emmaki

Oh, you sweet summer child... Also, it's really obvious that this isn't your perspective, but what ChatGPT thinks. Fiverr's not particularly listening to humans sharing their opinions. What makes you believe Fiverr will take ChatGPT's vague ideas into consideration? Especially when it has its own AI systems with more insight than man or machine to inform their data analysts of the good, the bad, and the ugly of this test? Analysts who likely have different questions to answer than those shown by sellers on this thread. I noticed a lot of the recent amazing templates/emails etc. for sellers from Fiverr were equally poorly created with AI, so you're in company. I'm always surprised at how poorly AI is being "adopted" by most people when there's much better use cases for it. Have you seen Google search results lately? Most of it is badly-done AI keyword spam. Even the news media is in on it with BERT. And of course, there's the AI infestation on forums where users think they might gain in some way - usually financially - by using AI answers (Quora is particularly bad for this). The point being, if you're going to introduce something as your perspective, then it should be yours, especially if you're going to tie your perspective into your service offerings on Fiverr. My opinion has been simple for years: if Fiverr sellers want to see change and actually get listened to - including those who actually get flown into TLV for chats with the CEO and now, 6 months later, are packing up their bags to leave due to the stress of Fiverr's increasingly draconian metrics - they should all simply go out of office for a few months. Fiverr is pretty hopeless without sellers (or buyers). That'll pan out in two ways: 1) Fiverr actually listens, or 2) AI workers are deployed (cheaper to run, less tiresome, no commissions etc). Won't happen though. You know why? Because no matter who leaves, there are always new sellers coming in, with varying levels of competency. Hence the increasingly draconian metrics. One might ask a simple question: why would Fiverr need its metrics to get ever-tougher, more opaque, and more reliant on AI at the same time it goes upmarket? The second question that follows is naturally: where is the balance in a system that treats all sellers exactly the same and still uses systems that were put in place when the site was a lot smaller? The third question: why has Fiverr never really responded well to sellers saying "wow, that's bad" to them about these systems? Back in 2017, I told the CEO in TLV that the Levels system was a horrible idea. He disagreed, of course. I know they listen - but I also know they rarely implement. Anyone can listen to people talking. It ultimately means nothing. It might make the person being listened to feel special and validated, at least until later, when they realize that they were not heard. This whole post is a monument to Fiverr's ability to listen, with a few comments here and there being "passed on" to the team. They do listen quickly when you tell them that one of their glossary items is outdated though. They removed that glossary item. But not the other obvious outdated ones... imagine if a Fiverr seller were to do such slap-dash work for their client 🙂 Take a look at the Early Payout page in the Help Center. The description of how it now works is badly-written to the point of nonsensical and contradicts the Forum post on the update, which promised the team would "update" (presumably here) on Monday. It's now Tuesday evening. That's corporate listening and action for you. Of course, the only people interested in that topic are the people who like Early Payout, who are full of profuse thanks to give the corporation even more of their money to get their money. Which I find amusing. tl:dr: it's must more interesting when you share your actual perspective, just like I did, all with the laborious use of my fingers and brian. ChatGPT is not interesting. It is an increasingly-nerfed tool, not your mouthpiece. Please don't confuse the two. One is powerful. The other is not. YMMV on whether any of this wall of text was interesting though, and that's fine.

Yeah, I'm not really criticizing Fiverr here. Sellers asked for PG for a long time so I was happy that it was introduced and it had basic quality standards and all of that. I just haven't really felt any need to use it. I'm usually amused by complaints from (newer) sellers who deem this a terrible way to do business and how [snip]. Perhaps the biggest issue I have with it is that it isn't very customizable, even with the negative keywords. Like on FB, for example, you can really finetune which people will be forced to look at your pretend charity ad/cause supporter/closing down forever sale that's really just a crafty way to sell people who don't understand reverse image search crazily overpriced AliExpress goods. Although if I'm going to relaunch my cheap 'n' cheerful Pro-but-not Pro gigs next year, I reckon that's a valid use case for it (since the latest reviews must be like, 5 years old now). I think they both have some of my cattiest feedback responses as well! Of course, these days, I primarily stick to "thank you for your custom" and "thank you!" for a review I like and "thank you" for a review I don't like. I know, what a borefest.

That really fits into how Levels was introduced (Fiverr blog post about it from the time). I Ihad a 0-5% inbox response rate from 2013 - 2018 because I basically ignored my inbox. You bet it was 100% before the first monthly evaluation, along with everything else. You only had to attain the metrics to get the level...and break some - by today's standards - really bad rules to lose a level. But what about Fiverr's other beta test? You know, the profile one that's going down the "personality" route for its gigs/profiles while gigs are still the primary means of getting noticed - although giving the portfolio more visibility is a welcome good idea for once. Meanwhile, certifications (inc. Learn certification) is buried under a popup of a "find out more" button. It does look like Fiverr's trying to somehow implement Fiverr Business/Pro profiles onto regular Fiverr, but without changing the marketplace presentation. So maybe, just maybe, those little buttons and emojis will go somewhere around here: So, certifications and skills that can be verified: hidden. Reviews that say e.g. value for money or w/e in full view along with the freelancing world's profile equivalent of "I enjoy long walks on the beach, candlelit dinners, and flashing my massive asset(s) at Fortune 100 CEOs" and mini-profile image videos (the "personality") which are basically just a rubbish copycat of IG stories. I have never opted into PG. I still have my free $10. But I know how dealers work 🙂 It would make more sense to use PG if it was more like Fiverr Affiliates (only get paid with a sale), but I suppose Fiverr knows how to butter its bread on both sides of the ad coin.

Ah yes, someone must have told them that asking for sells is bad, but asking for mentorship is a-OK. I point them to my mentorship gig. Still no orders 😥 What am I doing wrong? I thought $500 was a good price for an hour of my valuable time! I also love the 👋 Hi {username}., [unedited placeholder text]. Dude, just say "hi" and nothing else.

Nah, burn the whole system to the ground and start with a well-designed system that fairly reflects prior standing. It's just nobody has the baubles to do it 🎅

I think that all Pros realized quite early on that despite Fiverr's big words about 1% best of yadda elite best of blah that there was a need for a careful balancing act between the "Pro" gigs and "save muh ratings" gigs. It's quite a stressful game, really. There is one writer Pro who, very early on, got herself in one of the big US newspapers with a paid ad-ticle about how she was blah blah best #1 amazeballs fempower blah blah. She's spent a lot of time on courses and social media telling the usual throngs how to succeed on Fiverr - "just use AI, Fiverr's okayed it!" - and now she's a millionaire TikTok homesteader or something. Meanwhile, you look at her profile (might be OOO rn), it's very clear that the quality of her work is inconsistent as is her service. Yet the volume of the orders more than makes up for any frailties. I'm sure she's a good writer, and she's definitely a great marketer. But is she consistent with Fiverr's Pro values? What are they now? A stepping stone between Level 2 and TRS? Since Fiverr Business stopped being sub-only and anyone could be Pro, the quality of buyers has declined massively too (IMO). My first few Pro buyers were terrifying. Now? Honestly, I'd probably make more slinging $30 articles (and have no social life) and have 0 worries with ratings - with RTO and my bad buyer spidey senses, it would just be pick 'n' choose. The buyers are.... the same. There's just a lot more at $30 and more likely to look at my Pro gigs and say "eff yah, that's value for money!". Which, incidentally, is exactly what happened in my initial days as Pro before Fiverr decided that one couldn't have Pro and regular gigs in the same category, slashing my orders and income. They also didn't allow regular gigs to become Pro gigs. All changed now, of course. So, even as Fiverr goes upmarket, there's this weird race to the bottom by its own actions. Presumably because the real money is still at the (ever increasing, due to those slowly increasing and enforced category minimums) "bottom" after you peel away the prize $50k handful of gigs in investor report. I sometimes wonder if she ever got the "you're going to stop being a pro if you don't buck up your ideas" nastygram that I and others have got in the past. Make it make sense, Fiverr; the emojis and buttons don't fix this kind of sickness at the heart of your feedback and ranking system! Hm, maybe I'll try the cheap 'n' cheerful gig strategy next year. I did keep all my regular bestsellers on pause. With Request to Order, I pick and choose buyers grateful for my "value for money" by giving them a wild $200 discount (or whatever) on my pro gig and get glowing reviews. Or is that a form of feedback manipulation? 🤔 Hello @frank_d! Please get out your biggest barrels for this one: it *deserves* it!

@visualstudios - you forgot the "value for money" button. That's my favorite. Am I a pro-rated seller with thousands of 5-star reviews (OK, that's hardly a brag) or a VAL-U-ADD can of processed meat product ("made from meat") with beans at a discount supermarket? I get so confused sometimes...

Yes, it's a wall of text. @katakatica, the whole problem with Fiverr's 5-stars or you're toast pretty much started when Fiverr switched from the thumbs up, thumbs down system to the "Advanced Star Rating" - Fiverr's term, not mine - system in 2014 (all the talking points here applied then). IMO. The whole point was obviously to make it less binary, but that never happened. This was pre-levels, BTW - those weren't introduced until 2018. The Levels system was done to make the 5-star problem less of a problem! Now we're at the stage of how to make the review system less of a problem for the levels system. Oh, and the very long wait-list of people waiting for TRS. Which was also increased by dropping the $20k earnings req to $10k, IIRC? And the Pro backlog (which notably doesn't claim to be the top 1% of freelance talent anymore, but the way in which so many Pro sellers were made a few months ago, well...no shade to the promoted, but Pro was almost certainly downgraded to mold to the needs of the "new" pro marketplace). And the need to rebalance what may be private reviews leading to less public reviews, which of course makes the whole monthly evaluation thing... less efficient? In the past year, more than a few buyers have mentioned to me they left a review, but I see nothing. Sure, private reviews matter more! I assume they're why I get Fiverr's Choice orders. Anyway, all that waffle amounts to one thing: this new review system is just going to kick the can of worms further down the road. The review system is broken. Everyone knows that. I think I'm safe saying we all want it to be fixed. Properly. Not with emojis that don't add up and give CS extra work. As it is, Fiverr is now trying to go upmarket and really sell its new, professional image of pro work for pro buyers on a pro (or certified) marketplace with... an emoji rating system. Cognitive dissonance, anyone? Unless they're planning to only use emojis for the regular marketplace and keep stars for the pro marketplace. Hey, why not? The reality is that most consumers don't leave a review unless they're super-happy or super-mad. Or being paid. Plenty of buyers are aware that their review can have a crazy high impact on sellers' income months into the future, so simply don't leave reviews unless one of those outcomes happens. This new emoji review system hardly fixes that when nobody can figure out how to leave a review that has the potential to demote someone for two evaluation periods in a row. 🙂 - and that's not including the other types of no-review buyer mentioned somewhere above. Any review of uh, the review system needs a review of the monthly evaluation system. There are few other places in the world where a company's most successful performers are evaluated on virtually the exact same criteria as its unranked/worst performers. Not just monthly, but even weekly/daily. Not to mention that the less orders one gets (hello big ticket sellers who aren't farming out their work off-platform to evade Fiverr arbitrage Community Standards/chronically ill people/etc), the more severe the impact. I mean, the levels system was only on Fiverr in the first place to gamify the system with the monthly evaluation tacked on. The whole point was "fun". Now that fun has turned into a complete mess of a review and ranking system through lazy, poorly-thought out fixes that don't ultimately fix anything. Fiverr put zero thought into its original 5-star rating system, and at the time invested very little time, if much, into the community - anyone who was a mod here at that time knows that I'm 100% correct in that statement. While I can't prove this directly, watch some of Shai Wininger's (co-founder of Fiverr) interview videos about Fiverr's earliest days and it seems that Fiverr grew too fast, hired too fast, and then office politics raised its ugly head as one camp - the make money and get IPO camp - won over the other boring and less profitable "we should vet users more carefully and be at one with our community like hippies" camp. It's only since after the IPO that Fiverr has really started to invest in hearing the community, but it still isn't really listening. Old habits break hard, and of course, profits are perhaps even more important now. (Wininger also mentions in one of these interviews that Fiverr was only called Fiverr because he was obsessed with the number 5 at the time. Go figure. Kaufman's input into all this was to realize that $5 was cheap enough that few people would bother cancelling. There's more to it than this, of course, but that's the somewhat uncharitable ELI5) Yes, I know they frequently consult with top sellers about things that could be changed and blah blah blah, but how many of the actual good ideas have come to fruition - and how many have been replaced by zany and (comparatively) easy-to-implement things like "guys, what about... smiley face reviews instead of numbers?!?!" ...Which no buyer or seller on this platform who is at a level that Fiverr is personally reaching out to consult with them is going to recommend. OK, so sometimes they do stuff like this on the forum, and after 780 pages of posting by sellers and buyers who don't like the new thing very much, it goes ahead anyway, with some minor fixes. Case in point: this announcement is on the forum. The announcement was made on Thursday evening; or, just in time for what is pretty much the start of the Israeli weekend (prime time to bury bad news in the PR and media world...). And maybe I'm wrong here, but doesn't Fiverr usually announce its big beta tests with a notification? Or an email? But what we effectively have is Kesha picking the occasional post - I appreciate that she's probably limited in what she can do - and thanking for input, passing on, etc on a post that a fraction of the community has seen and is really only slowly waking up to because of where is muh five star review. Still, it bodes well for the good old thesis-antithesis-synthesis strategy. Tell people about a new thing that everyone invariably hates. When it is showered with rotten vegetables and durian fruit, come back with the new and improved idea that's a bit less rubbish but what you wanted all along. Fiverr can tell everyone how it listens to feedback and adapts without having to change any of the real issues behind the feedback system. I don't think sellers here have any real issue with the idea of not getting a 5-star review. The problem is that Fiverr pretty much demands a 5-star review, whether you do it with stars, emojis, or cup and ball games. Sure, we all know there's lvl 1/2 whatever sellers who make more than TRS/Pro, but it's not about that: it's about the (very) effective gamification. Fiverr needs to depend less on AI for ranking and reviewing sellers with CS mopping up the ever more complicated messes that are starting to require in-depth guides or experts for when it is "safe" and "not safe" to do perfectly normal contractor things like cancel an order when things go wrong. Or, even just signing up for an account and getting instabanned because you used an image from your Insta portfolio and there's no guidance on site or via the DENIED autoresponder that you can email CS to sort that out. Or a Help Center page that details this. I would personally be refocusing on what Wininger said, probably a decade ago. AI just can't achieve that at the moment, and I can't be the only one who has noticed the crazy increase in false positives account actions lately. Makes me wonder about the big Bangladeshi account ban-o-rama at the beginning of the year... I could really go on about the myriad issues that Fiverr has, but it hardly matters since nothing will change unless "the people that have the true power on Fiverr," as disgruntled sellers like to say when Fiverr has displeased them, actually show that power. Unionization is actually in Fiverr's annual report as a risk, yet Fiverr will promote the Freelancer's Union (not an actual union - surprise, surprise!). But a safe risk, since there's no hope of sellers really getting together for long enough to do anything, never mind set up a virtual picket line. Am I saying Fiverr sellers should unionize? No, because I'd be wasting my breath. Anyway, back to inane review systems! For those not in the know, the video below is Thatcher's famous "opposites day" speech. I think the Fiverr review system should copy it. 5 Thatchers = 1 star and 1 Thatcher = 5 stars. You could also use Kinnocks to express toothless disappointment. Numerically, spin the bottle could be used to determine how much a Thatcher or a Kinnock is worth, with an algorithm deciding whether the end number is fair or not then making up a new number based on Fiverr's stock market sentiment. As you can see, I've thought through this carefully. Sadly, no emojis, but maybe little favicons would work instead? We could also have a JFK and Trump/Biden rating system for Americans, where Americans could pick which is good or bad based on their political leanings. Ditto all other countries of the world. There, I even pre-complicated it! It's OK Kesha - I shall thank myself for my input and pass it onto the relevant team myself! It all yields the same result anyway...

From reddit: Question: will this lead to an uptick in "feedback manipulation" account disabling (positive or false positive)? Question 2: Is Fiverr CS actively correcting what the comment refers to as a "mistake"? Question 3: Does this mean the beta test is not working correctly, giving everyone the wrong impression and making the emoji review system even more complex, convoluted, and confusing than it already appears to be? Or is this just a test to see if this is a way to overload Fiverr CS with tickets transparent way to break that 5 star dominance as suggested above? In which case, if CS is apparently changing up reviews, it doesn't seem terribly effective. Unless the goal is to make CS work harder so Fiverr gets more bang for its buck. In which case, genius move. I have no new and fiendish ideas for bad review systems today.

Are we all enjoying the transparency yet, children? I would like to propose a secondary emoji system running alongside the first emoji system to really get buyers thinking about their order and how satisfied they were with it: 🙈🙉🙊 I'm not sure how it works, but I'm sure the emoji science boffins at Fiverr can figure it out. Alternatively, may I suggest using cups? Video just so everyone knows what I mean. But I have a special Fiverr twist to add... The buyer must play 5 rounds of guess the cup, with each round representing a ⭐. If they miss, then, well, maybe the 😝 emoji works. This is a good idea because: 1. Emojis are the new black 2. Buyers will have fun playing this classic game of family fun over and over again. 3. Sellers will enjoy this new and transparent rating system because you will like what you are given. 4. Fiverr will like this because they can code it to be easy and/or difficult depending on whether the day's star quota has been met. 5. Stockholders will do weirdo Wolf of Wall Street noises when they hear about how much dough Fiverr is making from their bizarre wonderful new feedback system. What's that, you say? Well star quotas are simply a fun way to gamify giving people reviews. Every day there will be a limit of 100,000 stars (or whatever, who cares). Once they're up, they're up, and sellers get no stars, but a 💀 emoji. Or a 👁 emoji. It doesn't really matter. However, what makes star quotas brilliant is that stars can be purchased for a reasonable, let's say $5 (plus 5.5% transaction fee and $2 small order fee). They can only get as many stars as the buyer managed to win though. So it's not cheating your way to 5 stars. I hope this helps, Fiverr!

If only you spoke English better, Lena. Or worse, depending on how fluent the buyer is, perhaps?

To be fair, those emojis do translate vaguely into stars, totally not fully explained how in the OP here due to the overwhelming focus on transparency and all of that. Speaking of AI, I've been wondering why Fiverr changed its AI policy from "sellers need to disclose upfront" (beginning of year) to "buyers gotta ask or *shrug*" (now). There's quite the uptick of complaints about this on reddit, where buyers have asked and are - according to them, anyway - getting outright lied to their face. Then of course getting artwork that can't really be edited. Then there's the buyers who don't know they need to ask and think it's OK because why would a MidJourney artist pretend that they do handrawn art? Can someone from Fiverr possibly address how this TOS helped with their ongoing efforts for transparency/marketplace integrity? I don't get the general impression that these buyers wanted the dancing robots stuff. They just wanted an artist who would like, draw the thing and do it how they said they would do it. What bliss it must be for buyers who don't realize they've been hoodwinked, accidentally fooling everyone else into buying terrible services. You obviously can't trust buyer star reviews anymore. Still, we may just be old. As an experiment, here's ChatGPT. I asked it to translate "emoji reviews are amazeballs" into emoji: 😃👍📝🔥🎉 So.... "I'm happy to burn my work and celebrate it"... or look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. One of these has multiple spheroid entities, the other doesn't. Hmm. Maybe a 1.8 star review in the end? Emoji math is hard. It's so good that Fiverr is now doing the number-crunching because it's quite clear buyers are unable to review in an transparent, honest and integrity-d way. So Fiverr must use AI to make it better. Dancing robots and emoji reviews for all! The good news is that none of this particularly matters in 100 years when we're all dead and our descendants are suffering even more bizarre review systems that go hundreds of levels deep from Fiverr (beyond our comprehension as 21st century tech simpletons). Do you remember the good old says when Fiverr focused on heroin(e) chic with swears for their advertising? EDIT: This is from the Fiverr subreddit. They're not aware of this test, as far as I know. But this is an interesting comment made today on a post complaining about - you guessed it - reviews.

An average score of each hidden metric wouldn't exactly give anyone's privacy away, unless the gig/seller was brand new or something. But I can't imagine it's that difficult to program it so that it only displays after 10 private reviews are done. Of course, private reviews aren't about privacy. They were just introduced to save sellers from the agony of their hurt feelings when a buyer publicly gave them any less than 5 stars. Or was it to save buyers from the endless parade of deceased grannies, tragic life stories, and prophecies of doom that would guilt them up into changing that *awful* 4-star review into a 5-star review, saving them from the jaws of demotion? Could it be that the last big change to reviews - cancellation reviews - which also came with the threshold drop from 4.7 to 4.2 didn't quite make the impression Fiverr hoped it would, so now we're going for this emoji/XP randomizer buttons experience? Will this mean that buyers who actually want to leave a 5-star review now have to play a careful game of whack-a-mole to arrive at precisely the star rating they want to give? I'm also willing to bet that we haven't seen how the new review thing actually looks is because nobody can figure out how to display the new stuff without it looking like a dog's dinner of TMI with added emojis because emojis are fun and relatable*. *Does not apply to shell-shocked Fiverr sellers who will soon get psychosomatic Pavlovian stress reactions from various common emojis, giving them trauma-based anxiety attacks for the rest of their life. NEW PRODUCT IDEA FOR FIVERR TEAM: THIS WILL MAKE LOTS OF MONEY! I propose that the ability to view some sort of obfuscated private reviews be shown to Sellers. This will not only help Fiverr to make more money, but also increase the transparency on-site for The Few - the 25,000+ who, according to Fiverr's latest investors' report are currently coughing up for SP. That's far too many sellers, of course, and I feel like SP isn't monetized enough. This new feature could be the analytics of a new, third tier of Seller Plus with a new badge (because badges are free, low cost, and our foolish reptile brains get a dopamine boost from them!), helping Fiverr to wow investors in Q1 '24 and beyond with the take going even higher. Chuck in something like Upwork's magical feedback eraser too to enhance transparency (it's like private reviews, but for sellers. See? Transparent). And access to an exclusive new feature called "Best Buyer Quotes," which could be like Brief and Match, only there's no notification spam because you go on like, a special board full of demanding quotes for work because they never could figure out how BMs worked and the prospect of crawling through 400,000 5-star sellers for a simple job is giving them hives. Revolutionary new idea. Never before seen or abused on Fiverr. What's that, you say? It sounds like all my ideas are rip-offs of old ideas? No! I'm just reinventing the wheel, fairly and squarely, like any good product manager does when the old ideas aren't exactly working. You see, sellers could use pre-purchased Fiverr credits to offer their BBQs. Sellers could grade these offerings using the fire emoji 🔥 and pick the one that's most "fire". If a seller doesn't have enough fires, their BBQ quota depletes faster and they are given a hot dog (🌭) warning, which is essentially telling them their Fiverr career is about to be fried so they need to git gud at making BBQs. Or simply pay for more credits. Which, if I didn't already mention it in this overly-long post, can only be purchased by members of SPPP as a SPPP 'Extra'. These Fiverr credits can also be used to purchase Buh-Bye Bad Review tokens to use again buyers who simply don't get your brilliant work. All of this to be locked behind a new level of SP, which I would call Seller Plus Premium Pro because I'm really good at naming things like that. Would this be double-dipping with the 20% commission? Absolutely not. These are value-added services for serious Fiverr sellers. The credits could be valid for 30 days only, unused credits will slowly be sucked into in the complex black hole of a unique and opaquely described "60-day rolling action-taker" algorithm (Don't ask me, ask the financiers cackling wildly behind me). As you can see, big thinking is at play here with advanced triple-dipping (or maybe quad dips? That's more emojiable with, IDK, 🦵, and sounds better). But I'm sure Fiverr could make concessions, like 10% commissions to offset the reasonable Fiverr Utilized Credit Kinetic Expenses and add a new level of desirability to purchasing SPPP. Buyers can just do whatever so long as it isn't illegal obvs. This includes practicing new and inventive ways to Telegraph their intentions to the unwitting seller. We do, after all, need buyers to keep their mental energy for the Trial by Emoji that they will soon endure. I'm appalled the best that Fiverr's team could come up with was emoji faces and a few buttons. With a little extra thinking, I've come up with a whole system of pure profit that is also unnecessarily complicated, features emojis, and increases transparency. I accept checks and a tacit admission that the feedback system is a complete mess and you have no idea what to do with it so emoji faces and clicky button to feed Fiverr Neo (wild speculation) it is. I am also available for ideas on newsworthy studies. These don't need to include emoji ideas, but they could. You only need to ask 😘 I am not responsible for Fiverr taking any of this seriously. Which they probably won't, to be fair. Will Kesha thank me for my invaluable insights and pass them onto the team?

I'm just really excited for the storm of controversy as unwitting beta testers suddenly get rubbish reviews. I love how you can only see this announcment if you're logged into the forum. Sure, it's only a beta test, not that important. But it is the explanation for rave 2.2 star reviews. I'm sure CS will love the tickets too. And buyers! Buyers who... er... have less language fluency will click the funny pictures but not bother with the boring word buttons. It's so cute. It's like being back at kindergarten. With the game where you put the shape through the hole that is in the same shape and it makes a funny wheeee noise as it goes down (at least where I grew up)! Not a lot of transparency about how the system spits out an actual review. Not a lot of transparency about how this was announced. Not a lot of transparency about how this will affect the beta tested sellers (mass demotion vs the non-beta group?) Plenty of Fiverr's favorite things when it comes to the review system: the same old words about integrity, honesty, transparency, but the reality is much more confusion for buyers and sellers doing more of their favorite hobby: complaining at Fiverr. Also, what is value for money doing as a review metric on a platform which wants to go upmarket? I get it, it's a way to fish out the sellers who are yadda yadda. But how does this help in situations where the buyer is just your everyday Scrooge in hard economic times and wishes that Fiverr was still Fiverr so, no, this $100 gig that used to go for $5 is not good value for money. I rate this system 2.6. I couldn't tell you how I arrived at the numbers. I clicked the happy faces! Why isn't the review happy? Did anyone involved in the making of this test consider that the star review system is internationally recognized by all but the most... challenged... as you know, 1 star bad, 5 stars amazing? Are we really going to try and call this a transparent an improvement? Oh well, I'm on holiday for the next month, so idc. I'll just make sure to get some extra bags of buttery popcorn to enjoy the show. No point taking it seriously guys. The private review is being completely ignored, so who cares? I almost lost Pro one time because a few people didn't like me being honest about their horrific ideas. At least, that's what my then-Success Manager said. Thing is, buyers almost always returned saying "actually you were right". And I'm like "well, what a surprise." Don't worry Fiverr, all these extra reviews do is make me more anemic and more cautious and more everything that makes my services my services disappear. All so I can get a pretty review and not demoted to Hades because you can't demonstrate value to money or a lot of other things if your tongue isn't wiggling furiously around a back passage, can you? Off to buy the popcorn now. And ponder the question: If you thought ChatGPT was already overused by Fiverr sellers to converse for them, you ain't seen nothing yet...

Pretty simple chaps. Private feedback may go bye-bye because buyers hate filling out 20 zillion forms just to complete an order, sellers hate it because it's not transparent and it's not fair and completely defeats the spirit of feedback (of the constructive kind, anyway). Now they're just going to roll all this into a form that ticks off metric boxes to feed in - one would guess - the algo and Fiverr Neo. Beware, sellers fluent in languages they are not fluent in. And the non-innovative selling non-innovative services? There's some strange checkboxes in there. Wildcard assumption: 5-star review system to be replaced by emojis. 😡 to 🥰 with 🥱in the middle. Anyway Kesha, looking forward to seeing the changes, but unless private feedback goes and hidden metrics are unhidden, at least for sellers' eyes only, nobody at Fiverr has any business believing that this is an increase in transparency. It's not. It makes far more sense that this is being used to help Fiverr's AI systems AI. If only I wasn't in the waitlist for Fiverr Neo so I could see what questions it asked... It's also not terribly clear exactly how these new changes manifest in the review overview thingy for sellers in the beta program? It looks just like the current one? IIRC when Fiverr switched from the thumbs system to 5-stars it just ignored the old system in favor of the new, since sellers were already steaming about the complexity that 5-star ratings over 3 categories would bring to the poor, shrivelled up brains of the buyers (the poor dears back then got confused so easily). Oh, if only we'd know then what we know now! This post was created with the power of wild speculation and reading too much into things. It's my superpower.

OP has been banned from Fiverr multiple times. My proof is all on Reddit though. Mostly in the form of a now-suspended (by Reddit) account that tried and failed to post a rant about how much Fiverr sucks and here's a super-elaborate guide on how to make a new account that after you get permabanned. A small sample of the novel: No prizes for guessing why he keeps getting banned (on top of what is already in this post). Which, OP, was denied because r/Fiverr rules are really, really super clear on a lot of things such as "don't post stuff that violates the TOS". I muted you in the m*dmail when you insisted that you knew the rules better than I did. This is really only the tip of the iceberg . Oddly enough it looks like both of his Reddit accounts - that I am aware of - are now suspended. You see, OP has a problem: he can't stop getting suspended and banned from websites like Fiverr, Facebook, and Reddit. And no, he's not an NFT expert. So, to conclude: * OP is on Fiverr account number ????? which may be one of the hidden reasons for the "non-approval" (viz the bit about "trustworthy" sellers in the email they send out) * OP was attempting to offer a service which violates TOS (arbitrage rule - weren't you looking for NFT experts on Reddit a short while back, OP? Interesting.) * OP will never admit that he has done anything wrong * OP also knows that what he's doing breaks the rules * OP is prepared to brazen it out when it's obvious that he's lying * OP also leaves stacks of evidence everywhere while doing this * OP believes that he has absolutely cracked the permaban code To conclude, I expect OP is probably quite annoyed now because no matter how many "seller accounts" he creates via his incredibly complicated and seemingly time-consuming, yet foolproof method that sticks it to da man, he's now got to make something high quality and trustworthy so da man lets him flog someone else's work as his own while taking people off-platform to because that's absolutely what he needs in order to run his business (which is basically him paying cheap 'n' cheerful Redditors to do everything via a Discord server for him). Anyway, hopefully that clears up the "minor discrepancies" part of his profile. It has not occurred to OP that his business model may simply not be compatible with Fiverr so he should go elsewhere. Some more choice bits added below as to why he won't do that and why this makes Fiverr the bad guy. I'd share the whole thing, but the whole thing would violate forum rules by being super-sweary and super TOS-violating. Perhaps this does, too... <disappears back into ether>

Semi-active.... it's the same 5 topics, over and over again, which isn't exactly enticing....

مرحبًا! هل هذا هو منشور اللغات المضحك حيث يمكننا استخدام الكتابة المتعرجة بدلاً من اللغة الإنجليزية؟ 我也可以做中文。 沒有那麼曲折。 更多的盒形文字。 Или как насчет русского языка, который выглядит намного более знакомым, но в наши дни мы должны ненавидеть все русское. 最後に、日本語。 Did you understand any of that, OP? No? Well, that's your post on an English-speaking forum. P.S. While I used Google Translate for the stream of foreign language nonsense above, I didn't bother to translate yours. Sorry! Likely you will return the favor though, so we're square :)

Orkney, Shetland, it's all the Outer Hebrides to me 😉 Is it normal to blame other islands for fly infestations? It's just that I imagine it's quite windy up there, especially out at sea, and I can't see how flies would do cross-island travel. Perhaps they infested a ferry or something first, but it seems like that would also be headline news prior to the cafe to me, and possibly grounds for an epic biopic with a title that makes loose reference to Lord of the Flies (possibly the authorities bestow the title on the fly exterminator who goes through much hardship to rid the islands of the airborne menace etc). This is my favorite news story this week. It's been in a few national papers, but Ladbible helpfully provides a full video so we can enjoy the classy drunken brawl from the safety of our monitors. My favorite bit is the accidental boobpunch ("No! You're BATTERING me!") followed by a collapse into the puncher's crotch, which the video lovingly repeats with a slow-mo close-up zoom... twice. Excellent stuff. This, my friends, is the pinnacle of British culture and why we had a glorious empire. Probably. https://www.ladbible.com/community/mums-50th-birthday-turns-into-full-on-brawl-like-scenes-from-shamele-20220620 Naturally, the DM sent a reporter to get the full story - don't worry, everyone's best of mates again! https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10939445/Mother-50th-birthday-erupted-brawl-reveals-punched-boobs.html

They were definitely called, but they were taking ages to come and when the weird farmer gave me permission to run away I took it. I'm guessing the guy who called didn't give them my registration plate as they would have found me otherwise, and I could have got in legal trouble of some sort. But nothing ever happened, so. No, I've also had a blue car and a maroon car. The color is pretty much incidental, as with the VW I was going super cheap, while with the Suzuki I was looking for boring things like reliability, low mileage, decent price etc., and color didn't matter. What I'd really like is the new Kia Sportage in a spiffy green color (that color profile is psychobabble BS) with all the options, a huuuuuuuge computer dashboard, and all the bells and whistles you can think of. But it's $$$ and I'm cheap. Maybe in 10 years, though I imagine something else will catch my eye in the meantime...

Gather round children, for I have been in three car accidents (four, actually, but 3 and 4 are basically carbon copies years apart with me as a passenger starring different, equally [bad word] drivers). I’ve walked away from all of them because clearly the fates love me very, very much and just want to keep me on my toes by making sure I have the occasional harmless brush with death. My first accident was on the same day that I got my first car, a snazzy Volkswagen Golf Mk. 2, or this beauty (NB: my car looked a lot worse, being an underpowered, ancient, cheap banger on its last legs): I decided to take the old boy – who I had christened Frank Sinatra because I was a little obsessed with Frank Sinatra when I was 18 – for a spin in the local countryside, down roads that looked very much like this: Didn't want it to be a boring drive, though, so I took special care to drive past a local top secret army facility that does nuclear stuff just because, enjoying the fact that I was tailed by a car inside the facility, before deciding to just drive around the Duke of Wellington’s family estate, which is open to the public in summer, but not in winter (it was winter, but hey, if the gates open, I go in and trespass because I'm 18 years old and this is FUN). A man in a tractor waved at me, and I waved back. I drove around for a bit then left as nothing happened and, well, I didn't really fancy getting caught and all the fun of trespassing just evaporates when the help cheerfully waves at you. All in all, a great drive - time to return home! Well, until I decided it was time to mess around with the radio, taking my eyes off the road for far too long on windy, narrow roads. I put my head up and noticed I was speeding towards a head-on collision with a tree. Naturally, I panicked and steered away, sending the car into a wonderful deathspin. As the car spun around, I regretted my poor life choices and quietly sat there waiting for whatever would happen next (no, I didn't scream - it didn't occur to me), but luckily all that happened was the passenger side crashed into a flimsy bit of wooden post between barb wire, flattening it. The car continued to spin around on a muddy field, eventually ending up in the middle with some startled-looking cows (thankfully on the other side; no cows were harmed during this accident). While the car was fine except a new, large dent adding to its "character," it was stuck in the mud so I was pretty much stranded until some motorists stopped and came to help me out. One even had a cellphone (this was way back in 2000 when they weren’t all that common) and called the police, which I didn’t particularly appreciate, as I then had to sit in my obviously and embarrassingly trashed car back on the road waiting for PC Plod to come, never mind all the repercussions, problems, and responsibilities that were probably going to come with it. Forty minutes later, they still hadn't shown up, but a battered old Land Rover with the world’s most stereotypical-looking farmer did. Oh dear – I braced myself for some yokel fence anger and lectures about cows and da irresponsible yoof, but it turned out to be the farmer’s neighbor, and he didn’t very much like the farmer whose fence I’d destroyed. He had a chuckle, telling me this was amazing and told me I should just leave. I did, somewhat confused at the unexpected turn of events, but eager to just get home and forget about everything. My parents were unimpressed when I returned home, with my mum in particular going on about it. Luckily, she had her own (small, stupid) accident a few weeks later so I was able to return the favor with extreme prejudice #teenagewin. The police never contacted me, which was... nice? I guess they didn't have my numberplate. The second accident is rather less exciting. Same car though, a couple of years later. This time, I was speeding down the a straight bit of highway at the exciting and illegal speed of 90MPH, probably rocking out to some music and generally enjoying myself. Unfortunately, the front driver-side tire decided this was the perfect moment to blow out. Nothing too remarkable happened as the highway was pretty much deserted. The few motorists near-ish either slowed down or sped away as my car wobbled and rattled about with me employing my death grip on the steering wheel while trying desperately to get down to a safer speed and onto the hard shoulder. I called roadside assistance, they fixed my tire, and I drove like a granny the rest of the way home. Bit boring really. I did learn that if the steering wheel gets a bit "juddery" you should probably stop the car and have a look at the wheel rather than ignore it though. OTOH, the reason I maintained control was that while I ignored the obvious danger sign, I did employ a firmer grip on the wheel so when the blowout happened I was pretty much instantly ready to grip like a madman... The third accident happened only last year. I was not driving, my friend was - my job was navigation and music. We were driving through a delightful mountain pass, much like this one but with more twisty-turny bits with barriers being a little bit more scattered than one would like, considering the drop: For some reason, my friend zoned out as we were approaching a pretty tight corner – I noticed that we were approaching at an uncomfortably high speed and yelled at him to break or at least wake TF up. Which he did, but it wasn’t quite soon enough. He employed the good old “panic and oversteer for spinny funtimes” tactic that isn’t quite as safe on mountain roads as it is on English country roads. Luckily, we smashed into a barrier on the passenger side again, this time with me acting as a fleshbag for the driver and banging my head into the window. On the plus side, the breaking meant that we were going at quite a low speed (perhaps 25MPH) so it was all rather gentle, if jarring. After getting out of the car to inspect the damage and yell at each other a lot about whose fault it was (my terrible choice of music, apparently, a claim that I vehemently rejected), granny driving was again employed as the car limped to its final destination with plenty of shouting from me about bad driving, using words and colorful insults that would sadly get this post hidden. And no, there was no music. The radio was fine, but as I acidly noted to my friend, I wouldn't want to cause another accident. I was particularly vexed that the accident had broken my ecigarette, which should indicate just how injured nobody was. Greek drivers are generally terrible; I’ve found the best way to handle them is to let them do what you want and keep your distance, although to be honest that's rarely my choice. This is not a country to drive in if you don’t like tailgaters and people who overtake you on corners when there’s a massive truck coming toward you, and a country where a good 90% of the cars are pranged and beaten up. I’ve often considered buying one of these LED back window things to let them know to back off, but don’t really fancy the potential altercations it might get me into. You’ll have to imagine which of the LED emojis I would employ. I'm not really sure what the point of the flirting one is, to be honest. Is it a novel way to say hey, awesome driving!? That's about it really. I'm a reasonably good (excellent for Greece), cautious driver these days and I haven't had an accident from being a bad driver in 20 years! It's other drivers that are the problem. Apropos of nothing and because this is a car thread, I'm now going to show off my car. As a TRS Pro who makes millions of dollars every week due to my undeservedly privileged status on this marketplace stealing orders from under the nose of n00bz who would do a much better job than I ever could despite their inexperience and inability to write, I obviously have a super expensive luxury car as well. If you've got it, flaunt it, I say. Go on poors, show me your losermobiles. I bet none of you have such a fine car as this! If you do, I will just assume that you're lying because you don't want me to know you're actually seething with jealousy. But I know.

In my experience Fiverr cancels the order then refunds me in full (because I fulfil all the preconditions for the Seller Protection Program with each order anyway). Others don't, but that typically means they failed to deliver in full in some capacity or other. Your job would be to find that chink and provide evidence - if a seller promises to write you 500 words but only delivered 100, that sort of thing. My 'wins' come after a lot of tedious communicating though - explaining my deliverables, showing how I completed the work in full, professionally responding to someone in full-on hellfire harridan mode etc. It's all a colossal waste of time in my view and overly rewarding to (in my case) buyers on the scam, but their marketplace, their rules. You'll be fine - vet your sellers properly, know your rights, and don't let bad sellers get away with sloppy work and tired excuses - trust me, if granny died last night, she'll be resurrected for another sad, yet oddly convenient, demise soon enough. And don't do dumb things like hurl abuse at the seller when things go wrong. I love it when buyers do that, as breaking TOS in a dispute concerning money, well, that's a bit tragic for them 🙂 tl;dr: be a normal person with a professional approach and a mind on your rights as a consumer; you are bringing money in, whereas sellers are ten-a-penny and the vast majority aren't going to be all that good or successful (rightly or wrongly). And don't put too much stock into Fiverr horror stories - people love to complain, rarely will they come back to correct a complaint when it is resolved in their favor (and in any case, you only have one side of the story...).

Hi Frank! Oooh, is it in English? Can I see it? What do you write about? Ah, local British newspapers are a fertile source of non-news! Shetland must be particularly bereft of news to have lost rucksacks as a headline (and the assumption that suicide had taken place is interesting)! The only thing I can recall about Shetland right now is that really drippy/annoying Cameron fella from Big Brother was from there. I wonder if he still dines off his 20-year-old fame (probably not, I think he was/is a farmer)?

I see you're an expert when it comes to illicit poop collection. Have you thought about creating a Fiverr gig for that? Having just searched Fiverr for "poop" it's a surprisingly open market. There are quite a few perverts on the platform who don't exactly behave as if they know how to approach turd burgling the smart way, so it could be a winner. The Daily Mail is a horrifically awful newspaper, but also my favorite one just because it's so awful. The hypocrisy! The awful politics! The blatant propaganda! The inanely dumb comments that accompany every story! The vitriol against anyone who isn't a white, middle class English man with questionable social viewpoints! The paper thin veneer of respectability that covers up the insanity compared to e.g. the Princess Diana and Brexit-obsessed Daily Express! Yes, it's always worth checking for bias and getting a bunch of different viewpoints on a single story. In the past few years I've also added a lot of alternative news and investigative journalists to my reading list for even more diverse opinion. I reckon this is particularly important considering the increasingly consolidated nature of the MSM. The rise of the term "fake news" is an interesting phenomenon in itself; all too often, people use the term to dismiss anything that doesn't fit their understanding of the world without doing any research into the possibility that the story is less black and white than presented (Ukraine and the impact of the accompanying sanctions is a good current example; how many people, know, for example, that there is ongoing diplomatic activity and peace talks in Turkey? Craig Murray has some great stuff on that). Possibly that's also a less desirable side effect of the social media echo chamber, both from algorithmic manipulation and blocking people who don't agree with you. None of this is particularly good for democracy (see: the whole idiotic Brexit saga). The Daily Mail loves a show on Rossiya-1 that is always talking about how Russia is going to destroy the UK with its superior weapons. Sadly, I can't find an example story today but I'll update when I do as I am super-curious about how an average Russian might view the show, which (according to the DM) is a propaganda festival for the Dear Leader and his massive weapon(s). The last story I saw involved the Russian show excitedly talking about how Russia was going to bomb the Irish sea and create a huge tidal wave that would destroy the UK coast. It's possible that such an act would do the UK a favor, improving it somewhat. In any case, Britain is more than capable of torpedoing itself into the sea post-Brexit under the leadership of Johnson.