Implementing a new rule.

[Lotus]

There has recently been emerging a new business model in the service team industry which I highly disagree with and believe will be detrimental to the market.

This suggestion is in full reference of this thread starting from post #5. - https://www.mc-market.org/threads/350815/

It was just a little debate between me and Cal on why I disagree to this scheme, but I’ll be paraphrasing some of my points from there to here to emphasise my suggestion.

This new business model which I highly disagree with is an ‘organisation’ owning multiple service ‘teams’ which are all linked together behind the scenes. What I mean by when they are linked together behind the scenes, is that in reality under the false facade that there are multiple ‘teams’, each of them are all run by the same exact singular team.

I don’t believe I should copy and paste my entire post hence I’ll just link it. But all my strongest points against this model can be found here - https://www.mc-market.org/threads/350815/#post-3067851

To reiterate some of the points in that post. Anyone can setup the infrastructure for this multi-service team organisation model. The fact there are already so many teams in circulation is because they are fairly easy to setup. Hypothetically speaking, I can open up 10 ‘teams’ myself and have 10 advertising threads in every section of MCM. But in reality, every single ‘team’ has the same freelancers and managers behind it. They are offering the exact same service with the exact same quality with the same freelancers across multiple ‘teams’. This is abusable and there are no rules to prevent this. The amount of multiple ‘teams’ for more exposure can potentially be limitless. If abused, the whole market will just be flooded.

If you think about it, this is just a very elaborate plan to advertise the same team over and over again. It may even be on grounds to infringe the duplicated threads rule. Yes, the branding may be different for each ‘team’, but they are all connected to one central team. If an ‘organisation’ owns 5 service teams, all 5 of those service teams will offer the same quality with the same freelancers and managers backing it.

Again, this is abusable and can get out of hand if enough people start doing this. I’d like to state that I’m not against service teams itself, but this sort of duplication tactic by hiding under the pretence of an ‘organisation’ for more exposure is just wrong.
We already have an ‘organisation’ called Slashy doing this - https://gyazo.com/f44ed3d8181f3571cc6f23ec40a64999
Now we have Above pulling a similar stunt with Prime and Avast (and they plan to add more). I would not be surprised in the future if more ‘organisations’ pop up where they will abuse this tactic for multiple threads in a section for more exposure.

To conclude, I suggest a rule to regulate such activities. I’m not sure exactly what should be restricted, and it would be great if you guys can suggest some ideas. My own solution would be that users should only be allowed to maintain a single service team (this could also apply to other businesses too possibly) at any given point. This is to prevent multiple rebranded duplicates popping up which will potentially flood the market.

 

[Emissions]

Additionally, currently Slashy owns 3-4 teams (even I can’t tell how many as apparently UnitedDesigns are owned by them and that was not transparent, wouldn’t be surprised if there is more involved). Above owns 2 teams to my knowledge (or more, I seriously can’t tell at this point).

You see, adding on to this, if all the teams were "the same" you'd know what teams were owned by the parent companies. This just disproved your equal-teams point.
Clearly the teams are different as you can't tell what's owned by what.

 

[Lotus]

You see, adding on to this, if all the teams were "the same" you'd know what teams were owned by the parent companies. This just disproved your equal-teams point.
Clearly the teams are different as you can't tell what's owned by what.

Nah, you missed my point. As a consumer, I was misled by the different branding. Thread designs, name, the whole lot. Of course the front of the shop is different, that’s the main reason why this exploit for more threads works for now.

They aren’t different behind the scenes. Regardless of which team I choose within an organisation, I would get the same freelancer offering the same quality and service. That doesn’t change.

 

[Court]

"They aren't different behind the scenes" - Behind the scenes, there is management running the operation and flowing commissions. Each team has a different management team and possibly different freelancers.

You say "Regardless of which team I choose within an organization, I would get the same freelancer offering the same quality and service."
- This wouldn't be true. For example, I have friends in Avast that aren't in Prime. I have friends in Fisher's that aren't in another Slashy service.


Us freelancers will join as many teams as we can. If we have to be in 3 discords, receiving different pings, it gets confusing. If we have 3 different discords, but only get pings from the "base" discord, its a lot easier. Most freelancers care nothing about this thread because its ruining the way they collect commissions.

Easy commissions collecting is easy money for freelancers. If you have to look through every discord for a commission, you may not even claim it.

 

[Cal]

This suggestion is highly controversial but there are clear sides. Yes, as an owner of a service team you would feel threatened as room for expansion may be hindered. Your plan is basically to maximise exposure by dominating all the service sections of MCM. Regardless of what time of the day it is, with proper timing and arrangements, one of your many teams will be in the top 5 of every section. The more teams you have under you, the more clicks on your threads you will get overall. Basically quantity over quality. If a full ban goes ahead, you won’t be able to do all that.

However, I’m not intending to appeal to service team owners, clearly all other owners have disagreed to this thread. I just believe that all of this will be negative from a consumer standpoint. As for freelancers... there are many pros and cons for them. If service teams dominate the market, it would be highly unlikely for them to get commissions by themselves. They would be forced to join a team to get commissions, and that’s not appealing. Under the veil of service teams, it would also be hard for them to increase their individual reputation as whatever they do will only reflect on the team itself. Yes, freelancers will get commissions from the teams, but this dependency on teams isn’t a good thing. I would expect a mixed bag of reactions from freelancers to this suggestion.

The whole idea is very anti-consumer. Hence I believe this suggestion is supposed to appeal to consumers. Basically improperly favoring the interests of businesses over the interests of consumers. Consumers want individual choice, they want to navigate the forums and easily find things. When one ‘organisation’ which owns 5 teams, has threads for all of them. That’s 5 threads by one organisation in each section of MCM. The probability of getting chosen for a project greatly increases. Your casual consumers are given the false sense of feeling as if they are given a ‘choice’ on different companies/freelancers. You may say that you’ll stick the Above logo under each thread, but many first time customers do not know much about how a service team operates. Grasping the multi-service team network idea for them... let’s just drop that. For example, they may make a choice between Prime and Avast. Turns out, whatever they pick leads to the same guys, it would not have made a difference.

Additionally, currently Slashy owns 3-4 teams (even I can’t tell how many as apparently UnitedDesigns are owned by them and that was not transparent, wouldn’t be surprised if there is more involved). Above owns 2 teams to my knowledge (or more, I seriously can’t tell at this point). See, if I knew I didn’t want to involve myself with a certain freelancer pool, even me who has been part of the site for a long time (most of it was just lurking) is going to find it hard to avoid certain groups. Each ‘team’ has their own Discord server and may be branded differently, but it would be hard to trace exactly which organisations the commissions lead to. Now someone new to the site is just gonna ignore this ‘team’ and choose another ‘team’ oblivious that they are both the same behind the scenes.

In example 1, you stated if we had to sell off our additional teams, it would flood the market. Well, if you don’t sell off your additional teams, you are still flooding the market. Sure, the markets going to be cluttered into a mess both ways making it hard for consumers to find individual freelancers from personal preference by themselves. But if you sell the teams, they will be different. You may say even under an organisation, each team will be customized to to look different, but the core values will remain the same across. If the teams are sold off, new management comes over and will change how things are run, even if it’s slight. Core values change, the way how freelancers are handled are also changed leading to changes in quality etc, and that would lead to more true ‘choice’ across the market.

Consumers greatly benefit from the service team model.
Service teams allow consumers to chose from a much wider pool of freelancers, already vetted for quality, trust, character and numerous other factors. Individual choice is made so much easier with a team. Sales reps can help direct a client to the specific person they are looking for that matches their budget, style and timeline all without having to do any research of their own.
You also say that the benefit of forcing everyone to sell of teams would be more diverse management, but as myself and our competitors have said numerous times on this thread, every team operates under different management, different operating goals, different long term plans, use different assets and use independently developed processes for all that goes on in their team.

 

[Emissions]

As a consumer, I was misled by the different branding. Thread designs, name, the whole lot.

The teams contain different brands because they are different. I'll refer to Slashy again, as I'm hired there, but each individual team does contain their own freelancers separate to other teams; their own management to handle everything in that company. The only thing that's the same in Slashy's companies are the Slashy team (obviously), and some freelancers are in all of the teams - but what's the problem with that? If you want to request a new freelancer, all you have to do is ask.

Of course the front of the shop is different, that’s the main reason why this exploit for more threads works for now.

The front and back is different. From this, I can tell you haven't really been researching into these holding groups. It is also hardly an "exploit" when the main reason Slashy was setup was to improve the surrounding areas in service companies. It's why they bought out some companies and improved their management team therefore improving the service given. You may have an idea that these holding groups are just to increase all their profit, but it really isn't. Money is a sector, but the bigger picture - atleast that Slashy has - is to improve the service area.
And it won't just be "for now", it'll be forever.

They aren’t different behind the scenes. Regardless of which team I choose within an organisation, I would get the same freelancer offering the same quality and service. That doesn’t change.

They are. As I stated previously, management is different and the teams contain different freelancers. As commented:

"They aren't different behind the scenes" - Behind the scenes, there is management running the operation and flowing commissions. Each team has a different management team and possibly different freelancers.

 

[Lotus]

"They aren't different behind the scenes" - Behind the scenes, there is management running the operation and flowing commissions. Each team has a different management team and possibly different freelancers.

You say "Regardless of which team I choose within an organization, I would get the same freelancer offering the same quality and service."
- This wouldn't be true. For example, I have friends in Avast that aren't in Prime. I have friends in Fisher's that aren't in another Slashy service.


Us freelancers will join as many teams as we can. If we have to be in 3 discords, receiving different pings, it gets confusing. If we have 3 different discords, but only get pings from the "base" discord, its a lot easier. Most freelancers care nothing about this thread because its ruining the way they collect commissions.

Easy commissions collecting is easy money for freelancers. If you have to look through every discord for a commission, you may not even claim it.

Quoted directly from your own team.
"The goal is simple- unify the backend resources to provide freelancers with a greater amount of commissions then ever before in one place. All commissions from the service teams under our network are all put into the AboveHR Discord, where freelancers can accept commissions from multiple service teams within seconds. As stated, currently it is only Avast and PrimeTechnology, but we are in hopes to expand to roughly 4 or 5 service teams- meaning freelancers can get commissions from five different teams in one server."

I don't need to repeat myself. I'll get the same freelancers if they are all commissions just get sent to the same 'base' discord. You have duplicate threads and shops all leading to one 'base' discord.

Consumers greatly benefit from the service team model.
Service teams allow consumers to chose from a much wider pool of freelancers, already vetted for quality, trust, character and numerous other factors. Individual choice is made so much easier with a team. Sales reps can help direct a client to the specific person they are looking for that matches their budget, style and timeline all without having to do any research of their own.
You also say that the benefit of forcing everyone to sell of teams would be more diverse management, but as myself and our competitors have said numerous times on this thread, every team operates under different management, different operating goals, different long term plans, use different assets and use independently developed processes for all that goes on in their team.

That's a far too embellished story to claim they are different.

Who cares WHO does it, as long as its done correctly and at a good price. I don't think you care that your favorite gas company is killing birds?

The problem I see in this is that there are no limits, I can have as many service teams under my organisation. Anyone can copy this, including me. I can open up 15 service teams under an organisation name and 'claim' that they are all run differently behind the scenes. Of course, all the commissions will go to a base discord where all the freelancers are located.

No limits. I can make more than 15 service teams and claim they are all different, whilst behind the scenes they all lead to the same system. That's 15 or more new threads multiplied by every section of MCM. I have nothing against service teams specifically. What I do have a problem with is that I can make as many service teams as I want (as long as I change the branding assets so they look different) and paste as many threads onto MCM. If you control more threads, you get more exposure and therefore more customers. But, is this really not unfair? In my eyes, it's just an elaborate way to post duplicate threads on MCM as long they look different.

Right now, it's only Slashy and Above. But in the future, a lot more people will be doing this because people will copy the idea. And by then, the forums will be so cluttered, you won't find anything but service teams. A bit spammy if you think about it.

 

[Luigical]

Quoted directly from your own team.
"The goal is simple- unify the backend resources to provide freelancers with a greater amount of commissions then ever before in one place. All commissions from the service teams under our network are all put into the AboveHR Discord, where freelancers can accept commissions from multiple service teams within seconds. As stated, currently it is only Avast and PrimeTechnology, but we are in hopes to expand to roughly 4 or 5 service teams- meaning freelancers can get commissions from five different teams in one server."

I don't need to repeat myself. I'll get the same freelancers if they are all commissions just get sent to the same 'base' discord. You have duplicate threads and shops all leading to one 'base' discord.



That's a far too embellished story to claim they are different.



The problem I see in this is that there are no limits, I can have as many service teams under my organisation. Anyone can copy this, including me. I can open up 15 service teams under an organisation name and 'claim' that they are all run differently behind the scenes. Of course, all the commissions will go to a base discord where all the freelancers are located.

No limits. I can make more than 15 service teams and claim they are all different, whilst behind the scenes they all lead to the same system. That's 15 or more new threads multiplied by every section of MCM. I have nothing against service teams specifically. What I do have a problem with is that I can make as many service teams as I want (as long as I change the branding assets so they look different) and paste as many threads onto MCM. If you control more threads, you get more exposure and therefore more customers. But, is this really not unfair? In my eyes, it's just an elaborate way to post duplicate threads on MCM as long they look different.

Right now, it's only Slashy and Above. But in the future, a lot more people will be doing this because people will copy the idea. And by then, the forums will be so cluttered, you won't find anything but service teams. A bit spammy if you think about it.

I mean to go off of what you just said. That sounds like a great plan! If this is allowed that would be completely broken.

 

[Emissions]

Quoted directly from your own team.
"The goal is simple- unify the backend resources to provide freelancers with a greater amount of commissions then ever before in one place. All commissions from the service teams under our network are all put into the AboveHR Discord, where freelancers can accept commissions from multiple service teams within seconds. As stated, currently it is only Avast and PrimeTechnology, but we are in hopes to expand to roughly 4 or 5 service teams- meaning freelancers can get commissions from five different teams in one server."

I don't need to repeat myself. I'll get the same freelancers if they are all commissions just get sent to the same 'base' discord. You have duplicate threads and shops all leading to one 'base' discord.



That's a far too embellished story to claim they are different.



The problem I see in this is that there are no limits, I can have as many service teams under my organisation. Anyone can copy this, including me. I can open up 15 service teams under an organisation name and 'claim' that they are all run differently behind the scenes. Of course, all the commissions will go to a base discord where all the freelancers are located.

No limits. I can make more than 15 service teams and claim they are all different, whilst behind the scenes they all lead to the same system. That's 15 or more new threads multiplied by every section of MCM. I have nothing against service teams specifically. What I do have a problem with is that I can make as many service teams as I want (as long as I change the branding assets so they look different) and paste as many threads onto MCM. If you control more threads, you get more exposure and therefore more customers. But, is this really not unfair? In my eyes, it's just an elaborate way to post duplicate threads on MCM as long they look different.

Right now, it's only Slashy and Above. But in the future, a lot more people will be doing this because people will copy the idea. And by then, the forums will be so cluttered, you won't find anything but service teams. A bit spammy if you think about it.

Then if the teams are the same, they loose reputation and no clients go to them. It's simple.
Stop trying to ruin expansion and get to grips with the fact it's going to happen.

 

[Sentiinel]

I'm against service teams no matter what the outcome of this is but seeing an entire page of threads from the same account is really really stupid.

 

[Court]

This suggestion isn't the way to handle this. Maybe allowing service teams to post 1 thread about EVERY service they offer. Therefore, if Above has 2 companies, they can only post 2 threads. One for Prime, One for Avast. Same with Slashy.

Handling it the way this suggestion wants won't help. But the idea above may do.

 

[Lotus]

This suggestion isn't the way to handle this. Maybe allowing service teams to post 1 thread about EVERY service they offer. Therefore, if Above has 2 companies, they can only post 2 threads. One for Prime, One for Avast. Same with Slashy.

Handling it the way this suggestion wants won't help. But the idea above may do.

That really isn’t a suitable suggestion as service teams offer a variety of products and they all have their respective sections for their threads.

However, even you can now see that there are far too many threads being posted as the number of service teams increase. Hence would it not be better to restrict people who run multiple service teams to relieve the load? There isn’t a limit for how many service teams a person/group can run, and that’s already being abused for extra threads.

 

[Ivain]

I have only 1 point to contribute to this discussion. If "the future" of Minecraft commissioning is to have as many different brands and names attached to the exact same team of people as possible, then I may have to eat my words about the market for minecraft builds not being dead.
If I've misunderstood and it's about teams that, while they mostly have the same people, have significant enough differences that asking multiple of these 'team' facades for the same exact build will yield different results, then nevermind this post in its entirety.
But if you need 20 different brands to represent the exact same service, then you're doing something wrong. And please don't start about shell companies and overarching organizations and all that, each of those functions differently from what this situation is about.
All those big companies that own different brands make sure that each of those brands produces something slightly different, and each brand has different people working for it, even if there's large cross-overs of core staff (for instance, all soft-drinks are made in the same factory by the same staff but the marketing and research and finances etc are different), and the drinks are still different.

To place an analogy that makes more sense, take a look at the game development market. There's lots of different franchises produced by different studios, but all published and owned by the same publisher (say, Ubisoft, EA, 2K, etc). Occasionally a franchise may be given to a different studio to develop, ofc, and it would be the same franchise but with different result.
That's a business model that makes sense. All different teams, but they're run and/or owned by the same overarching organization (aka Cal, in this case). That's logical business practice.
However, to have the exact same studio put on different brands as 'masks' gives me the impression that studio has a reason to want people to believe that they're a different studio than they really are.
If it turns out that all games published by Bethesda, EA, CD-Projekt Red and Ubisoft were all made by the same group of people, I'd feel pretty cheated and upset by the wildly different quality of work they've been outputting per brand. I believe that is the sentiment behind this suggestion.
Of course, I know each development company and publisher in that list is a unique entity, because different people work for them.

The final question is, if everyone everywhere knew that all of these different teams were the exact same team, would they think what I'd think, that it's really bloody weird that they'd maintain so many different brands for the same service?

 

[Mick]

After spending about 30 minutes reading and re-reading through all of the arguments made on this thread, and then spending 10 minutes thinking about it while I was cleaning, I've come to a decision. I believe that this suggestion thread got off-track and a majority of the responses, although they made compelling arguments, they weren't relevant to the argument made in the original post. Ultimately, whether service teams are bad for consumers or not wasn't the point of this suggestion, and isn't important when making a decision about this in my opinion. The problem proposed was that service teams are splitting up their team into smaller sub-teams with the intention of flooding the sections with their service offers.

If the owners of these teams cannot provide a genuine and valid reason for splitting their service offers up into multiple threads, they must merge the information into the same thread. If you have the same freelancers creating the same products and communicating through the same discord, then I wouldn't consider that to be separate teams, and it should come under one thread.

Regarding the issue of misrepresentation, if a team is owned by another, they must clearly show that on their thread or they will be warned for misrepresentation of self. There should be no situation when someone is unsure of whether you're a part of a larger team or not.

Usually this is the point that I'd move this, but I still think I'd rather get more input on this since there is clearly a lot of opinions and I don't think I've really scratched the surface. In the time I've spent handling this suggestion I could have done a page

Bump.

 

[Satan]

After spending about 30 minutes reading and re-reading through all of the arguments made on this thread, and then spending 10 minutes thinking about it while I was cleaning, I've come to a decision. I believe that this suggestion thread got off-track and a majority of the responses, although they made compelling arguments, they weren't relevant to the argument made in the original post. Ultimately, whether service teams are bad for consumers or not wasn't the point of this suggestion, and isn't important when making a decision about this in my opinion. The problem proposed was that service teams are splitting up their team into smaller sub-teams with the intention of flooding the sections with their service offers.

If the owners of these teams cannot provide a genuine and valid reason for splitting their service offers up into multiple threads, they must merge the information into the same thread. If you have the same freelancers creating the same products and communicating through the same discord, then I wouldn't consider that to be separate teams, and it should come under one thread.

Regarding the issue of misrepresentation, if a team is owned by another, they must clearly show that on their thread or they will be warned for misrepresentation of self. There should be no situation when someone is unsure of whether you're a part of a larger team or not.

Usually this is the point that I'd move this, but I still think I'd rather get more input on this since there is clearly a lot of opinions and I don't think I've really scratched the surface. In the time I've spent handling this suggestion I could have done a page

Bump.

I'm down for this. This is a reasonable and suitable punishment to users who try to disguise their teams in separate entities.

 

[Satan]

Pointing out that coca cola owns a bunch of different brands doesn't give this any slack as coca cola doesn't own a bunch of companys which do the same thing, such as Slashy_Hosting
View attachment 162160
if coca-cola branded themselves in to 12 different companies serving the same product would you still say the same thing?

Coca Cola is heavily regulated by IRL standards and government jurisdiction that can hunt down illicit dealings and lawbreakers. We're a forum of kids and some exceptions with lots of money. Don't compare IRL examples to this please.

 

[Satan]

Explain why i shouldn't its an example.

MC-Market has no authority or power to seek out users who do commit exit scams, where they do run off with money. Whether that money be a few dollars ranging all the way to a few hundred (which doesn't translate to IRL scenarios where thousands are taking place). IRL Governments do have the resources and obligation to find people who do commit these financial crimes and bring them to justice. We're just a forum, the best we can do is ban the user and even then they come back with vpn or something, idk. And if you want to parallel Coca Cola to Slashy Inc. here, for one, Slashy isn't regulated whatsoever on this forum, not until Mick announced the service teams they own, must be distinct from one another.