This is true, that things have slowed down since implementing the Jr. VIP+ response permissions, however, there are possibly thousands of HAF replies that are easily found via Search. Also true that the people caught scamming, have been banned on their known account(s). I cannot argue against that. I'm talking about the ones who have not been caught and/or have posts that can easily grab the attention of some novice that's looking to get someone to perform some task for them, for a stipend. I'm also not only referring to the more extreme cases, such as this, where some newbie may be scammed, simply by not knowing prices. But how about the more subtle approaches, such as trying to lure someone into a Skype chat, like this. Also, you can go through both these threads and find tons of examples of people selling outside the marketplace. A purge would ideally eliminate all these posts.
I understand, and congratulations on your promotion, by the way! The problem is that there are just so many of these. I could go through the HAF section, reporting all these posts, but there are so many, I'd like to be assured the mods wouldn't take issue with me doing so. It will be quite the task, but because of the search results pulling up these posts and these threads, I feel such a purge is needed, if we are to trim down the SL section and provide a better quality of life, here at BHW.
Why would those sections be dead? Still anyone can start a thread, there are 20 threads posted on a daily basis on both, give or take. This wasn't more before the rule was introduced half a year ago. If you see threads with no replies, it doesn't mean that no-one PMed the OP. There are less replies for sure, but with the Jr. VIP only rule the spam/scam was reduced to minimum, that's what happened and i guess the quality of the provided services also went up a bit. This change is actually one of the best things which happened to the forum in the past few years.
That's a wild assumption. Fewer deals what we can see for sure, but we can't see behind the curtains, what we can see is that there are less public replies and that's it. The same job can be fulfilled by a more skilled person now and the possibility to get scammed is less. That's what is "wayyyy" less, not the amount of deals. There are "wayyyy fewer" deals with the wrong people. Non-vips can trick the system of course, but when they do and if it turns out, they get punished. The system is not fool proof, but it's "wayyyy" better than before.
Before the rule was introduced:
Probably the most ignorant comment of them all. Being JrVip does not make you skilled, it means you have $100. Looking at the most frequent contributors to this section currently, I think it's safe to say that they are not the best in their field.
Jr. VIPs are required to be on the forum for a specific amount of time, if nothing else this alone makes them more experienced than those newbies who registered yesterday to spam the HAF and WTB sections applying for every job they don't have the skills to be able to provide. Time wasting is often as bad as getting scammed. The forum had a fare share of this before the Jr. VIP-only rule, maybe you aren't here long enough and haven't noticed it. This is what i was referring to when i said that Jr. VIPs are more skilled normally. It was a time-consuming hassle for the person who posted the HaF or WTB thread to weed through all the useless providers and find the right one, while paying attention not to get scammed. Often a close to impossible mission. This is not happening anymore or a lot rarely.Before the rule was introduced:
After:
I think it's safe to assume that fewer deals are done. If like you say, deals are done straight in PM without replying then that is proof that the whole thing is a waste of time. It was introduced to stop scammers. But all it means is that scammers are just going to PM members directly. Before when they posted on threads we could at least identify a lot of scammers but now we have no chance.
# of threads posted means nothing. It is the # of members who get their request met that matters and that is something that we cannot measure but, by using decent logic we can assume that fewer deals are done as the amount of active freelancers is considerably smaller.
Probably the most ignorant comment of them all. Being JrVip does not make you skilled, it means you have $100. Looking at the most frequent contributors to this section currently, I think it's safe to say that they are not the best in their field.
