Told I have to delete previously accepted content

[contributor27]

Hello,

I am a stock contributor. For some background, I primarily create outlines of different political and geographical entities (states, countries, counties, lakes, seas, islands) in vector format. For each geographical entity I produce one vector with a black outline which is often thin and one vector with a thicker black outline with a colorful filled in offset behind it. Until recently, for each political entity, such as an island off the southern coast of the U.K. or Washington D.C., I submitted these two kinds of vectors and both kinds were accepted. 

Recently (maybe two or so months ago now), however, the colorful offsetted version of political entities has been getting rejected with the reason given that I had already submitted content which was too similar. From the time I started uploading content to Adobe to the time these offsets began to be rejected I had uploaded 400-500 vectors, around half of which being the aforementioned colorful offsetted vector type (which was suddenly being rejected).

Confused, I submitted multiple support queries (I believe three) to no avail.

During this time, I continued submitting content and, suddenly, both the black outlined version of vectors submitted and the colorful offset version of vectors submitted were being accepted again. I was pleasantly surprised.

However, not long after, the rejection of my colorful offsetts began again. I decided I would submit another query, and this time selected 'Other' as my problem (I believe I selected rejection reasons before...). 

To my surprise, I received an email from someone who had contacted me before when I had a seperate question about tax withholding. I will attatch a screenshot of the email I was sent by her but she said she would contact the moderators about my vectors and get back to me. 

I thought this could straighten things out. I wondered why, after months and around 200-250 (half of the total 400-500 images accepted previously) were half of my images (the colorful offset vectors) being rejected. I had reviewed the guidelines provided by Adobe, and it seemed that my vectors were being accepted or rejected in an inconsistent manner (one week they were, and one week they weren't, then later were again, (all this after having been accepted for months). 

I then recieved a reply from the person who had reached out to me. I will attatch a screenshot of the email to this post but this was its contents:

Moderation requested that you stop uploading similar files, and only upload the one version of those maps.

They suggest the empty ones should be removed.

1) Go to the page: https://contributor.stock.adobe.com/en/uploads/review

2) Close the blue notification on the page.

3) Click the file that you would like to delete and then you can see the file information on the right side.

4) At the very bottom of the page, you can find the ‘Delete file’ function next to the file ID.

5) Click the ‘Delete file’

Please reread our guidelines to avoid your account being lbocked.

I am confused and distraught. I can't find anything on Adobe's creator guidelines which reference creators having to delete content which was already accepted and published on their pages. I re-read the guidelines and believe my content is in compliance (As for months it (hundreds of images) was accepted). 

I am incredibly greatful to Adobe for allowing me to sell my content thus far. I have always been interested in maps/geography and graphic design and was happy to be able to join those interests. 

If anyone has any knowledge about this topic or knows someone I could contact about having to delete previously accepted content It would be a tremendous help. I am willing to forward the email if the screenshot provided is not sufficient.

Thank you

[Abambo]

Assets that have been accepted are not necessarily OK. It just means that they are open for sales. There are many assets that get removed after being accepted. Most of them get removed because of quality issues that passed moderation. Now it depends on the amount of modification you did to adapt the files if it can be considered as spamming or not. 

If above, however, is the message from Adobe contributor support, you need to comply. 

[George_F]

This does happen from time to time.  I've seen it most frequently with AI images, but not exclusively.  I would have anticipated your account to be temporarily suspended until the account was brought into compliance, so if that didn't happen then I'm glad for you 🙂.

This is one of those cases where Adobe sets their own rules, and may even change their minds from time to time.  There isn't really an appeals process, so rolling with what they decide is part of the game for us contributors.

I have a feeling this is a decision that could have gone either way, and perhaps this was brought to the attention of someone who makes decisions about these sorts of things or similar to that.  If the colored offset behind the black linework can be easily deleted, I don't see much value in just having the black outline. As a customer, browsing multiple pages of similar assets means I give up after a few pages so I can see the logic on perhaps not wanting too many assets that are essentially the same product.

May this be just a slight bump in an otherwise successful stock contributor experience 🙂

[Abambo · Accepted solution]

Reading the instructions: They suggest you delete files in review, not accepted files. (look at your link!) I would, however also clean-up the accepted files. 

[contributor27]

Right! Thank you. The files in review were already accepted. I will look through the accepted files at some point.

[Abambo]

You're welcome.