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tamarian
Community Member

Double Rating System - Public and Private

Hello Upwork community,

 

I am a freelancer working on Upwork for about 4 years now. During this time I learned a lot about how the platform works and I witnessed a few changes on how the system works. These changes were designed to bring advantages to one or more parties using the system: Upwork as a company, the clients or the freelancers. It is not my intention to debate upon any of the recent changes, but I want to talk about the Double Rating System.

 

As we all know, the clients and the freelancers alike are able to give 2 kinds of feedback: public and private. Please help me understand what advantages this system brings and for whom.

 

So far I find this system being deceiving by allowing the hiding of the truth from both parties. 

Compared to a normal rating system  (1 rating - public) I find the following disadvantages:

 

- it hides the truth from the one who is receiving the feedback, thus hindering a possible evolution (by working on the weak points that would have been visible in the feedback)

- it hides the truth from a potential client/freelancer 

-it allows for deceptive behavior and revenge actions.

 

So, help me understand what are the advantages of this system. Why is this preferred to a transparent and honest rating system?

 

Kind regards,

Marian Albu

 

 

 

 

8 REPLIES 8
prestonhunter
Community Member

The answer to this is very simple:

 

Whiny crybabies.

 

As a client I have hired over 90 freelancers.

 

Far too many of them, especially if they're from a particular country, turn into whiny crybabies if given anything other than a perfect 5. No matter what their work performance was like. Doesn't matter. They will hound a client to change the score if they see a non-5 score.

 

Not all clients want to put up with that.

tlsanders
Community Member

Marian, the problem is that a lot of clients lie in public. Some do it because they don't want other freelancers to avoid them because they gave bad ratings, some do it "to be nice," some just do it because it's become a ridiculous norm that if the freelancer squeaked through the job without triggering an international incident, he/she is entitled to perfect 5-star ratings across the board.

 

To make matters worse, when a client is honest, he/she is often attacked, bombarded and harassed by the freelancer. This sometimes results in feedback being changed and sometimes not, but it is always something a client would prefer to avoid. Many freelancers admit to this, talking in the forums about how they "confronted" a client about the 4.5 rating and demanded that feedback be "corrected," or refused to work with a client again because he had given them "such a low" 4.8 rating.

 

So, public feedback has become about 98% meaningless. Private feedback is Upwork's way of obtaining some honest and useful information about freelancer performance.

If public feedback is truly 98% meaningless what's the point of it? 


Aaron G wrote:

If public feedback is truly 98% meaningless what's the point of it? 


Apparently nothing.

Someone previously suggested it's because of whiney crybaby freelancers who can't handle anything less than perfect.  However, it seems to me that it's the client's who are being appeased here.  Apparently they are unable or unwilling to deal with the repercussions of an honest reveiw so we must appease them with a safe space for for this.  

petra_r
Community Member


Aaron G wrote:

If public feedback is truly 98% meaningless what's the point of it? 


It's not "meaningless" - it just doesn't define your JSS. It's a marketing tool.

odiasuda
Community Member


Petra R wrote:

Aaron G wrote:

If public feedback is truly 98% meaningless what's the point of it? 


It's not "meaningless" - it just doesn't define your JSS. It's a marketing tool.


Re: "Meaningless" I was simply repeating what the other "Community Guru" had said. 

petra_r
Community Member


Aaron G wrote:

Petra R wrote:

Aaron G wrote:

If public feedback is truly 98% meaningless what's the point of it? 


It's not "meaningless" - it just doesn't define your JSS. It's a marketing tool.


Re: "Meaningless" I was simply repeating what the other "Community Guru" had said. 


"Meaningless" in the context of JSS and yes, also in how reliable it is when everyone expects 5 stars for everything every time.

 

 

wlyonsatl
Community Member

Marian,

 

Upwork could do a few things to make the JSS more than just a "marketing tool," including:

 

a) Provide a similar rating system for clients, so they feel as much obligation to be accurate in their freelancer ratings and to be as easy to work with as they require from freelancers. (This would also help freelancers avoid unpleasant clients, which may not be an important goal for Upwork.)

 

b)Do not allow clients to leave completely different public and private ratings.

 

c) Provide clients and freelancers with a breakdown of all current/active freelancers' JSS scores, so everyone can at least see in which percentile a particular freelancer's JSS is compared to all other freelancers'.

 

Upwork says it does not include in the JSS calculation client ratings from consistently negative clients. That is a good thing, but more could be done to make the JSS a true rating system. But if that is not its primary purpose, the JSS is probably pretty much what it is intended to be and we should expect no major changes to it.

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