Background for this posting (this was originally posted on the other blog)
It's good to have a lively back and forth on the Dragos / Nashobawinery arbitration and I appreciate everyone's participation. But I have also received some complaints. Many people subscribed to the blog to get updates about the site and instead are having their feeds and email boxes cluttered with what one described as a "flame war". Others have pointed out that the original topic blog posting (which has long been forgotten) was not about this person's specific arbitration and that this has gone way off topic.
At the same time, the people writing back and forth have their right to express their opinions (as long as they do so with professional language...which I'll address below). Personally, I am disappointed to see several people form such strong opinions after hearing only 1 side of the story and not waiting to actually view the evidence of what happened so they can make up their own minds about what actually happened. They are like jurors who listened to the defendant's story and proclaimed their verdict: before viewing any actual evidence or allowing the prosecution to speak! But if that is what they want to do, then even these people have the right to do that.
So to help both groups, I'm creating a brand new blog posting JUST about the Dragos / Nashobawinery arbitration.
Issues and misconceptions about this arbitration
1) Use of unprofessional or inappropriate language:
Before going further, I want to remind all parties to keep their language professional and appropriate to a professional, business environment. If you post an insult, your post is going to get deleted. This is not hard to do and there is an easy way to monitor yourself. Imagine that instead of typing your response to some anonomous person that you can't see, that you are co-workers and the other person is right in front of you (i.e. in a business environment). You might disagree with the, but would you call them a "moron" or "idiot" or "useless"? Even if you're the type of person that were inclined to do that, you would probably think twice because you would know that you would get written up at the least, and have a good chance of getting fired. As a result you would be more respectful and courteous. Please keep that in mind. Note that if you continue to post unprofessional or inappropriate language your blog posting permissions will be removed (i.e. you will be "fired"). Please help us to avoid that
2) Making this arbitration public
This arbitration only concluded a few days ago and this will be made public in the following week. It is true it "only takes a button" to make the arbitration public, as someone said. However it would be irresponsible of us to do that without consulting the other party and making sure that doing this would not disclose important information (security information, intellectual property, etc.) Let me put it this way: if the roles were reversed and you were using the site, would you really want us to just "flip a switch" and expose your security information (userids and passwords), and intellectual property to the entire internet? It takes a few days to let the other party go through everything and tell us what IP they want hidden and what is okay to keep, and that is what we are doing. Once that is finished this will be made public.
3) Type of arbitration: this is not a self-cancellation arbitration
This is a great example of what happens when you form a strong opinion without waiting to actually get the facts (and rely solely on one party and a little bit of guessing).
One person (who had not seen the arbitration) guessed that this was a self-cancellation arbitration (which it wasn't) because they took at face value what Dragos had said about it. (They then went out to explain why the process was so wrong for a self-cancellation arbitration) I explained that it was *not* a self-cancellation arbitration, but actually an oversight arbitration (where we are trying to help both parties finish the project...not where they are trying to cancel), and asked that they wait on the actual arbitration to be public so they could understand and see for themselves.
But then I saw again this morning and twice more saw complaining about how this situation was not right for a self-cancellation arbitration.
So again: this is not a self-cancellation arbitration. Please WAIT until the actual arbitration comes out before forming an opinion, becuase you may find that your opinion was based on incorrect facts (such as this one).
Answers to specific questions:
1) >>rajehurunagar wrote: why does it take so long to make the arbitration public ? isnt that supposed to click on a button and make the arbitration public ? and is there a page where these arbitrations can be found because I keep hearing about making them public but I couldnt find anything on Google rajeh
I answered above why it is not just a click of a button. But you can click on the blog home page on this posting to see the other arbitrations that have been made public.
2) >>Ricky T wrote: he is an old dog doing their dirty jobs
Ricky, you would not tell your coworker he is an "old dog" because you would get written up or fired. So please keep it professional and don't use this type of language, so you can continue to correspond. If you choose not to, then you will force us to remove your blog privileges.
3) >>Florence wrote: Just look at this case, they are closing an entire account of one of their top coders because he presumably delayed an arbitration for 3 months even though he did not missed the deadlines and the customer backed the coder.
Florence, this is great example of opinion based on incomplete or incorrect facts.
1) You thought the customer backed the coder because you simply believed what Dragos had said was true, but had never seen the arbitration or what actually happened. I would have liked to defend ourselves and tell Dragos what the employer had said about him to us, privately. But we did not yet have permission to post that to us, so we could not defend oursevles. Fortunately the employer has recently come out with a public statement. That statement does not even express everything that was expressed privately. But it does clearly show that he was definitely not "backing the coder".
2) You don't really know why Dragos lost or even what he did in arbitration because all you have is what he said happened and you haven't actually seen the arbitration itself.
Florence, I ask that you wait a few days to read the actual arbitration and *then* form your opinion. Otherwise you risk making incorrect assumptions like the above.
4) >>Nigel Kemsley: That is no excuse for a lousy conduit during a technical arbitration. It seems that the coder didn't do anything against the rules.
Nigel, if you were sitting on a case in a jury, would you make your verdict after only hearing the defense and not looking at any evidence or listening to the prosecution? I really hope not, because if everyone did that, every criminal would be set free.
You have not seen what actually happened yet (the arbitration) and you only have Dragos's version of what happened. So how can you possibly know he "didn't do anything aginast the rules"? And later you get outraged about this and say that you're going to talk to all sorts of other people about this. I hope that was not true and just emotion talking. Because if it is, then that is one step worse than simply forming a strong opinion without the facts...it would be also *acting * on it as well. If that is what you're doing, I'm very dissapointed and hope you will think twice about it and wait for the evidence to come in later this week, before making your "verdict".
>>albert galvan wrote: They are closing this guy's account because they want to teach him a lesson: Vworker is not a service is a privilege. They know they cannot prevent him from creating a new account so they will not loose him as a coder. But they will destroy his reputation and account so that next time he knows how things really work around here. This whole business starts to look like slavery and it makes me sick...
Albert you've taken what Nigel did and brought it to the next level! Not only did you start with a strong opinion based on one person's side of the story and without waiting for the facts. But now you've gone one step further and are able to do something that all psychologists warn us is one of the most dangerous things to do: assume we can guess the motivations of someone else! So we've jumped from a strong opinion, to slavery!
And again another inaccurate fact is behind some of your logic. In actuality, we have several systems in place to catch duplicate accounts, including ThreatMetrix (don't take my word for how great it is: you can read about their amazing technology on their site) and in a week a 2nd anti fraud situation for detecting affiliate fraud (which will go out with the new, higher paying, affiliate program). So the entire premise really doesn't make sense.
To everyone,
Please, please, please WAIT until you actually see the abitration before forming an opinion on it. If you think it was handled badly AFTER that, then you will have an informed opinion and we can talk/discuss it. But right now, so many people are basing their strong opinions based on inaccurate facts and assumptions, which makes it difficult or impossible to have a rational discussion about it.
Thank you,
Ian Ippolito
