Re: Bad Employers/Clients List???

[Susan Brown <sbrown -at- JSCSYS -dot- COM>]

        I think there are a couple of things we should think about.

        My first question was 'Is this a public or a private forum?'. My
first thought is private: we restrict (by requiring a subscription and by
enforcing our own rules) access to this list. People who don't subsscribe,
or don't follow the rules cannot be a member. Sort of a private club, with
low annual dues and initiation fees (if you don't count the work we had to
do to get to our current positions). I am not sure how the lawyers would
come down on this, but I feel fairly confident that my feelings on this are
close to being right. This means that anything wirtten on this kind of a
list would not be a public publishing, but an internal discussion in a
private club. (I stand ready to be flamed/argued with/condemned on this.)

        The second question was 'How would we do this?'. The manner of
presentation could mean the difference between trouble or no trouble. I
think we get ourselves into a bit of trouble by maintaing a 'black list'.
Why not just a list? Good and Bad. This way we are not colouring the
presentation (Only submit if you have something bad to say), but are
offering a broader service: 'everything you needed to know about ...',
rather than 'why you should avoid ...'.

        Third question was "Would there be contribution guidelines?'. This
can also make a big difference. For example, 'For the 8 months I was working
with Firm X, they were consistently 6 - 8 weeks behind in paying my
invoices.' not 'Firm X are just a bunch of deabeats!!', or 'I hear Firm X
never pays their bills on time.'  Guidelines for submissions could include
and standardized checklist people submitting could rate things (like working
environment, cooperation, timeliness in paying) on a scale of 1 to 10.,
experiences must be your own and not a friend's, etc. etc. I'm sure you get
the picture.

        This is my first cut on this, but I basically think it could be a
good idea. Making it useful would be a lot of work, though.

Susan Brown
JSC Systems Corp.

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