Portfolios are generally where you post your work, hoping for hire and where people post their experiences with you. As someone who wants to hire from these sections, the restrictions on “reviewing” developers needs to be reconstructed.
If you go into the section, you’ll see that almost every portfolio there has feedback in the comments, which can help drive someone to hire a specific person.
The problem is that you can only post positive interactions there. If you had a bad experience with someone, you need to contact them privately, not inform others about it. So, although you get to see the quality of that developers work from their portfolio, there’s a lot more that goes into hiring someone than just how experienced they are.
Quality of their work compared to advertised - From just their portfolio alone, you can’t get to see what they create for others. You may only get to see a glimpse of what they make. This one can be sorted out however, just if you do more research.
Time of completion - Although a developer might advertise their speed, that’s not always what you get. Without anyone talking about their experiences, you’re going in completely blind to how fast that developer works with very limited expectations.
Communication - Just from the portfolio, you are unable to see how well the developer communicates alongside you.
Scams - This is a very unlikely situation, but you may walk away with a product you are completely unsatisfied with, and it is entirely different from what was advertised on the portfolio.
With the ability to post criticism on devforum posts, people are able to make more informed decisions on who to hire, and developers have more ability to work on their product to keep improving it. With only positive reviews allowed, developers are going in completely blind and may get a bad experience, as well as an empty pocket.
While I do think you’ve made some cogent points, this system can unfortunately be easily abused.
Say someone has a personal vendetta against a creator. What would stop them from fabricating a negative experience, and using that as a way to deter potential clients? (Not to mention there would be back-and-forth, clogging up the portfolio category.)
I believe your idea does sound good in theory, but having your idea actually implemented leaves portfolios open to be spammed maliciously and/or influenced by unethical means - as in, people leaving negative reviews with the intention of not telling the whole truth.
The current system we have now is just how the hiring process works. You look at a resume, evaluate, and then “interview”. You can contact some of their former clientele (“references”) from their portfolio and ask about their experiences privately. Issues do slip through the cracks on occasion, sure, but this is a tried and true system. With enough common sense, you can tell if someone is reputable.
Where did you get this from? Constructive criticism is allowed, feel free to look at some examples of this in #help-and-feedback:cool-creations. You might be thinking of destructive criticism, which is indeed not allowed anywhere.
Without a doubt, calling someone out for scamming would be destructive criticism and calling out alone is against the rules already. For these experiences you should probably report scammers to the developer engagement team.
Posts from friends were removed that were critical since “calling out and criticizing users counts as a personal attack”. I’m talking about negative experiences with devs, rather than constructively talking about their portfolio and how to expand it.
