screwed over again by a vbulletin.org member?

[Talisman]

This turned out to be an interesting discussion. You know, if you guys really want to post public complaints about people when one person (allegedly) rips off another person here ...... then the only truly fair way to do this would be to set up an open forum where every step of every transaction is made public...... and I mean EVERY STEP.

You'd have to have a section where the new folks can post their requests for help..... along with all details about the job, what they're willing to pay, the time-frame they think is reasonable, and so on. Then, the experts who want to bid on these jobs would also publicly post their terms, pricing, availability, experience, references, and whatever else is required.

Then the selection process and all the details agreed upon by those involved would be clearly documented here for everyone to see. All communication between the two would also have to be posted here..... and the edit and delete function should be disabled, so no one can revise what they said.

THEN...... when some deal goes sour in one of these cases, we can all see who's right and who's wrong. (Though I'm willing to bet we'll still all disagree over who's being more fair or less fair than the other.) But at least this way we would have some objective basis for debating the matter..... since that seems to be so important to so many people.

One drawback I can see is this would add a lot to the workload for our moderating staff..... and I'm not so sure they really want to take on such a role. (Personally, I think they have more important things they could be doing.... and this could degrade into a messy situation where the staff ends up babysitting people who should take care of their own business.) But it could still be done and maybe they'd want expand the site and features to allow it.

Personally, I still don't think we (collectively) need to do this here. I don't believe these things belong here and it really goes against the whole purpose for having this site. In my view, this forum is here to promote an open exchange of technical advice/expertise between fellow users who are willing to share what they know. And the moment you start transacting business between users here, it goes against the purpose of having these forums.

But I don't like seeing hacks being sold to others, here, either. So this is the view I take.