Like many others I am eagerly awaiting the launch of steemgigs.org and the prospect of a more fully fledged gig economy powered by blockchain technology, and the latest post from @surpassinggoogle is welcoming news for those of us that have been hanging around the Discord channel keen to find out the latest developments.
Having worked on Freelancer.com, Fiverr.com and a number of other online freelance websites, I want to point out some of the issues that have plagued these types of platforms and hope that they will receive some attention from the team behind @steemgigs. As someone who is keen to participate both behind the scenes but also wanting to make use of the service, I encourage people to provide their contribution now that the project is on utopian.io.
Some some things to watch out for:
PROJECT SCOPE
- Certain types of projects can be defined more clearly because the outcome is a tangible deliverable (e.g. a logo) but even then some of the requirements can be unclear (e.g. clean, cool-looking) and this is often a source of contention which leads to disagreements (which then requires a dispute resolution process).
- Certain types of projects cannot be defined clearly (e.g. coming up with a concept) because the outcome can take a variable amount of time or even change during the project (as is often the case in the Lean/Agile/US world).
BIDDING PROCESS
- I think one of the flaws of freelancing websites is the emphasis on price rather than the merits or suitability of the bidder, which prices out most people in countries with higher living costs for projects, or allows people in richer countries to pay people less than adequate prices that they would pay people in their own country. It would be interesting to experiment with the idea of having the potential bidders decide who would get the job and at what cost but I am not sure how well it works in practice because I haven't seen it done before.
- Paying for priority/preference is something that again tips the bidding success towards people that can afford to do this, and I don't know if this falls in line with the vision of steemgigs.
DISPUTE RESOLUTION
- Having a diverse range of opportunities and projects requires a team that has different areas of specialization in order to resolve potential disputes.
- On many of the freelancing websites the dispute resolution process is not very human (i.e. they stick to the contract/agreement without considering the circumstances) and the outcome usually leads to mistrust in future transactions.
- The outcome of the process is usually a refund, partial payment or cancellation of project, but I think we should focus on how to 'get things done' so that people will be motivated to use the service without feeling like they won't get that project finished.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
- No doubt many of the projects posted on steemit will relate to specific groups or team and the projets they want to work on, but does this provide certain users of the platform that are associated with those groups an unfair advantage when it comes to bidding for work?
RATING SYSTEM
- For buyers (clients) this can be a problem because there will be a reliance on reputation as a starting point for trust when choosing suppliers (freelancers).
- For suppliers this can be a problem because rating systems favour people who go out of their way to do more than the job requirement so they can get a '5 star' rating, but we should be aiming for an equitable amount of reward for effort.
- For buyers and suppliers the rating system is abused when there is a dispute and no satisfactory outcome is reached, resulting in one or both parties suffering a hit on their rating.
All of these factors will influence the user experience and thus the viability of the platform, so I think it is good to have a clear idea of the problems we may face and how to address these issues. I am hoping to get a more in-depth preview of the platform so I can start adding contributions on utopian.io, but would definitely be happy to speak to some of the designers and developers to hear their thoughts on these issues.