Who is MeFi Jobs for? June 29, 2013 7:51 AM   Subscribe

Is MeFi Jobs really a classified ads forum for people who want to pay $5 to advertise but don't appear to be active members? That seems kind of bad faith to me, but I'm wondering whether this seems OK to other folks.
posted by liketitanic to Etiquette/Policy at 7:51 AM (28 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- frimble



That seems kind of bad faith to me,

What do you mean, why?
posted by carsonb at 7:53 AM on June 29, 2013 [1 favorite]


Initially I'm comparing it to people who sign up, ask a question, and never even respond to the answers. That's a valid use of AskMe, if a bit annoying from the perspective of an active participant. When I signed up for MeFi I immediately posted a link to the front page. It was why I signed up. Give Tina a little time, maybe she'll start participating in the other portions of the site? (For better or worse?)
posted by carsonb at 7:56 AM on June 29, 2013


Just a heads up on the mod perspective on this. If we see people doing this as a one-off thing, we don't mind terribly. Like, it's okay to have your first interaction with the community be a jobs posting. That said, if it continues in this vein (i.e. people only post jobs and don't otherwise engage with the community) we'll usually tell them to knock it off.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:57 AM on June 29, 2013


The official line on this is, this particular posting seems ok as a one-off thing, even though I understand why it feels sort of weird. If this person were doing other iffy things on the site, or posting several of these kinds of things, then we might step in.

I believe we've had other people who just signed up to post jobs, and that was fine -- in those cases, they were more clearly real job-jobs.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:58 AM on June 29, 2013


If I were going to create a jobs post, I would probably consider creating a sock puppet for it, to avoid disclosing my employer or other personal information that I don't necessarily want associated with my usual account.
posted by juliplease at 8:07 AM on June 29, 2013 [40 favorites]


Sock puppet accounts came to my mind too, juliplease. I think that's probably the case with a significant proportion number of one-off mefi jobs posters.
posted by Daddy-O at 8:09 AM on June 29, 2013


I don't look at Jobs much, but if I had just happened on that post/profile I would assume that poster was a member who didn't want to associate her real name and job with the rest of her posts. A sock puppet for legit posts, if you will.

Or, what juliplease said while I was typing slowly.
posted by DestinationUnknown at 8:09 AM on June 29, 2013


Mods usually know sock puppets.

This said, I have no problem with signing up to only post jobs. It's a bit weird, but eh, where's the harm?

Also, I would pay $75 to have an fMRI of my head.
posted by cjorgensen at 8:19 AM on June 29, 2013 [1 favorite]


I think it's reasonable as long as it doesn't move into spam or SEO rubbish.
posted by arcticseal at 8:23 AM on June 29, 2013


I may actually have a job to post there soon. I hope not; it would mean I finally had to fire someone which I'm really trying to avoid despite their own best efforts at getting canned. Anyway, I would absolutely make a (mod-notified) sock puppet for that purpose.

I'm wondering though, if anyone actually ever sees the jobs posted there. There are so few of them.
posted by digitalprimate at 9:12 AM on June 29, 2013


Look at it this way. That person is going to get more responses on Craigslist with a free post. So, they're not getting any advantage here. They for whatever reason want to reach MeFites, and that's what the MeFi jobs listing is for.
posted by michaelh at 9:17 AM on June 29, 2013


I almost hit the contact form about that job, actually, so I understand the impulse behind this post. I don't have a problem with first-post Jobs posts, but that one seemed weird. Maybe the Dr Phil and "check us out on YouTube" references pushed it into sketch territory for me.
posted by donnagirl at 9:39 AM on June 29, 2013 [1 favorite]


Well I think it's ridiculous that we have whole sub-site devoted to Steve Jobs. I know he's in the spirit world now, but that doesn't mean he'll manifest on the Prime MeFi plane just to answer your inquiries. Post to AskMe, get your questions answered by living people for chrissakes.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 10:45 AM on June 29, 2013 [13 favorites]


There was recently a question about flexible part-time work in Los Angeles, and a couple of people suggested exactly this kind of thing.

Agree that the Dr. Phil reference misreads the Mefi audience, though.
posted by purpleclover at 10:56 AM on June 29, 2013


I really, really want jobs to be a much more heavily posted-to subsite. I know a lot of talented, skilled MeFites are out of work, or are working a job that severely underemploys them, while they are just barely getting by (raises hand). It can't be that no one on the site knows of any available jobs anywhere.

I know that MetaFilter has no intention of becoming craigslist (and that's a good thing), but with the membership barrier and the general sense of community, I wish we could share our resumes, or let freelancer-MeFites post their skills/availability, etc. It seems a waste of a possible gold mine of connections.
posted by tzikeh at 12:09 PM on June 29, 2013 [3 favorites]


1) I don't visit Jobs.MeFi often enough.

2) I like the "professional white background."

3) What are the chances of putting up a "For Hire" subsite (or integrating it into Jobs)?
posted by notyou at 12:40 PM on June 29, 2013


I don't see why it matters what form or extent any member's participation takes as long as they aren't breaking any site rules or acting badly. I mean, if someone posts ten job openings and never does anything else on the site, they're still an asset to the community because the means it's ten opportunities for people here. If someone only posts the occasional AskMe and never participates anywhere else on the site, that's fine by me too, because those questions become part of the database and will very likely help others here. The job openings and questions do have to be legit, but otherwise I can't see the downside.

And I agree with what tzikeh says. I'm a freelance editor and writer and would love a way to network on here. The argument against that is probably, "There's LinkedIn for that." Yes, and there's Ask.com and other places on the net where you can find out random stuff, but we still have AskMe, and it's the best resource of its kind on the net. The community here is so solid and of such high quality that figuring out a way to tap into what it has to offer, as we did with AskMe, is going to create something that's unique and better than what you'd get from any more random pool of internet users.
posted by orange swan at 12:54 PM on June 29, 2013


What are the chances of putting up a "For Hire" subsite (or integrating it into Jobs)?

There is a sort of thing like this that seems to be going on - on the front page of Jobs there's a list of members available for hire. But I have no idea how to get yourself on that list.
posted by LionIndex at 12:58 PM on June 29, 2013


But I have no idea how to get yourself on that list.

Go to the New Post link on the jobs page - there is an option for posting your availability.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 1:00 PM on June 29, 2013 [2 favorites]


Does it count as getting your pony if upon asking you learn your pony already exists?

As far as I'm concerned it does. Thanks!
posted by notyou at 1:06 PM on June 29, 2013 [1 favorite]


I had a similar thought about someone awhile back who joined, posted a new song on MeMu every. single. day for about a month and never did anything else on any other aspect of the site as far as I could tell. It felt a bit spammy like maybe they were trying to drum up attention for their music but I never brought it up (until now) because I couldn't think of a way to do that without coming off like an ass.

And then the user stopped posting stuff every day and things went back to normal. So.
posted by Doleful Creature at 5:26 PM on June 29, 2013


Even if he never stopped, who cares? I look at Music every now and again. It's not like it's suffering from a ton of views and comments.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:12 PM on June 29, 2013 [1 favorite]


I really, really want jobs to be a much more heavily posted-to subsite.

I am so with you on that. A few years ago I tried to campaign a little for an expanded activity level on Jobs, but it didn't seem to fly and so I just stopped posting to it.

For instance, I thought it should be a place to post jobs that look interesting to you and that you think MeFites would be a particularly good candidate pool for, or that you know about through a professional link or something like that. I'm always getting email job descriptions from people who are hiring who say "pass this on to your network," and these don't get openly posted anywhere outside those kinds of networks. And since MeFi is one of my networks and full of smart people, I'd like to post those things here. But it really seemed like people thought it was too weird to use Jobs to post jobs for which you're not the person hiring or it's not in your company.

To me that's kind of the opposite of a useful jobs list because it eliminates the power of a network, which of course is the #1 route to getting a job, but that was the zeitgeist back at the time anyway.
posted by Miko at 8:09 PM on June 29, 2013 [6 favorites]


I like Miko's pony.
posted by hamandcheese at 12:38 AM on June 30, 2013 [4 favorites]


"Mods usually know sock puppets."
posted by cjorgensen at 4:19 PM on Jun

We can ask NotTheWhelk if this is true next time he is here.
posted by marienbad at 6:04 AM on June 30, 2013


make a (mod-notified) sock puppet

Is there some kind of implied guideline that people are supposed to let the mods know when they are creating a sock? I assumed (like cjorgensen) that mods just "knew" when someone is making a sockpuppet, either because the email address is one there's already a record of, or because it's called something sock-like.
posted by gubenuj at 2:29 PM on June 30, 2013


Is there some kind of implied guideline that people are supposed to let the mods know when they are creating a sock?

Nah, you don't have to, we will know one way or the other. But people do notify us, or ask us questions about what's ok, and that's fine too. It gives us a chance to make sure we're all on the same page re: appropriate uses vs inappropriate ones.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 2:35 PM on June 30, 2013


I post jobs because I need staff, and most MeFi people are pretty interesting. *shrug*

As far as I know I have gotten one applicant for the two or three postings I have made -- and if it's the guy I am thinking of, he is probably too good for the job! So in my mind, this is a place to find decent potential applicants/future colleagues.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:53 AM on July 1, 2013


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