Credits -- Classyarts Credits are issued to members who contribute time or money. Earned credits are redeemable in images and data from our database. Earned credits accrue by month, and expire at the end of the following month. Unused credits are not redeemable, but are used as one factor when deciding when a member should be upgraded to the next higher rank. In fact, rank increases up to level 4 (Researher) are automatic, and are based on the total credits earned and used, with unused credits counting for twice the value of used credits.

Credits:

Credits are based on an estimate of how long a particular task should take, adjusted by the contributors rank to adjust for experience. Each six minutes of work is worth one credit, and one credit is worth roughly one dollar in exchange for images or photographer database records. Paid subscribers purchase credits, while contributors earn them. A member may be both a paid subscriber and contributor.

Each member has a month that begins the day they join -- if they join on or after the 29th of any month, the subsequent month will coincide with the calender month (so that it stays the same each month, even February). For monthly paid subscribers, the exact date is controlled by PayPal which collects the payment each month. Unused credits expire at the end of each month. So, for a member who joins on the 15th of one month, their months end the 14th of each succeeding month. On the first day of their month, they get any credits earned the preceding month. For credits to be 'earned' the member must have submitted work from the 'projects' section of their control panel, and that work must have been proof-read by another member, and approved by yet another member. So there may be a significant lag-time between submitting a completed project and receiving credit for that project.

Paid members receive their credits each month when the payment is made, and have one month to use them before they expire.

As mentioned above, credits are adjusted for experience, as reflected in the rank of the member (for non-cash contributions only, paid members do not have those paid credits adjusted.) These adjustments are multiplied by the base credit rate for the type of project being submitted. Thus transcription of printed text has a base credit rate of one credit per kilobyte of text. For a 0 - Novice member, this is multiplied by 1, while for a 7 - Daguerreian member the same project is multiplied by 4. For a 10K text the novice would earn 10 credits, while a daguerreian would earn 40 credits. This is one incentive for members to earn higher ranks. Here are the conversion rates (multipliers of base rate) for each rank:

• 0 - Novice 1
• 1 - Contributor 1.1
• 2 - Supporter 1.3
• 3 - Operator 1.6
• 4 - Researcher 2
• 5 - Artist 2.5
• 6 - Photographist 3
• 7 - Daguerreian (or higher) 4

Credits may be used to purchase images from the database (5 credits each 'set') or for records from the photographers database (1 credit per record), or to purchase ebook publications (1 point for each $1 in price). A 'set' of images are those recorded together for one image, such as front and back of a CDV, or a stereo card front and back, plus close-up of one panel.