Hurts my soul not to have pictures, but they were not uploading. :(

I was recently told that the fans in the House MD Spot were horrible people because they rated repeated, uncredited, badly keyworded content low, and that the House MD Spot and the Fanpop Spot where the only spot that had fans who cared about crediting, keywording and repeated content.

i'm not sure i got this, you mean 'important' as in what people believe or 'important' as in a major spot characteristic?

I have made so many comments all over the site about how important I think both crediting and keywording is that I hesitate to say much more - for fear of sounding like a broken record.

But yes, I do both on ALL my content and i think it is important.
With the credit, unless the submission actually 'belongs' to you then you should give the credit to whomever it belongs to.

Keywording just makes it easy to find whatever one is looking for.
Not much point putting up an awesome, out-of-this-world Bewitched wallpaper if it just reads 'tv show wallpaper.' You got no keywords, then the searchbar (no matter how much of a friend it mught be!) won't be able to find what you're looking for.

Well, they're important to me, but not everyone feels that way I guess.

Sorry if my question is unclear! LOL! I mean, for the spots that you are heavily involved in, is it part of the spots overall culture that content added to that spot is credited and keyworded? Are memembers of the spots, in general, encouraged to credit, keyword and avoid adding repeated content?

ah, I see. =]
the majority of people, yes, I think so. but it's amazing how a minority can really piss us off with LOADS of repeated, badly credited (if not uncredited at all) content. although I think some of them do it because they don't know better. I mean, it took me a while to get how important it is, and how to do it properly. that's why I think once you sign up you should be taken through some kind of step-by-step tutorial through the site.

It bothers me so much when people don`t add credit or keywords. I`ve come across so much repeated content lately with no credit and keywords. I`ve mentioned it before in the spots that it occurs in and people still continue to ignore me! However in the same spots, plenty of people do add credit and keywords.

I've actually given up on reminding people on the Johnny Depp spot to credit and keyword because they just ignore me and then loads more useless repeated content gets added on top of it...it kills me inside. ♥

okay i only got this after reading your comment so i changed my vote.

the keywording and crediting on HIMYM is...well sualey does a very good job...and so do a couple of others. but mostly..MEH! i hate it when filtering keywords (when looking for a picture for a pick for example) and i get endless results with the person NOT in the picture!!
on HIMYM id say its...possibly 70/30? and 70% is crap!
to be honest as much as i try to credit correctly that one is a lot tougher than putting proper keywords!!!
and people dont really give the impression they care that we can find stuff!

They're not too important to me, personally, anywhere I go. I always keyword and credit to the best of my ability, but it doesn't bother me if others don't.

I do get a bit annoyed when Fanart isn't credited to whoever did the fanart. Unless it's gone "public domain" (ie spread so far over the internet that the original artist has long since been lost/forgotten) then I don't think fanart should be posted unless you can credit it to whoever made it. And even then, I think fanart should be posted VERY sparingly. Most fanartists don't want their things distributed elsewhere.

As for the spots I'm in, to be honest... I find that the only spots where this is an issue AT ALL are spots where, er, Fanpop/Fanpop Users regulars hang out. I don't tend to be in many/any of those spots, though... so I'm pretty much blissfully unbothered by the drama. XD

(Edited to better address the issue(s) at hand here :))

Keywords are generally not used on the site. For instance, the annual Fanpop's Got Talent competition is often abbreviated as "FGT", but a search for FGT reveals that "fgt" is not in the Fanpop's Got Talent club's keywords. This makes me think that a vanishingly small segment of the users actually use the search function.

Crediting really is only talking about images, so that's a much smaller issue, but also not a priority for the vast majority of the users. Generally, if you are a consumer of content, you are not concerned with crediting the image owners and/or creators. It only enters your awareness if you actually create such images and/or have some concept of the stake that goes into them. Thus, I suspect that the user who singled fanart out as needing credit, above, has created fanart or knows people who are into creating fanart, but may not know any professional photographers. It's much the same as pirating music or films: the people who are strongly against such carefree distribution of those kinds of IP are the ones who are involved in their creation. If you're not a professional musician and don't know any, chances are you couldn't care less about providing recompense to the artist.

Actually, I don't create fanart, though I am a fan of many who do. Why fanart means more to me than other images is because MOST other images don't harm the credit holder by being posted here.

For instance, take ANY image on the Disney spot. It's one of two things: An official image or a fanart of some kind. In the first case, credit goes to Disney. In the second case, the fanartist should be credited. Now if you see an official image on the Disney spot... Do you know who it belongs to? Of course you do. Everyone does. If you see a fanart of a Disney character on the spot, do you know who it belongs to? Of course not. Not if credit wasn't given. So who is harmed by uncredited images in the Disney spot? Fanartists. Not Disney.


Also, corporations like Disney don't mind their images being spread around. It's free publicity. On the other hand, most fanartists DON'T want their work uploaded ANYWHERE by anyone else.

As for the photographers you mentioned... If the photography is purchased/owned by a studio/corporation it's pretty much the same as official Disney images. If it's an amateur photographer who is still hoping to sell the image - I feel the same about it as I do about fanart. It probably shouldn't be uploaded at all - and DEFINITELY not without proper credit.

But the vast majority of the images on Fanpop fall under the category of being owned by large corporations/studios/companies who, frankly, don't care if you credit them or not, so long as they're getting some free publicity.

And if they don't want their copyrighted images posted? Well, then the fact that you credited them won't mean squat, anyway. They're still being illegally redistributed. It's just that everyone looks the other way.

Hmmmmm interesting discussion. I guess I should have asked the whether people think it is wrong to rate uncredited, unkeyworded, repeated content low. But I guess we all rate in different ways. I guess because I was told that I was a horrible person for rating uncredited, unkeyworded, repeated content, I was looking for confirmation that most people on Fanpop think it is important. But I guess people don't think it is as important as I thought they did.

I definitely don't approve of rating content low because of keywords or credit. It achieves nothing, aside from lowering the rating of otherwise perfectly fine content. It's especially useless when there are far better alternatives that could be taken...

Alternative for Missing Credit: Add the credit yourself in a comment. For most spots, this is very easy. As I said above, if you're in the Disney spot... the credit belongs to Disney. Credit is more of a courtesy to the copyright holder than a legally binding requirement, and thus it doesn't matter whether the credit is directly under the photo in the credit field or a couple lines down in a comment. This alternative gets the credit you want on the image on there, AND lets the uploader know that people out there want credit on the images.

Alternative for Keywords: Add them yourself in a comment! Cliff even wrote an awesome article about this here: link Again, a low rating achieves nothing. Adding some good keywords yourself helps the site out and also gets the point across to the uploader that they're lacking keywords.

Really, nothing annoys me on this site quite as much as people who complain about images lacking credit or keywords... but do nothing worthwhile to remedy these problems. One comment with credit/keywords in it is worth more than a thousand 1-star ratings.

Ha! Oh my god, leaving a comment on all the stuff that isn't credited and keyworded would take so long it would be ridiculous. And I would say that about 70% of the time, in my experience, telling people about keywords and crediting either gets you 1) nowhere (ie you are ignored) or 2) abused. I have tried SO many times to help people out with image crediting and keywording, but there is only so much you can do when people are unwilling to listen to you and call you a bitch for providing them with information. And in terms of ratings, I feel as though people who go to the effort (it actually isn't that much of a hardship) to credit as best they can and keyword as best they can, then they should be rewarded with a higher rating than someone who does not credit or keyword their contributions. That is why I rate uncredited contributions lower and then I tell people why, so that they know and can do something about it if they wish.

I really wish that Fanpop had an official policiy that could really clearly tell us what role crediting and keywording play. I have been told so many different things by so many different people and I would love to know what, if anything, is the right course of action.

I'm not telling you to comment on anything in a way that would get you ignored OR abused. Leaving a comment of, "Nice image! By the way, this art was made by SoandSo at DeviantArt." wouldn't get you abused at all - and if it was ignored, it would've still served its purpose. In my personal experience, I've only ever been thanked by people for comments like that. No abuse at all.

Also, you say it would take too much time for you to comment helpfully on suggestions... but then you say that you take the time to tell people WHY you're rating their submissions low. It seems like less trouble to just be helpful, rather than rate low and then explain why.

I also can't see how rating low and then explaining why would get you any less abused/ignored than a friendly comment providing more information about someone's submission. Either your attempts at adding relevant info are a lot nastier than necessary... or you've found a fascinating way to word, "I gave your content a crappy rating because you didn't do it the way I want you to" in a way that delights other users instead of angering them.

Also, I think the fact that the credit/keyword fields are optional is all the "official policy" we need on the matter. They're optional - which means you can add them or not add them, whichever option a user chooses. Optional doesn't mean "Feel free to add them or not add them, but our other users will abuse you if you choose poorly."

If you need more official guidance, consider that an F4 member wrote an article about adding keywords to others' poorly keyworded content in a friendly way... and yet, there doesn't seem to be an article anywhere advising users to rate low and demand others adhere to their personal ideals of keywords/credit.

Ultimately, the choice you're making is to either comment helpfully and help make Fanpop a better place - or rate low and do little more than add to the drama and negativity of the site.

As I said above, even just ONE helpful addition of keywords/credit in a comment is worth more than a thousand crap ratings. No one's saying you have to add missing keywords/credit to all the images on Fanpop, but at least do SOMETHING productive about the situation, instead of just complaining about it.

Wow. That makes me feel like crap.

I personally put a lot of effort into telling people as nicely as possible why I have rated their content low. Your suggestion that I say "Nice image! By the way, this art was made by SoandSo at DeviantArt." is pretty much exactly what I say, except I do not always know who made the artwork and I usually say something about keywording too. And I do get abused for that. I will leave a comment like that on one or two images in a batch that a person has posted, or I will send them a message. Given my slow internet connection, I simply cannot comment on every single image that someone posts. Plus, some people who tried to make Fanpop a better place by doing that got temporarily banned because the system picked up their similar comments as spam.

And I am not just complaining about it. I have tried to tell people the messages that I have been told about crediting. I am a little offended that you think I'm just pissing and moaning for the fun of it (because it really is the best kind of fun).

"Ultimately, the choice you're making is to either comment helpfully and help make Fanpop a better place - or rate low and do little more than add to the drama and negativity of the site." - You have no idea how much that sucks for me to hear. No idea.

"...there doesn't seem to be an article anywhere advising users to rate low and demand others adhere to their personal ideals of keywords/credit." - I have never demanded that anyone credit or keyword. I make polite suggestions. I really do.

I really hope that we have just misunderstood eachother here, because I was quite offended by some of the things that you said in your previous comment. I have been leaving helpful comments as much as I can, as politely as I can and I have been very active in helping new Fanpoppers with crediting, keywording and rating. If I have been doing this the wrong way, I guess I should stop wasting my time.

I'm sorry that you were offended by some of the things I said in my previous post. It wasn't my intention to offend you - just to express my opinion. You DID make a pick and ask people for their opinions. Surely, you must have known that they wouldn't all agree with your own...?

The bottom line is that I don't, in any way, think it's useful or even appropriate to rate things low based on an optional part of the uploading process. The uploader isn't breaking any site rules. They're not doing anything wrong - and yet, you're punishing them with low ratings.

Not to mention you're messing up the ratings process for people who want to use it as intended. When I look at the image section of a spot, I expect the 5 star images to be large, bright and clear images. I would expect a 1 star image to be small, dull, washed out, blurry... etc. But thanks to raters like yourself, the rating of any given image really means nothing. A 1 star image might really suck - but it's probably more likely that it's an awesome image that just wasn't uploaded "properly". I suppose you could say this grates on my nerves the way poor credit/keywords grates on yours. Hence my statement that your low ratings are just adding to the drama and negativity of the site. Your chosen response to your own pet peeve is doing little more than causing annoyance for others. This is how I see it, but you're welcome to try to change my mind about it.

Also, you keep saying that it's too much trouble to comment to leave credit/keywords on a submission... and then you turn around and tell me how many comments you leave asking people to credit/keyword their content. Either you don't have the time/inclination to comment or you do - but you're pretty much claiming both at once - which is confusing, to be honest. It also makes it sound like you're all for commenting to criticize others, but not too keen on commenting to add relevant information on Fanpop's content. Again, this is just how I'm seeing your comments.

In short, what I'm looking for is an explanation for why rating someone's content poorly is in any way more beneficial to the site than simply leaving a "This image is owned by Fox. Keywords: house, huddy, cuddy, hugh laurie, lisa edelstein" comment and moving on.

And if it ISN'T more beneficial to the site, then I guess I'm looking for a reason why someone would continue to do it.

Seriously, I am curious and I just want to understand where you're coming from.

Also, it might help me deal with my own pet peeve about low ratings if I can understand what compels you to do it.

Yeah, we are on different pages and we are not understanding eachother.

Hmmm... Apples and oranges, I suppose. Well, it happens.

I always like to read all users' opinions on this particular issue and I have and found all views interesting but I have a damn migraine here so i'll only add a bit about my own experience as far as image crediting/keywording goes when I first joined the 'pop.
My first few submissions to the site were movies posters and images that I owned and had scanned so I entered in the image credit "personally owned." At the time that made sense to me.
I'll just show one of the links where it was brought to my attention what the proper way to image credit is and I have tried to use it (as well as keywording) ever since:
link
I still get a giggle when I see this today!

This was just one of the many images that I submitted at the time that the good DrD commented on and I had no clue what she was on about, which explains my lack of patience with her comments.
To be totally honest, at the time I actually thought she was a site moderator or something,LOL!

Lol Cammie, you should have creddited as 'Universal Studios & your scanner' *nods* ♥

LOL, Claire! *nods* in agreement!

I don't think I care that much when rating stuff in a spot I don't really go to very much. Especially if it is a random spot a friend wants their stuff rated in. I don't care. But in say, the horror movies spot which is my favorite I hate it when people upload videos, links, pictures, etc with the same keywords as everything else that has been submitted. It's annoying and it makes it hard for someone to find a full movie of something if it isn't tagged with the movie name but instead 'showtime'. ???

I always lower the rating when I come across something with no credit or keywords, and I will continue to do so.

As usual, I agree with The Misanthrope. Astro, have you actually considered how much effort it would require to properly keyword all the crap that's uploaded without them? If so, I'd suggest you go spend some quality time in the Twilight spot. ;) What's the point of trying to improve some lazy sod's images when they won't bother doing it themselves? It doesn't require that much effort to track down a proper credit or add a few appropriate keywords when preparing for a massive upload. I, personally, won't be rewarding such laziness.

I've cut back on leaving comments telling people how they can fix their credit/keywords, because I'm sick of being ignored (although nobody's tried to fight back about it in a while). Sometimes, I'll find a new user who is glad to learn these things - but usually, it's the same lazy people who thrive on uploading useless content just to get medals.

I think that leaving a comment about why something was rated low (and of course, telling how to fix it) is definitely more helpful than just rating everything a 5 and leaving 'WTF' comments. Seriously, if I found a comment on an image I'd uploaded that said "This image is owned by Fox. Keywords: house, huddy, cuddy, hugh laurie, lisa edelstein", I wouldn't know what to think (other than maybe the poster had a form of Tourette's)

Astro, have you considered that your constant abrasiveness might be adding more to the "drama and negativity of the site" that you're so intent on preaching about, more so than a few helpful suggestions?

As I said before, the original idea wasn't mine. It came from an article Cliff wrote link. So please direct your criticisms of the idea itself there. Maybe Cliff can use them to come up with a better idea or something. Although I doubt anyone actually will complain to him about the idea, because it's just SO much more fun to bitch at me, apparently. I don't see a single one of you in Cliff's article, and yet I get all kinds of crap just for spreading his good idea around. You guys are funny XD

Also, you have some strange ideas about what adds to the negativity and drama on the site if you think posting a rude comment in response to things I said to someone else *three weeks ago* is in any way NOT adding to it. But I guess hypocrisy is all the rage these days.

Oh yes, hypocrisy is great, isn't it?

I guess I'm more criticizing your presentation than the idea itself. Is that better?

"Astro, have you actually considered how much effort it would require to properly keyword all the crap that's uploaded without them? If so, I'd suggest you go spend some quality time in the Twilight spot. ;) What's the point of trying to improve some lazy sod's images when they won't bother doing it themselves? It doesn't require that much effort to track down a proper credit or add a few appropriate keywords when preparing for a massive upload. I, personally, won't be rewarding such laziness."

This paragraph, at least, seems to be all about the idea, actually. But again, I'm sure I won't see you posting all of that on Cliff's article. So let's at least admit that you're just bitching at me because you want to bitch at me and this is as good an excuse to do so as anything else. C'est la vie.

Oh, and as for abrasiveness... I'm plenty nice to the people on this site that I like, as well as those whose opinions I respect. If others think I'm "abrasive"... Well, shockingly enough, I probably don't really care for them much in the first place. So they're perfectly welcome to find me as friendly as a scouring pad.

Yes. I got up this morning and declared today 'Bitch at astroasis Day'.

Cliff's not the one telling those who are trying to help people upload things right in the first place, that what they're doing is pointless & negative.

Then why didn't you just say what you mean from the start, hmm? Instead of attacking a perfectly good idea?

And I never said that telling people how to upload things properly is pointless and negative. I said that rating things poorly based on the uploading process is pointless and negative. And I still haven't been offered any good reason for why it isn't.

I read Cliff's article when it was first published, and I rated it 5 because I thought is was a great idea and it was well-presented and offered another solution to this kind of problem. My thoughts against the idea, however, are that 1) tagging a post of 100 icons, for example, in comments is going to be a massive effort, and in addition, leaving 100 similar comments on 100 icons will no doubt be picked up as spam by the Fanpop system. Something very similar as already happened to a number of Fanpoppers, who have been temporarily banned for just trying to help. And 2) Like DarkSarcasm said, when I tag someone's image in that fashion, chances are they will not understand what it means and they will therefore not learn about image crediting and keywording. It should really not be other people's responsibility to tag and credit other user's work, especially when a simple, polite message or comment can inform a user about what image credit/keywording means. Its the old "give a man a fish/teach him how to fish" story: give people the information to be able to credit/keyword to the best of their ability on their own. So, my interpretation of Cliff's article, was that the tagging system was an alternative way of counter-acting crediting/keywording issues. I think it is a great idea, but it places a great burden on other people to take responsibility for someone else's posting practices, when it may simply be a case of the person not knowing about crediting/keywording.
To me, that article really highlighted that crediting/keywording are really important to Fanpoppers and that perhaps, as the site has gotten bigger, it has become harder and more time-consuming to inform every new user about what crediting and keywording means.

As for rating practices, from my experience, people want high ratings. When their content is rated low, they want to know why. When I tell people that I have rated their content low because while they have contributed a great picture, they have not provided an image credit, any keywords and their image title is " <3 ", many people are appreciative of the comments and will look for information to help them with future postings. Some people will ignore you, and some will get furious and tell you that you are bad person (as a side note, before anyone says that I just must be a rude person if I get that kind of response, I am always, ALWAYS polite and make it clear that it is the choice of the image uploader if they want to add image credit or keywords. I am never rude to people about this issue, because I know that many people simply just do not know what crediting/keywording means). So, when someone learns that they are in fact posting great pictures, but the overall image package that they are presenting is not good (ie, they do not tell us what the image is, where it came from etc), then they are (usually) very understanding of why the image was not rated highly. To me (and from what I understand, many others), the title, image credit line and keywords (and of course the description line) should be filled out to the best if the uploader's ability so that the OVERALL image that is posted contains enough information to tell us exactly what it is. The title/credit/keywords are part of the image. So rating uncredited/ poorly keyworded images low functions to say that the image is not up to scratch in terms of what we want to know about it. That is why I rate uncredited/poorly keyworded content low, even if the picture is great. It is about the total image. Again, that is just how I learned to upload and rate based on my interactions with people here on Fanpop. Personally, I think that rating images high that are uncredited/badly keyworded is more of a probelm on Fanpop, because people do not about crediting/keywording for themselves and then we get LiveJournal users coming here and reporting 1,000s of uncredited images and abusing Fanpoppers who simply didn't know anything about crediting.

As for the "abrasiveness", well, I know that I clearly do not share your view and I really didn't appreciate being called part of the negativity here on Fanpop when I have simply tried to help people. I guess I would just ask that you be more respectful of the fact that my opinions may be different from yours, but that doesn't really give you the right to call me, or anyone who agrees with me, a bad Fanpopper.

I really do appreciate the explanation for why you rate things the way you do. It does give me something more to think about than just assuming it's done to be mean or something. As I said before, I really just wanted an explanation for why you would rate that way so that I could try to understand it. And while I can't say that our opinions on the issue will ever be the same, at least some understanding is a good thing, right?

As far as I knew, you and I had already agreed to disagree weeks ago when this argument occurred... so I'm hoping we can still do the same. I did apologize at the time and apologize again for offending you.

I also want you to know that my comments to DarkSarcasm about my abrasiveness weren't directed at you or this argument we had. I hadn't meant to be overtly abrasive when you and I talked, which is why I apologized then for offending you. You've given me no reason not to respect your opinions, which is why I'm grateful to you for explaining the thought process behind your ratings.

I'm pretty sure DarkSarcasm's comments about my "constant abrasiveness" had little to do with what happened here and were based mostly on other issues. And while I'm sure that one or two Poppers are 100% behind her, it doesn't really warrant further discussion here on your pick :)

Thanks for that comment astroasis. That definitly clarifies our positions a little better.

Here is a perfect example of a user's response to my advising her how to properly keyword and image credit:
link
This is in fact the 3rd not so happy response I've had from users when I've tried to tell them how to better submit their images.
Geez, makes me feel like not really giving a damn anymore!

Oh my... Yeah, I get that sometimes too. You really do feel like just giving up, but it is always nice when people really appreciate the help. A couple of people have said that they were so glad for the help because they didn't know how to do it and were afraid to ask for help. So that is always nice.
But responses like your example are terrible. And its even worse when people interpret you help as "being mean". I hate that!

both are important it drives me crazy when people don't put any up i mean if you take the time to download a picture do it right otherwise i'm going to stop taking the time to rate it

i usually give high ratings anyways like a four if it has no credit or keywords but lately i judge a little harsher because i'm sick of seeing it and in the comments i tell them why i gave them that rating in the most polite way i can

not so much on crediting but keywording yes

Gonna be the oddball here; people don't seem to use the searchable anyways and post duplicate content anyways so I don't think keywords are as important anymore since they just aren't utilized. Where as crediting is always a respectful thing to do.