How can we improve the Paid Drupal services experience?

Dee,

This is great. Drupal Association should consider this seriously. I think while there is certainly a need to rate a developer or a firm, there is an equal need to highlight clients who default/delay in payments or make part payments.

Roshan

The drupal team can design a system of rating.

They can have points for contributed modules, themes, etc.

Providing help in forums etc.

This is a great idea.

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Regards.

Not sure a community rating system would do anything particularly useful.

For one thing, a client coming to this forum to find a service provider will have no incentive to come back and provide feedback after the experience. The only opinions we are really going to collect are those of Drupal providers looking for work.

For another, there are different levels of Drupal providers hanging out in here: freelance developers, consulting shops, etc. Coming up with a system that fairly rates all levels would be a challenge.

One idea: separate forums for providers and people looking for providers.

M

Its a good idea to rate service providers and receivers. But how do we make sure that the providers conducting simple fraud or under-deliver are known, but that the ones who perform their duty are not? Just think of what the bad boys could do to distort the results. Its simply not feasible to make it a fair and balanced system. Especially for clients.

Some simple code of conduct shouldn´t be that difficult to follow, especially from the client end when it comes to sending money. Someone without a bank account in its own name who insists on western union/ paypal upfront is certainly not the one I would choose. The same applies to some simple measure like getting hold of land line phone numbers and talking to them in person. A bit thinking and less naivety can get you a long way avoiding fraud or under-delivering. Re references - just call them. I did it twice and learned what was the true part and the not so true part of the service providers claims.

As soon as the project is more than 100 dollar for that or this fix there are certain procedures and usually providers and clients have certain structures in place which makes it unlikely they are all fake. So we are talking about a lot of different levels of service providers here. Freelancers, companies and teams of consultants/developers and any combination of them. How you fit them all in one rating and classification system which someone can understand?

It would also be great to stop some service providers and developers using the Paid Service section as an advertising channel!!!

How can we minimise fraud and damage to the Drupal brand/community?

Relevant to this but on a sidetrack, I have found myself, whether it was wise or not, commenting on the suitability of organizations using 'drupal' in their brand. Overuse of the word 'Drupal' by private developers in domain names and company names would eventually undermine the integrity of Drupal. Clients wouldn't know which sites belong to drupal.org and which are just 'phishing'. If Drupal was a Sony or Microsoft they would be stomping on this straight away, yet some of these people are peddling their wares right on this site.

As for rating clients/developers, that is a slippery slope. Developers create their own public impressions through the image they project and the service they provide, just like businesses in any other environment.

One idea would be for developers to be able to apply to drupal.org for some kind of paid certification based on coding skills, standards, and Drupal experience. Drupal would get specific details off these developers including physical addresses and phone numbers and so there would be some comeback if a client had problems. That would then give some clients some level of warranty.

My question is:
How can we minimise fraud and damage to the Drupal brand/community?
How can we maintain a harmony between "Service Providers" and "Service Receivers"?

The first question is a bit off base. There have been some threads with finger pointing by service purchasers, however that provides a one sided story. Its less a question of fraud and more about Drupal's 'brand' value.

The second question get's closer to the core of the issue. And I think Amazon's sticky post at the top of the forum goes a long way towards educating involved parties how to better approach their projects.

At the end of the day, its mostly about education:

- Custom services is more of a collaboration than a customer/vendor relationship
- Clients need to provide/be prepared to provide mutually understandable requirement details
- Vendors need to continue communications instead of walking away from troublesome projects

+1 to information and education. -n to bureaucracy and overhead.

It is also interesting to note that most other OSS apps: Wordpress, Movable Type, Magento do not provide such a forum. Joomla! does, so it might be a good idea to how they're managing things.

Is it Drupal.org's responsibility in the first place? Does it want to be? I'm not so sure. And +1 all you want but heck, we still don't have module ratings and I can't see something like this being priority. There's already a Drupal services page at http://drupal.org/drupal-services which includes reputable companies and consultants who have contributed to Drupal. Besides that, I think it's very much the client's responsibility, as is in most cases, to do some research on who they are hiring to do work for them and give money to.

Before hiring someone, a person/company should ask:

- Does the consultant know Drupal?
- What experience does the consultant have? Site configuration, theming, custom development?
- Is the consultant active in the Drupal community?
- Does the consultant have the time to commit to this?
- References?

I very often hear about people who've given money to a "consultant" and never heard back, or their project was done wrong and they need to start again. Yes, it's sad and disturbing and having a way to protect people from these situations would be great. But there are already many ways in which each person or company looking to hire someone to work on their Drupal projects has access to. Escrow services, doing a search on Google, looking at the person's activity here on Drupal.org, signed contracts, calling references, etc. etc. etc.