[wp-forums] Ethical practices of consultants

[Chris Kasten]

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 6:07 PM, Mark Ratledge <mark at markratledge.com>wrote:

>
> On Jun 30, 2010, at 5:39 PM, James Huff wrote:
>
> > The basic format of such a topic (which would be closed and sticky, btw)
> would include a brief bit on what we consider to be "ethical practices"...
>
> Thoughts:
>
> I think there should be real clarity in what is considered to be ethical
> and what is considered to be not ethical.
>
> Should people or consultants *never* email people offering to fix what they
> need fixed? Can people or consultants email help seekers with a simple
> "contact me if you are interested?"
>
> Sounds like there will be a list of unethical consultants; will there be a
> list of ethical consultants? And who decides that?
>

Good lord, not us!

This all has the potential to be a good idea right up until we start naming
names. Then it augers into the ground faster than a stunt-show jet after the
pilot punched out.

I know some of you probably follow the WP Pros mailing list. Have you
noticed how often the "blacklist topic" comes up? 3 times this year so far I
think (I'm not sure, I only follow that list casually). Pretty sure once in
June though.  It generates a lot of noise and then kinda peters out -- until
the next time.

Ultimately it just gets messy around criteria defining and the very
realistic anticipation of "he said / she said" debates. I'd *really* prefer
not to head down that road on the forums.


>
> Should be people be pointed to jobs.wordpress.net or sites like Elance?
>
> I can already see this: what's the process when a consultant is blacklisted
> and they subsequently raise hell about it in the forums? Delete the thread?
> Delete the user?
>
>
We don't have the tools to ever win that battle. Too easy for them to just
create a new account and come back (believe me, I've fought and lost those
battles. You "win" when they get tired or bored...)

Dunno about you guys, but while I'm pretty quite on the forums these days I
still spend at least an hour a day going through the akismet queue. All this
does is give us more traffic in the queue with the inevitable battles and
bozo-bit flipping.

If there's truly merit in the blacklisting let's take it off the forums and
work with the folks in the WP Pros list.

My dos centavos,

Chris_K (formerly known as HandySolo)