edc_lab

My bad! I thought the Likert Scale was the unbalanced one, like "this not linear technique needs a name". For me, the classic "very bad, bad, neutral, good, very good" is just... the normal one! Probably the huge amount of messages on Kesha's topic didn't help me understand your message clearly so sorry both of you for my mistake. I hope you understand.

Do you wanna know my technique for spotting red flags? Now imagine the dentist's reaction.

Hello! @visualstudios posted a link on that topic, they are using an asymmetric rating scale called Likert Scale. So this is something applied on purpose and I doubt this going to be changed. Basically, if I had a good experience purchasing a service, and I don't have the option to rate it as good, at that point, I will be more inclined to set "very good" instead of "average". This means I'm selecting a 4-star rating and all the decimals added by the checklist are a sort of plus that brings the sellers closer to 5 instead of 3. The system is trying to push more sellers in the 4.0 zone to tell the new potential Fiverr customers "Look at my sellers, look at their numbers, they are very good!". It's also a way to influence customers that Fiverr has very good services, not just good.

Hello @frank_d, I'm a new seller and I'm trying to learn as much as I can about this platform so thanks for opening this necessary topic. Here's my take on the last message made by @Kesha. Let's try to make things a bit more clear all together. Why does Kesha use the word "direct"? Can we impact the Success Score indirectly? Probably yes, the reference could be the new rating system with all these checkboxes. How do they understand that? Is this a reference to the new rating system where buyers can select, through a checklist, the level of communication? About these three elements: Expectation: if buyers don't like the outcome you need to do your best to please them. Working more and providing more solutions could be the way to go. If you fail, they can ask for a refund and you can say goodbye to your money. Deadline: revisions and extensions could impact your score, so apparently, if you want to be safe, just avoid using it. Delivery: They take into account many statistics, one of which includes "how long it takes you to deliver the final product and how that compares to other sellers in your niche". Let's wrap it up. I need to set a realistic delivery time, but this delivery time needs to be similar to my niche delivery time. If mine is 7 days and the niche one has an average of 4 days, what should I do? Is it better to match the niche average delivery time or not? Will a forced gig extension made because of the unresponsiveness of a buyer be considered neutral or will it be considered negative? If the buyer is happy and satisfied, even if I used extensions and/or revisions, will the final score be extremely positive? Is it better to deliver on time and receive a "very good" review or is it better to deliver with extensions and/or revisions and receive an "exceptional" rating? I didn't watch the webinar but based on what I read so far they give huge importance to metrics, statistics, and whatever is analyzed by their fAIver software rather than humans' real feedback, that's crazy. I want to remember that these graphs that the Fiverr team is analyzing are footprints made by humans so I think they shouldn't ignore the source of that data.

I agree with that, but the thing is, Fiverr needs bonus & malus points because they need to make rankings, so in one way or another they need to do that. That's why I said they should make an article listing all the main bonus & malus decisions a seller can make while working on a gig. If I need an extension and I ask for it, I need to be aware that if they refuse it I'm going to get penalized for that. I don't want to know their rating formula, I would just like to know what's good and what's not. If they clearly say "accepted extensions are not going to penalize you" everyone would be more than happy to know that. When it comes to working with a client there are a lot of variables involved, but if you know where the possible traps are (bonus & malus), you'll have all the necessary info to make custom workflows for every client out there. If a buyer made a wrong order you can't penalize the seller. If a buyer didn't provide requirements you can't penalize the seller. If a seller receives a tip the buyer shouldn't be able to leave negative ratings. If a buyer needs a simple "it didn't meet my expectations" to get refunded, you can't let them abuse your sellers so easily (which are Fiverr customers too because of the fees). And many other things that probably I'm not aware of. Making the system transparent could help sellers become better professionals. But first of all, they need to specify what transparency means for them. Your message is full of energy, convert it into a positive one, and remember why you're doing that. I wish you all the best, stay strong!

First of all thanks for providing these links, luckily some slides are in English so I can have a broad idea, at least. You know what? Right now I don't want to know exactly how their algorithm formula works but, for instance, I just want to know that if I'm setting a gig with a 3-day delivery and I have an unresponsive client and then I request an extension, do I get penalized by asking for an extension? Apparently, no (but is that really true?). Someone could say "A member of the staff wrote that on the forum", wait, what? I'm expecting to see it right on the platform, not on their forum! Instead of writing "set a realistic delivery time" they should say "set a realistic delivery time to avoid getting penalized - read more". Pretty much like when you write the word "email" on Fiverr chat and a tooltip warns you about using that term. Too much text for a tooltip? Ok, make an article listing good and bad behaviors that could impact sellers' scores. This is the type of transparency I'd like to see. If you, Fiverr, really want to make people better sellers you just need to warn people before they make a bad decision, not after they make it (especially because, right now, the seller's analytics don't help much in that sense). Let's say, I write a not-very-clear gig description and this leads to a cancellation, right before confirming it Fiverr should tell me how heavy the impact of this decision will be (and a wise person would immediately go to read more about writing efficient gig descriptions). So, mistake after mistake new sellers will learn how to use Fiverr just by using the platform, this is how experience is made. Instead, a week later, I see sellers left alone and some of them are trying to fix this tough situation by exchanging feedback and theories by sharing their own experiences to find a way to improve the success score by pausing or deleting gigs. Maybe two days ago deleting not-performing gigs was a smart move, but today after someone made edits to the algorithm, it could have been a bad decision and now those gigs are gone. I perfectly understand people trying to improve their success scores in one way or another, but this is not how things should work. This should be something Fiverr needs to do, not the sellers.

Ok, so, does it mean that every decision could be tracked with a bonus and malus system? I'm thinking about something like: Gig's delivery time: 5 days Revisions used: 4 Delivered on time: no Extensions needed: 2 Actual delivery time: 8 days Bonus/Malus obtained: X points Public review score for delivery: Y points Private review score for delivery: Z points * some complicated calculations to determine the final value * Delivery time result: Negative Impact I know, for some aspects they say "This will not impact the Success Score" but since the official response in some cases contradicted itself I'm open to believing everything at this point. This transparency is so confusing.

I think it's very important for sellers to understand what's happening "on the other side of the gig" so thanks for sharing this screen. The sentence "it helps us improve the experience on Fiverr" is so deceptive, seems like you're rating the company, not the seller. At this point, I guess this simple sentence made several victims among the "incoherent Success Score" that some sellers have. In my opinion, the following little fix would be a starting point for improving this private review system: This feedback won't be made public and is only visible to us. lt helps us understand the way JohnDoeValueForMoney is working on Fiverr. - How would you rate the overall quality of this delivery made by JohnDoeValueForMoney? - How closely did JohnDoeValueForMoney delivery meet your expectations? - Was JohnDoeOnFiverr's delivery useful for your needs?

Ahahaha my bad! I thought it was Maiky's notification since she was sharing her screen during the presentation. If you check the video you can see that she smiles right after the notification appeared and I thought it was her reaction "Oh damn, I got the pizza group notification while I'm on a Zoom call!". By the way, thanks for sharing the webinar!

I watched it too and I learned a new thing. They have a Pizza Party group.

Oooh, I'm happy to read that, really! Seems like you had a very good time here! Right now I'm in my hometown in the center-south of Italy, which is located right between Rome and Naples, but in a month or so I'm going to move a bit to the west coast in a seaside town called Gaeta to enjoy the coming sunny days. So, what did you like the most about Italy?

Usually, when you release a relevant update of, let's say, an App, you start distributing it to a small number of users and slowly increase the percentage of people who have the update available on the app store to see if everything is working as planned, otherwise you stop the release and make the proper fixes. Here on Fiverr, if I remember well, apparently they did that just with the rating system (switching from stars to emojis and checklists), indeed some people were asking here on the forum if someone experienced the new rating system or not. The vast majority of complaints were mostly about the "value for money" rating, which makes getting a 5-star review harder than ever. The success score wasn't something people were chatting too much, probably because was a kind of mysterious thing that nobody knew what to expect from that. Then the Success Score was released and a huge amount of posts flooded the forum (and the Customer Support too, probably). Most of the messages were about false positives of flagged accounts and incoherent success scores of successful sellers. The error here, in my opinion, was to release this new success score to every single user in the span of a few hours. Why plan a month of transition if you release all at once? If they thought to use the transition month as a fixing month, well, that's a crazy decision in my opinion, it doesn't work like that. Personally, I think they should have made something like that: How many active sellers does Fiverr have? Let's say 250k. Release the product to something like 0,5% and 1% of sellers, monitor the situation, and check Customer Support and Forum topics in case of complaints and feedback. Then, note everything, address complaints, find solutions, and once you're ready, change the monitored percentage by releasing the product to a greater sample. Test again the same things and move to a greater percentage until you hit 100%. If you have 250k active sellers testing the new release on a sample of 1.2k-2.4k is more than enough to initlially understand whether you messed up with the new system or not and then they could have increased the percentage of users testing the new features in the mentioned month of transition. But no, they released everything all at once, and now they cannot reassure all the worried sellers and this leads to panic and desperation for several of them. So at this point, sellers got it right when they reacted badly to the news of an upcoming major update, causing them to have perplexities and worries, but apparently, everything was ignored. It's not just about the system, it's about the approach Fiverr has during these transitions. My advice here is: You have some great experienced professionals here, just listen to them, it's free!

Good point, I think in that case you would have received a sanction. Crazy stuff.

I agree! That was my plan actually, better safe than sorry.

I was a UW freelancer too and I got fooled by their algorithm a few years ago. I had a great start, got a rising talent badge and a success score of 100% almost suddenly and I got 9 clients in a few months. Then, 2 clients out of 9 never marked the job as completed because they vanished from the platform and I kept the contract open for more than a year (closing it would have impacted my success score). The idea was to get my 10th client and close the ongoing projects, because after 10 contracts you have the chance to mark which review you want to avoid from success score calculation and I really wanted to get rid of these 2 "no rating" works. But having these contracts open with no money activity for their algorithm meant I wasn't helping UW gain money and they set my account on "invisible" multiple times. The 10th client never arrived and I lost both the rising talent badge and the success score. All of this happened because I was concerned about dropping from a 100% Success Score to a lower number. This pursuit of perfection could stress freelancers heavily so understanding that a 4.8 can bring you the same quantity of work could reduce this mental stress, which is a good thing. The "value for money" thing seemed the biggest problem of this update, but apparently, other new issues are more concerning, such as the false positives of some legitimate accounts. Acting well and watching your account getting flagged isn't the best feeling in the world, I guess, especially if this leads to a drop in the number of orders. I hope they listen and they fix each problem instead of scaring these people with a bot saying "The decision is final". Behind each account, there is a real human, not a bot, and taking care of them should be a priority for Fiverr. I think the verification method would be something like sending them a postcard. "Hello CS, I'm on vacations, please don't ban me. See you!🌴🥥"

Wait, are they flagging remote workers accounts? I mean, if this summer I want to move to another country and enjoy the remote work from there, can I do that or no?

I checked your profile and I'd like to reply, but I don't know where to start. If you're not trolling: Get rid of the heavy filters on your face (if these aren't filters, sorry). Set a profile to tell us more about your working experience and services. Check spellings. If you're trolling: Congratulations on joining Fiber, stay online at least 25 hours a day.

I don't know why I missed this message! On those days I noticed an increase in people opening topics and asking how they could improve their thumbnails so I decided to make a detailed post to link them when needed. Later, I noticed a little graphic mistake in one of the images I made and I asked the CS if they could edit the post with the fixed one. It ended up with them removing all the images inside the post without updating my message with the new image and I was forced to repost it, otherwise, it wouldn't make much sense. Maybe one day I will make a topic on that, who knows! Thank you so much, I really appreciated your comment! Bye!

Note: A month later, on the 15th of March 44 B.C., Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of Roman senators. This significant event is commonly referred to as the Ides of March.

When I read things like that I'm always, like 100% of the time, speechless. What comes into the mind of these persons is still a mystery to me. What kind of reply do they expect from a seller? "Oh, many thanks, I didn't know that, let me lower my prices real quick to match your desired budget". I mean, have you ever gone in a shop and asked this type of sentence to the business owner? I don't think so. That's so awkward.

Thanks for sharing these screens. I agree, these little details play a big role so it's important to have everything aligned to each category. I hope they listen to your warning.

Hello @breals I don't know if this will make you less concerned, but right now, I can see a 5.0 rating on your profile. Luckily, this issue has a visual element, and you spotted it on time. However, what if a similar issue occurred with a "hidden" element, like the ranking algorithm, which we can't visually see but only "perceive" that something is behaving differently? I hope everything is fine for everyone now. Bye!

Too bad, if only there was an online platform to hire proofreaders! Jokes aside, it's interesting to see a real example of it. Are all these options equal in every rating tab or do they change because of the selected rating? For instance: What made the work exceptional? ✓ Delivery time What made the work very poor? ✓ Delivery time

Good advice here, especially the one related to links and files. To sum it up, if an offer is too good to be true, 99% of the time is a scam (well, I would say 100% actually). Have a nice day you too @zahir_is_here

Some congratulations here on Fiverr remind me of "nice pic!" written under Instagram posts, but there you know those comments are made by bots. Here it's definitely funnier.