[sampk]

Not directly related but shit like this really scares me away from these sites and make me lose some faith in humanity (look at the client's history): https://www.odesk.com/o/jobs/job/Artist-Needed-for-Home-Page...

He's basically selling ratings. 147 jobs — which would usually cost you at least $200+ each — done for $829 total!

[corin_]

Surely that guy isn't selling ratings, as he's the client so he's the guy paying the low fees - presumably to get work (just cheap work), otherwise why would he spend $829 just to give contractors ratings. (Unless there's more going on than meets the eye, for example behind the scenes he's selling the chance to get a positive rating for more than he pays on the site.)

[loceng]

Or the company via a different means is paying this "person" more money than he is spending, to make it look legitimate -- the only loss then is the fee (%) that Elance / oDesk takes, which further incentivizes Elance / oDesk to allow this behaviour, though that is minor in comparison to having a lot of "high quality" / highly rated contractors on their platform.

[loceng]

Yeah. Elance / oDesk aren't incentivized to prevent this behaviour. They want a site that looks busy, and full of "high-quality" / highly rated contractors.

They could easily allow for filters to weed, though instead they allow for details to be hidden.

[carlosrt]

Having the ability to see everybody that scored in the top 5% for [specific skill] would be nice. Maybe an email to [e-mail] is in order.

[aptwebapps]

You can see the top 10% if you're logged in.