[Brad]

Posting in the request forum has never really worked. I honestly think a lot of people here don't even bother to run a search on who they hire anyway. You know what they say about a fool and his money....(not to imply that everyone that gets scammed could have avoided it).

I don't think this is a problem we will ever be able to solve here, nor should it be. The problem is as soon as Jelsoft/vB.org staff start attempting to control the issue they start becoming liable for these scams. I'd also rather see them working on other things than wasting their time dealing with the bickering that always follows someone begin scammed out of some money and wanting to post about it here.

Also like Dean mentioned a feedback system is open to begin abused so much it is not even worth thinking about how to dumb it down enough to control it. Look at the feedback system on xbox live for example...it is the bare minimum of what I would call a true feedback system and even it is abused to the point of begin useless.

Best advice to give to people is to be careful about who they hire just like they would do IRL. Get personal information in case you need to follow up with legal measures...be a good business man (that goes for both parties btw).

By the way there are sites on the 'net that are set up for this sort of thing already. A lot of the better programmers here pick up jobs on them so perhaps it would be best to direct people to these websites. I don't have links atm because I've been out of the loop for awhile now but I know sites like this do exist as I used them to hire people and pick up a odd job here and there back in the day.

Honestly if you want my opinion on the issue the paid requests forum was one of the biggest mistakes the acting staff of this site ever made (I'm included in that group, for the ones that aren't familiar with me). It was nothing but a constant headache the entire time I was a staff member here.