Welcome to Guru Answers!!

Hi Stacy,

I hope this comes out right. Please forgive me if it doesn't.

The new design, isn't so great.

It's not a good fit visually with the rest of the site, and the larger arty banners with the green, blue, and black are just too much. There's almost a cartoonish feel to it now, and I'm not sure how that works with the image of Guru as a business site and a freelance site. Fun is fun, and maybe there should be a Guru games page for those that want, but the answer section should be a clean-cut place of helpful information, not karma ratings and badges. That's more for a games page or celebrity gossip forum. Most of the people here are working professionals, so does it really fit the audience?

Sorry. Sometimes opinions just have to be shared.

:)

I have to agree with Christine. I'm baffled as to why such a site would encourage people to compete for "karma" points.

Many people posting have serious issues that need answers. When the person we're complaining about can come in a give negative karma points, it starts to turn into a silly game.

I received negative points for each of my 5 comments/questions within a half an hour of firing my "employee." It makes it pretty obvious doesn't it? Can we please up the professional standards here? Dealing with immature unprofessional freelancers is painful enough. Why must we have one of the top freelancer sites encouraging it?

Do away with the Tags, Badges and Unanswered tabs above. No one uses them, very few know what to do with them, and probably the rest of us don't understand them. In their place, add a tab for Customer Service, or Help Desk requests.

A lot of questions presented here on the Questions tab are of a private nature, citing problems concerning specific employers, jobs or freelancers. That doesn't belong here. That should be handled by Guru's customer service.

Other questions concern "how to's" of a technical nature to perform certain tasks or problems concerning uploading files etc. That should be handled by the help desk.

Although links to customer service, and help desk are listed somewhere here (in tiny small letters, somewhere) big bold tabs added above should be added for better visability and convience. Also, any messages posted to that should only be available to view by either customer service or the help desk for technical problems.

I just encountered a little something that highlights perfectly why having votes, karma, etc isn't a great idea. I posted a reply to someone asking about how to deal with a freelancer who wasn't producing. There were finances involved and it was a little complicated as there could be refunds involved. My recommendation, I believe, was the correct one. They need to contact help desk to seek some advice (after all, they will have record of the timeline of the project, the messages back and forth, the payments, etc. It seemed logical to me that you seek out those who can actually provide you with correct actions to take for your circumstances, whether that involves an immediate dispute on file or not.) Yet, I was given a down vote for that? Doesn't it see childish to anyone else that there are even down votes in the first place?
Does it not make more sense to not allow voting on questions and answers or to only allow votes in the form of an icon that indicates that it's an interesting question, or a suitable answer. In other words, if you have nothing good to say, then say nothing. If others don't find the question interesting they can kindly avoid comment, and if they feel an answer is lacking, they could do the decent thing and offer their knowledge on the subject. Isn't the Answers section supposed to be about helping each other out? If so, then what purpose do the votes, karma, and badges serve? None, as far as I can see.

Stacy: 'Looks pretty good to me. I'm curious why you guys decided to delete the categories, but maybe theyt just aren't relevant anymore ? The fact that you're receiving this from me, will mean that I can once again post in 'Answers', which I couldn't do with MSIE 8.