Official feedback thread re: the new leveling system

[dereck_s]

14 minutes ago, vickiespencer said:

 

I have not gotten all 5-star reviews, but I have been here for over two years, and my "thingy" still looks good, too.

I thought I read somewhere that the scores are based on the last two years. 🤔 
 

I've heard that as well regarding the 2 years but I don't know the source. Regarding the success scores I believe you (as a TRS) have additional protections and are being judged very differently than level 0-2 sellers.

Edited February 24 by dereck_s
typo

[priyank_mod]

18 minutes ago, vickiespencer said:

I thought I read somewhere that the scores are based on the last two years. 🤔 
 

Broadly, entire order history of seller is part of the calculation but last 2 years' performance holds the key with relatively higher weightage (which coincides with the presence of private reviews). 

New system trusts orders with private reviews much more than thousands of 5-star public ratings from previous decade. 

[frank_d]

8 hours ago, dereck_s said:

Do you still have an active gig on here? When I tried to look up your info including the fiverr link on your profile it brought up nothing / "Page Not Found".

I assure you, I am still active on the platform.

[williambryan392]

5 minutes ago, dereck_s said:

I remember reading a lot of your old posts trying to figure out the inner working on Fiverr.

So did I! Very helpful.

Try using a lower case 'd', not capitalised 'D'

[charlsmcfarlane]

6 hours ago, vhskid said:

Among the recent big (and bad) changes, we have a full look only at the new reviews system. 

Given that we don't have to speculate and guess about this, I went ahead, broke it into pieces, and assembled it again in the form of a UX audit and redesign.

 

 

I wrote a separate post, so it won't get lost between the memes:

[ UX audit + redesign ] New Rating & Review System

 

Ideally, we'll have separate threads for every gig rating metric, because these subjects are just too big to discuss them all at once.

This is exceptional. An incredibly insightful analysis.

[antonnzuev]

18 hours ago, emmaki said:

That's really another issue: Fiverr has a ton of private review data and God knows what else that it hasn't shared with this update that is probably informing their new review/leveling system. I mean, I can get why they're not telling us everything, but them telling everyone how transparent everything is was, to my mind, incredibly patronizing. 

memo to staff reading this: next time, focus on "honesty with limits". Things will probably go better.

They tell us about the transparency of the site. But what this transparency consists in is not clear.

[antonnzuev]

17 hours ago, ahunyady said:

These are better than Fiverr’s system, but would have the same ultimate effect. The only transparent way to do it is to educate the buyer on what different ratings mean. 4.7 stars is the cutoff for “acceptability” (at the TRS level) so that needs to be communicated to the buyer at the time of leaving feedback. If they rate below 4.7 stars, then they’re saying that you, as seller, should be removed from the platform if you don’t start delivering better. The same for private feedback. It’s worded in a way that makes the buyer think they’re rating FIVERR not the seller. That’s the reason for such low recent private feedback.

Totally agree.
It would be better if Fiverr started to redesign the existing tools for buyer and seller work rather than introducing innovations that nobody needs. And these innovations don't even work. 

[leannelrivers]

17 hours ago, newsmike said:

German buyers are among the easiest and most generous for me, right on par with US buyers.

Same. I love German clients, they're the easiest people to work with, next to the Swiss who are on another level when it comes to money, and Brits who are infinitely polite even if they're fuming. Americans are OK until they tell me to sound less British and more American. 

[egaylord]

19 hours ago, dereck_s said:

My experience with the Promoted Gig feature is that when it claims to be working it's lying and when it is working my competition is also promoting so I still don't seem to place any better. On my promoted gigs half of them we're repeat buyers I've been working with for awhile. I get maybe 1 organic traffic / new buyer order a week at this point and that's not a guarantee.

This is why I can't trust the statistics on the promoted gigs page. I have buyers that have been repeatedly buying from me for years but they are still marked as "promoted" and all my earnings from them, years later, are still reflected on my promotions page as if my spending on promotions for this month directly impacted my revenue from them. I've suspected that I'm making hardly enough from new buyers from promotions to cover my promotional spending each month (on avg I'm spending $250-$300 on promotions each month which is an absolutely wild amount for me) 

[chopperbricks]

Yep! I once had a friend who needed my services, I sent him a DIRECT LINK to my gig, he ordered from there. Yet for me it showed up as promoted... 😬

27 minutes ago, egaylord said:

This is why I can't trust the statistics on the promoted gigs page. I have buyers that have been repeatedly buying from me for years but they are still marked as "promoted" and all my earnings from them, years later, are still reflected on my promotions page as if my spending on promotions for this month directly impacted my revenue from them. I've suspected that I'm making hardly enough from new buyers from promotions to cover my promotional spending each month (on avg I'm spending $250-$300 on promotions each month which is an absolutely wild amount for me) 

 

[melanielm]

Totally off topic, but I wonder if there's anyone left who has been here longer than I have. I joined in 2010.

At this point, calls for rolling back the new system are just clutter and noise. Private reviews have always existed and will always lack transparency (It's in the name...). The most frustrating bit (Besides Fiverr's lack of actual answers, but let's not hold our breath.) is that sellers can't compare notes with any efficacy to figure out what actually matters and how to fix it. I suppose this it to prevent 'gaming the system,' but it also prevents aligning efforts with what Fiverr values most so we, and they, can continue making money.

It all whittles down to "Do good business" in order to counteract systemic failures as much as we can. (Like cancellations that shouldn't affect us, overly complex review systems with weird smilies, etc.)

[lievevandyck]

The new system.... especially the success score is ruining all for me. I started at a 6 two weeks ago and today, I dropped to 5! In the last 2 weeks, I answered everybody, maintained communication throughout all the orders, had no cancellations, delivered everything on time and so on and on.... so I was presuming that my 6 would go up to a 7 so that I would be a level 2 seller, as I am already in the old scoring system but no the opposite happened and I dropped to 5! Conclusion for me: I read all about how to improve that score and I really did a lot of effort the past two weeks to do that so if I just continue as a do now I will only drop more? How can that be possible? To clarify I completed more than 1400 orders as a translator, had 38 cancellations in 4 years (none of the cancellations were even my fault but just people ordering the wrong language,....) so how is this possible? I really hope they will reconsider this success score. Is there anybody with a similar experience? And yes I contacted support about it but they said, our AI is doing its job and your scoring is correct.... but i feels so very wrong....

[phanduy]

6 minutes ago, lievevandyck said:

The new system.... especially the success score is ruining all for me. I started at a 6 two weeks ago and today, I dropped to 5! In the last 2 weeks, I answered everybody, maintained communication throughout all the orders, had no cancellations, delivered everything on time and so on and on.... so I was presuming that my 6 would go up to a 7 so that I would be a level 2 seller, as I am already in the old scoring system but no the opposite happened and I dropped to 5! Conclusion for me: I read all about how to improve that score and I really did a lot of effort the past two weeks to do that so if I just continue as a do now I will only drop more? How can that be possible? To clarify I completed more than 1400 orders as a translator, had 38 cancellations in 4 years (none of the cancellations were even my fault but just people ordering the wrong language,....) so how is this possible? I really hope they will reconsider this success score. Is there anybody with a similar experience? And yes I contacted support about it but they said, our AI is doing its job and your scoring is correct.... but i feels so very wrong....

its exactly the same with me bro, I've just drop to 5 after 2 weeks hard working, improving everything

[lievevandyck]

1 minute ago, phanduy said:

its exactly the same with me bro, I've just drop to 5 after 2 weeks hard working, improving everything

Sorry to hear that. Seems that the algorithm is missing things. How is it possible that by improving things, like I did, we drop?

[diplomadon]

Same for me success score was 6 two weeks ago and today, dropped to 5 

[lievevandyck]

3 minutes ago, diplomadon said:

Same for me success score was 6 two weeks ago and today, dropped to 5 

And probably you tried hard to maintain your score or even improve, right?

[diplomadon]

Yes of course 🙂

[cal5086]

18 minutes ago, lievevandyck said:

Sorry to hear that. Seems that the algorithm is missing things. How is it possible that by improving things, like I did, we drop?

Yep, all my gigs that were 8s dropped to 7s, now I'm 7 out of 10.

How are we supposed to improve if we don't even know where we stand..... Specially considering Fiverr doesn't even know where we stand at this point.

I've exclusively delivered 5 stars outside of two that were 4.7 because even with a tip, my "value" wasn't there.

[katherinasim]

My success score dropped to 5 today as well. I have deleted "2 gigs with negative effect", and successfully completed many orders lately, trying my best. As a result, my score dropped -1 in ALL gigs.

Very nice motivation Fiverr. Thank you

[cal5086]

Just now, katherinasim said:

My success score dropped to 5 today as well. I have deleted "2 gigs with negative effect", and successfully completed many orders lately, trying my best. As a result, my score dropped -1 in ALL gigs.

Very nice motivation Fiverr. Thank you

Yeah, it's really the worst feeling to work so hard over the last two weeks and be rewarded with the exact opposite outcome Fiverr said would happen.

I mean I get it if they are working on the back end, but be transparent about it, or turn off the leveling system until they figure out what they want to do.

[lievevandyck]

Just now, katherinasim said:

My success score dropped to 5 today as well. I have deleted "2 gigs with negative effect", and successfully completed many orders lately, trying my best. As a result, my score dropped -1 in ALL gigs.

Very nice motivation Fiverr. Thank you

I agree, no motivation at all!!! So after 4 years and not even 1 negative review I barely score ˝average˝. I try to encourage every buyer to leave a review but some just don't do that. And how can it be my problem that not all messages are converted in orders? Some people contact multiple translators and then choose one....

[palmreader37]

Same here. All gigs but one dropped one point and my overall success score dropped from 4 to 3. Nice work Fiverr, really good motivation to continue working for a seller that was TRS for over 7 years...I guess I was a different person back then. 

[lievevandyck]

Just now, cal5086 said:

Yeah, it's really the worst feeling to work so hard over the last two weeks and be rewarded with the exact opposite outcome Fiverr said would happen.

I mean I get it if they are working on the back end, but be transparent about it, or turn off the leveling system until they figure out what they want to do.

Yes turn it off, because this is not encouraging anybody. I am surprised so many people have issues like this and Fiverr considers all is normal.... 

[arianelaurent]

Also, why do this update on a weekend?!! 

[williambryan392]

Just a thought, but as they 'tweak' things, e.g. not taking some cancelations into account, this will improve some seller success scores, and if your seller  success score is relative to others it could be the reason you've seen it drop.

49 minutes ago, melanielm said:

I wonder if there's anyone left who has been here longer than I have. I joined in 2010.

There can't be many I guess. You are an OG! Fiverr started in Feb 2010, what month did you join?