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Comment on Ask HN: Are freelancer sites (e.g. Odesk, Elance) useless?parent

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"things like "I am real", actually put me and probably other professionals off from your post."

I suspect the poster's goal was to easily identify those responders who didn't even bother to read the posting (or those posters who were machines!). Is there a less offensive way he could have obtained this information?

Well yeah sure, by asking pertinent questions about the project or how i "might" solve X. What technology might be good for X etc? In my opinion it gets a conversation going, which might be a better way of judging someones worth(goes both ways).

Posting "I am real" looks more like a test for "i'm smarter than a 5th grader"? But other freelancers might differ on this.

Think of it like a CAPTCHA. It's not a reflection on you as a person, and it's not much of an imposition — it's just a way to stave of an inevitable flood of illegitimate requests.

And just like captcha, expect a decline in conversion :-), that's all i'm saying.

I asked for a pencil sketch of a logo idea. Went with the only artist who submitted one. I even ended up using the original idea.

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