It's important to realize this forum has a global reach; rates are not the same everywhere. It is your responsibility as individual professionals to evaluate the client, and decide if their rate matches yours.
Ultimately your idea would require a large investment in tooling and moderation, which we're limited by our current host and by available time and resources.
It's up to you, as individual small business owners, to filter the meat from the shit. You can't farm out that responsibility. And Polycount cannot do it either, it's nowhere near our role.
But if you see obvious phish/spam/theft, let us know by using Flag-Report, and we'll investigate. Rates however are up to you to validate.
We do try to educate on responsible Freelance hiring practices, see the wiki, and the many shares on the forum whenever this comes up. But we can't solve tl;dr.
It's a dog-eat-dog world out there sometimes. Welcome to a free and open marketplace, man. Anonymous 1-post man.
Your work is worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it. There are no "standards". Just because something was worth $10 000 for the last five years doesn't mean it's not going to cost $5 this year. Obviously you're angry because it seems you're earning less - and that's good. That means the market works. Market is for the consumer, not for the worker. If you want to earn more, apparently it's time to develop skills that pay better.
that's the beauty of capitalism, they are free to try and pay what they want and you are free to ask for more, or turn them down.
in general people paying below minimum wage are going to get below minimum results so it works out in the end as it should in most cases. its the old time/quality/budget triangle where you only get to pick 2 of those 3 options.
this is also why you should have a 6 month safety net of savings so you are never put in a desperate position and have no leverage and are forced to take jobs like that. personal responsibility goes a long way.
Replies
We've clarified our position on this, see
https://polycount.com/discussion/136571/freelance-jobs-guidelines
particularly this reply
It's up to you, as individual small business owners, to filter the meat from the shit. You can't farm out that responsibility. And Polycount cannot do it either, it's nowhere near our role.
But if you see obvious phish/spam/theft, let us know by using Flag-Report, and we'll investigate. Rates however are up to you to validate.
We do try to educate on responsible Freelance hiring practices, see the wiki, and the many shares on the forum whenever this comes up. But we can't solve tl;dr.
It's a dog-eat-dog world out there sometimes. Welcome to a free and open marketplace, man. Anonymous 1-post man.
in general people paying below minimum wage are going to get below minimum results so it works out in the end as it should in most cases. its the old time/quality/budget triangle where you only get to pick 2 of those 3 options.
this is also why you should have a 6 month safety net of savings so you are never put in a desperate position and have no leverage and are forced to take jobs like that. personal responsibility goes a long way.
Do your part in educating your peers so it can stay the former not the latter.