r/forhire • u/7oby Freelancer • Feb 12 '13
[Meta] New Rule: This is a job board, not a billboard. Any complaints?
I just saw a legal assistant who's done divorces for 15 years and is offering uncontested ones for $300... in Nevada. I don't think that's the point of this subreddit, and since I am pretty sure you'll all agree, I've made it a rule in the sidebar:
- please don't post if you're a lawyer or a limo/taxi rental company, this is a job board not a billboard
If you agree or disagree, please comment! I appreciate your feedback, it helps me know if we're moving in the right direction.
Posts removed today because of this (which I think you can still see): EDMReddit (1 day old user), lilraging (0 day old user), youronlinestuffcom (17 day old user), unheeding (5 years 9 days)
Screenshots: EDMReddit, youronlinestuffcom
Unheeding was apparently posting his bbq sales (what) because of this post's fascism.
(P.S., new feature: the filter for hiring, for hire, and all in the sidebar now adds results from /r/jobbit too, some employers don't post in /r/forhire as well and I {at least} think you probably want more listings available.)
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u/expandyourroots Feb 12 '13
Awesome, thank you very much for doing this.
Lets hire some redditors, not lawyers of LA who need more monies then us students!
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u/tewls Feb 12 '13
I can go to monster for a job board. I want unique interesting jobs here. Such as the gay pom illustrator job and being drawn as one of your favorite cartoons. You can't find that stuff on job board. Leave the typical stuff out imo. Is it fair? Nope, but there are 100,000,000 other sites that will be fair to those types of jobs and unfair to the unique jobs being posted here.
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u/7oby Feb 12 '13
I don't understand your request. Do you want all "normal" jobs removed and only the oddball jobs remain? I wouldn't mind a subreddit for offbeat jobs, but this is more general.
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u/tewls Feb 12 '13
I guess if I was going to put a strict definition on the limits I would like to see. I would say allow unique jobs (can't really give you a strict definition there, but it's a simple enough guideline to follow in most cases I believe) and allow freelance stuff. Anything licensed/incorporated/big business already has plenty of large avenues to solicit potential customers.
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u/Nadril Feb 12 '13
I'm not entirely sure how the divorce thing is different than, say, offering to do a logo or something for $200. That being said it's not my call. I can see how some of those examples are shady but I'm still not sure I agree with this rule.
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Feb 12 '13
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u/7oby Feb 12 '13
Gladly! There are two definitions of For Hire as a verb.
to engage the services of (a person or persons) for wages or other payment: to hire a clerk.
to engage the temporary use of at a set price; rent: to hire a limousine.
The idea of this subreddit is to help people who want to earn money do so. The person you linked is, accurately, in the second camp, which I had originally clarified as "people who are already making a ton of money and are advertising services that are already being utilized", e.g. lawyers and (coincidentally) limousines or similar. This isn't really a "What do you do, and how much does it cost?" subreddit.
However, unfortunately this leads to issues. I'm all for freelance listings, such as the one you linked, but not for lawyers and legal assistants offering their services. Have you seen bus stop benches advertising uncontested divorce? My goal is: if you are offering a service that popular that you don't really need reddit, and it would go on a bench or billboard, then it shouldn't be here. In fact, I offered the person who advertised the $300 divorces a chance to respond to me and have me re-instate his advertisement. I have not yet received a response. (Most likely, they're not coming back.)
This isn't new, spammers frequently create one time use accounts but keep using the same domain. All of those are jobs that may/may not be legitimate, and are being posted to r/jobs which isn't even a job board (but the spammers don't even read the sidebar, they come to the site, paste the title and url, and type 'jobs' as if it were a tag on delicious or a hashtag on twitter).
I hate to cite this Supreme Court precedent, but "I know it when I see it". The second post was a guy saying "I run a very successful company and want more business". People reported a guy the other day who said he would build your website for free, and I'm wondering if, as discussed, those posts should be eliminated too. My current thought is people will dislike the quality of the work and end up hiring someone to fix it, which creates more work, heh.
I'm going to just stop typing now and wait for a response. There's another guy who posted similar to you who also typed a lot and I'm just going to see if I can link him to this and answer his question at the same time.
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u/remedialrob Feb 12 '13
Wait a second now artists and designers and bunches of other people offer their services here all the time. How is a starving artist saying... and we've all seen this one a million times... "Need to make rent this week I'll draw your family as Shrek Characters for $20 a pop" any different from a lawyer saying "need a cheap divorce I can do them in Nevada for $300" or a taxi service saying "too hammered to drive your punkass home? We'll get you there in one piece if you can foot the bill in Chicago?"
In fact, a ride home when you're drunk or a cheap divorce from a spouse with villainous intent has probably helped a lot more people than a mural of their now deceased kitty kat.
Just sayin' If you're going to further splinter up an already splintered subreddit then why not go all the way and ban all the starving artists... in fact why not ban anyone who wants to get hired for anything freelance or unrelated to the average 9-5 grind?
Where do you draw the line? And why do you get to draw it? Is't that what the up/down vote system is for?
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u/7oby Feb 12 '13 edited Feb 12 '13
I ended up typing a lot more to another guy so feel free to check it out:
Let's consolidate it into that thread.
(And as I said in the title, I'm looking for feedback just like this, so the rule is not necessarily going to stick, at least not in it's current form. I've also, when I posted this thread, messaged the other mods to see what they thought.)
P.S.
Is't that what the up/down vote system is for?
You're actually quite right. But unfortunately as you can see from r/13Downvotes (where LibertyEqualizer will send 13 accounts to downvote "blacklisted" users automatically), there are bots on reddit, and if these posts are allowed, bot/sockpuppet accounts will be utilized to balance out the up/down vote system. Balance in the spammers favor, of course.
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u/BrettLefty Feb 12 '13
He's bored. And this is why he became a moderator, god damnit! Don't piss on his power parade.
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u/remedialrob Feb 12 '13
I generally try not to piss on anything that has power... you know... cause shocks to the willy don't feel good...
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Feb 12 '13
in the name of clarity maybe it would be best to Actually add the word 'advertising' into that rule so there could be no question about it
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u/Zak Feb 12 '13
I'm not sure that's actually clear. From my understanding of how r/forhire is meant to work, it's perfectly fine, and not covered under the new rule to say
[For hire] I write code
but it's not fine to say
[For hire] Los Angeles DUI lawyer
Is the difference just that one is an established business with an office? Most of us can tell one from the other without a clear definition, but it might be useful to spell it out.
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u/7oby Feb 12 '13
Is the difference just that one is an established business with an office?
The way I see it, kinda. I mean, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a lawyer offering uncontested divorces. Oddly people don't take photos of their ads very often (except for "life is short, get a divorce"), but I found this one that's in the vicinity of what I'm referring to.
I also saw one that charges $150-$235 a month for "search engine optimization", which leads me to think if that's acceptable, so is Charter coming in here and offering business internet for $55 a month.
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u/7oby Feb 12 '13
How would you write the whole thing?
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Feb 12 '13
Maybe
No Advertising Allowed! This is a job board not a billboard.
or something
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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '13