this appears treated as "one batch" (which is good, as opposite would allow gaming) 

 

I am not trying to game any system!😶 

 

All I am trying to do is get back to the situation I was in until a few weeks ago - be able to submit a constant stream of high quality images to Alamy without having an interruption in my workflow. An interruption which is no huge deal but is an inconvenience.

 

Let's say I have a 100 images in my backlog. Does it make any difference to my QC score to submit them as one batch, or perhaps submit 10, wait, then once they've passed submit another 10. etc to quickly build up a history of QC passes. 1 pass for 100 images  or 10 passes for those 100 images?

 

 I am asking purely to better understand the experience of others.

 

In any case those submitted yesterday have passed by this morning. 

 

 

Edited December 15, 2020 by geogphotos

[Mr Standfast]

21 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

 

I

 

In any case those submitted yesterday have passed by this morning. 

 

 

 

Pretty well where we all were before 5 stars and the new protocol started.

 

Stay safe.

[spacecadet]

59 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

In any case those submitted yesterday have passed by this morning. 

I actually found that quite useful workflow-wise. Just stick a batch or so a day into the pipeline, enough to keyword in one go, and they dropped out of QC the other end. Not that having them straight away isn't convenient.

[Matt Ashmore]

When the 5-star system came out, I was pretty much immediately 5 stars. I did at one point realise that a batch was taking quite a while to QC and then noticed that my dashboard said that I had 3 stars. I hadn't had any QC failures in the meantime. So I emailed contributor services and got a reply saying something to the effect that 'yes, you haven't failed QC for a while so we'll put you back to 5 stars'. So while we're assuming that there's some automated process behind all of this, driven by some kind of rules and algorithm, this might not be the case... it could be purely manual based on an Alamy QC person noticing that you haven't failed QC for a while so deciding to give you more stars in order to balance their own workload.

[Allan Bell]

I am a one star general - still.

There is another side to this and that is if I upload a batch of say 10 images I will have to wait at least 7 working days and sometimes up to 14 working days for them to pass QC and the covid situation at this time can make it even longer. Now I upload the next batch of 10 images and Tag those just passed QC. Wait another 7 - 14 days before I can upload more images and Tag those just passed. That means I can only upload say 30 batches in a year, or 300 images in a year.

Whereas 4 or 5 stars can be uploading say three batches of 10 images a week. Say 1,500 in a year.

 

Personally I feel as though I am in a catch 22 situation and yes it is my fault for failing QC too often. But as you can see from the above that if I have an unblemished QC record from today I would imagine it is going to take me the next 3 years to gain another star or two.

 

Is it worth carrying on?

 

Allan

 

Edited December 15, 2020 by Allan Bell

[spacecadet]

4 minutes ago, Allan Bell said:

I am a one star general - still.

There is another side to this and that is if I upload a batch of say 10 images I will have to wait at least 7 working days and sometimes up to 14 working days for them to pass QC and the covid situation at this time can make it even longer. Now I upload the next batch of 10 images and Tag those just passed QC. Wait another 7 - 14 days before I can upload more images and Tag those just passed. That means I can only upload say 30 batches in a year, or 300 images in a year.

Whereas 4 or 5 stars can be uploading say three batches of 10 images a week. Say 1,500 in a year.

 

Personally I feel as though I am in a catch 22 situation and yes it is my fault for failing QC too often. But as you can see from the above that if I have an unblemished QC reacord from today I would imagine it is going to take me the next 3 years to gain another star or two.

 

Is it worth carrying on?

 

Allan

 

How long is it and how many have you uploaded since your last fail? That was the only figure that was ever useful to me- that and your pass rate over, say, six months to a year.

Of course you have the option of larger batches. Up it to 30 and you have 1000 images a year- my ten-year average. My average batch size is, er, about 30.

Edited December 15, 2020 by spacecadet