Replacing 5-Star Average Feedback with Job Success Score

[Joshua M]

RIP Graphic Design, Article Writing and Telemarketing.

I still support the idea though! Just want to know if the roll-out includes JS for agencies?

[Stephen B]

@Preston

like I said, I'm not bothered about my own score, but about the way Upwork continues to tread its freelancers into the ground while giving clients a free run on practically everything.

I won't hold my breath waiting for a job success score for clients...

but, thinking this though more - if the clients' average is removed, and they don't have a job success score, then how is a freelancer supposed to vet a client, apart from looking back at every job to see the individual score?

Except oh, I forgot - you can't do that, because these days most clients only have a small fracttion of their jobs listed on a job page. So freelancers get the short straw again - they're responsible for choosing cients with practically no information to go on now; and of course if they choose a wrong one, whose fault is it??

[Preston H]

Stephen,

I don't have an answer for you about how contractor's can assess past contractor's evaluation of clients other than looking at their individual feedback scores.

I assume that Upwork's announcement means that client star-based feedback scores will removed.

This would be less of a problem if it was easy to see all the client's feedback scores.

Really, I would PREFER to be able to see all the individual feedback scores. That IS something I look at. But the ability to see this has been buggy and unreliable lately.

On the upside, we still CAN see where clients are from, how much money that have spent, their average hourly rate paid out, their hire rate, and whether they are payment-verified or not. That's quite a bit of information, in addition to individual feedback ratings and comments from past contractors, when that's available and to whatever extent it is available.

[Stephen D]

Now that is as smart as a couple of other decisions, starting with using the buggy, complicated, mystic oDesk platform and dumping the far better, stable and bug-free Elance platform.

While it is hard to fail on distributing 5 sets of stars, just a short moment of not paying attention when selecting reason for termination is enough to ruin one's job success score. And who is going to understand this score?

I have 4.99 stars and a job success rate that is jumping between 88% and 93% several times throughout the day. A number that can only be caused by a click on the wrong item. Except for one client, everyone received excellent service. Otherwise, why 4.99 stars?

I have just read through the information that has been new to me. I was actually expecting to be notified of changes by email. Anyway, why do you want to punish the freelancer for clients' inactivity or failing to provide feedback? On one hand you say that you encourage long-term relationships but contracts with low to no activity are being punished.

Most ridiculous is that obviously nobody listens to seasoned professionals here. Instead of considering their opinions, you simply defend your point blindly and at all costs.

[John K]

I read the blog post by Jeff Chen alluded to by Garnor, and this is what was stated there:

"Currently, when a client views your profile, they see your Job Success score alongside your 5-star average feedback. Starting September 8, we’ll remove 5-star average feedback entirely, and display only your Job Success score throughout most of the Upwork site. 5-star feedback given per contract will remain displayed on your Work History."

Note that he only discusses what clients will see. Unless I overlooked something, he did not explicitly say freelancers will no longer see clients' 5-star average feedback when viewing Job Feed. It would be nice if a moderator would confirm or deny whether client 5-star average feedback will also be removed.

[Mark C]

I read that post as well and the article that it directs to about improving the JSS.

It doesn't cover issues about how do you deal with new elements being brought in like what to do about Upwork suddenly closing inactive contracts then hammering your job success score because of it.

The JSS is a disgrace, it is secretive and unfairly penalises freelancers for inactivity and apathy by clients.

How about introducing an Upwork success score and making that public?

Every time there is a 'bug', such as job applications - sorry proposals, going missing, or profiles vanishing, or native English speaker being ineligible to apply for jobs that need English speakers, and the 101 other things that are discussed in the forums, Upwork gets marked down and the score is publicly displayed.

These new initiative are just window dressing  to cover up all the problems that are still ongoing.

Rant for the evening over

[Jasna M]

This is exactly my case. I have two contracts paused by client and one is paused by UpWork. If I don`t have active work for one week my JSS will be decreased for 5%.

At this moment I have JSS -93%, but probably it will be down the next week.

Maybe, some freelancers have benefit from high ranking. I don`t. There are so many better ways to give general picture about someone`s work. Unfortunately, UpWork choose this one and we all have to accept it.

[Lena E]

Hi John,

To answer you question,  Clients' 5-star average feedback when viewing a job post will remain. 

Thanks,

Lena

[Douglas Michael M]

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@Stephen D wrote:

....stable and bug-free Elance platform.

 No. False. Not ever. In your dreams.

....Most ridiculous is that obviously nobody listens to seasoned professionals here. Instead of considering their opinions, you simply defend your point blindly and at all costs.

Gee, that complaint sounds familiar. Where have I heard it before? Could it have been...Elance?

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Best,

Michael

[Isabelle Anne A]

I don't like this one bit and there's no use explaining why because the decision has been made.