Be Careful Who You Hire

[adioking]

Some of you may have noticed some very strange posts going on at High Stakes Report during the last week. I had taken bids from people to write content while I was in Cancun for the week and chose what I thought to be a quality writer.

I had him write up a sample post, read it and ran it through CopyScape, then hired him. A whole week went by and when I came back I was informed that the writer had been writing very poor posts, none of which were related to online poker OR high stakes games.

I ran the new posts through copyscape and found quite a few of them to be copied directly from sites like pokernews.com and pokerpages.com. What a joke!

Because of this, I had to deal with several complaints that I received in my email, as well as make a public apology on High Stakes Report. All of the content has been taken down and the writer has since been fired and banned from the website in which I found him on.

In case any of you out there are hiring other people to do your work, don't make the same mistake I did.

Here is my original request for a writer:

By buyer:

I will be out of town for about two weeks. HighStakesReport.com is looking for a consistent writer to report on the ultra high stakes poker games that are happening online and post about them on our website.

We use Wordpress CMS so setting up your writing account will be very easy. All you have to do is follow some high stakes poker games on websites such as FullTiltPoker.com, PokerStars.com, and others. Just write a reaction to what you have watched and post intriguing hand histories as well as a compelling photo or two.

Please bid a rate per article. We may offer you a job that lasts longer than the 2 week need if you can show us quality posts. It would be best to have somebody hired by Friday.

If you feel like laughing at just how stupid somebody can be, feel free to read our mediation session:

By Buyer:

"Coder copied content from multiple sites, including photos. This work is NOT original work and the coder has done nothing but tarnished the reputation of my website.

In addition to that, the articles that have been "written" have absolutely nothing to do with high stakes online poker games, which is what was requested. They are just online poker news reports.

This is not acceptable by any means and I'm ashamed to ever have hired the coder for such a job. Coder has wasted my time and I refuse to pay for content that is not the coder's original work.

The articles have been purged from the website.

By Writer

Hi Sherry,

I accept the fact that most of the posts being published are taken from one website or the other. But ,let me tell u this Dan, the buyer himself guided me to do this. To elaborate, Dan told me to search for the latest poker news on the web. Infact, he sent me 2-3 web links to check the latest poker news.

Moreovr, now I realize, it was well designed ploy he has put me into. I know no matter how much explaination I give I will be considered to be at fault. Simple reason, I did what the coder asked me to do.

Infact, the very first post I did for him was taken from a web site but he didnt say anything in context of copying. Rather, he appreciated my work. And, thn he said me to continue work on the same lines for a week or so. And, also hinted me a part time author work. So, i started writing 5-6 posts per day and agreed to pay $6 per post. Mind you, the bid was accepted at $7 as per record. But he insisted me to change it to $6. I did that for him immediately.

So far I have done 32 posts for him ie. work worth $192. and, Now since he has got exacty what he wanted ie. good spicy posts from poker world. Out of no where he feels that my posts are copied.

I just want you to ask coder if he felt I was copying the stuff and that is something he did not wanted why didnt he telle me about it early and why when the work is over and he owes me $ 192.

Sherry, this is something I am sure the coder must have done against many. He makes you work for several posts ( saying to follow up poker websits) and then he can conviniently put allegation of copying.


And, the best part . In order to keep all the problems away from him. On record all he asked was for one post bid. And, on personal level he asked me to do it for a week ( 5-6 posts a day) so that even if he goes uncovered all he pays is $7. Also, he knew this is what he wants to do so in order to avoid any official proof about this he asked me to communicate on his e-mail and not on bidding platform. I seriously feel cheated.

I feel ceated and completely at loss for having worked for such a shrewed and nasty person. I hope you will do justice to me.

By Buyer:

It appears as if the coder has accepted the fact that he has copied content. If you look over our history, you can also see that I never once said anything about copying content.

The very first post was NOT taken directly from another site. Using CopyScape.com, nothing came up that matched the content that the coder had written.

The fact that the coder asserts that he did "32 posts worth $192" is false. All of the work was copied, and therefore could not become the property of our website.

We received multiple complaints that content was being copied from another website onto our own. The coder was well informed that I would not be available during the entire week, which is why I was unable to inform the coder of his ill-gotten content.

The assertion that I have done this too many is untrue. Copied content is copied content, and it is unacceptable no matter what. Let this be a lesson to you that you cannot get paid for somebody elses work. This bid request was for content writing, not data entry/manipulation.

By Moderator

Pramod,

The buyer was checking for quality on the samples that you submitted. This has nothing to do with copyright. Unfortunately since you did use someone else's work, I would have to close this out in favor of the buyer and rate you a 3.

In addition, you will no longer be allowed to work on this site.

Sherry Hayden

[Ozpoker]

I actually subscibe to your feed and yes I was suprised by the different content I was recieving.

FWIW, I think most people will realise that it was not your work.

BTW - which servcie are you using to find and hire these/this writer ?

[JohnG]

Unfortunate to hear I also saw some of these posts while you were away. Couldn't spare a few minutes to go to La Isla Mall and go on the internet to check it out? Anyways lesson learned and good luck in the future.

[Brandon]

Looks like rentacoder, correct?

Crappy situation man, never wan't to ruin your name by someone doing something so sleazy as copying content.

How was the trip?

[adioking]

Trip was a BLAST. I'll be putting up photos on facebook later on if anybody here has an account there.

I want to take HSR and change it's look and feel a little bit more though. I'm looking for suggestions of how I could make the site "better" in terms of interactivity and dynamic content. We are currently thinking of adding something like a player of the month and making the site look more like a website than a blog. We've been working on video updates as well, but those are really quite time consuming and the site is hardly making any money at this point in time.

Talk of a database has been going on too. Does anybody know a good dataminer who can work a DB in with Wordpress? We need to be generating money before pushing the envelope on this idea though...

[Bryan]

By the way... I was the one who told Dan about the crazy posts, but had no way of contacting him to alert him as he was in Mexico.

I have admin rights, but shit... I didn't know what you hired him for. The posts were definitely crazy though.

Speaking of writing... I better get back to it before I get my legs cut off.

Bryan

[xpertadvice4u]

"Moreovr, now I realize, it was well designed ploy he has put me into. I know no matter how much explaination I give I will be considered to be at fault. Simple reason, I did what the coder asked me to do.

Infact, the very first post I did for him was taken from a web site but he didnt say anything in context of copying. Rather, he appreciated my work. And, thn he said me to continue work on the same lines for a week or so. And, also hinted me a part time author work."

OMG.
Talk about self-incrimination.

How can I get a gig like that?

Oh, yeah...with a bad rap like "Longest Poster Ever" I guess I would never make it.

[adioking]

LOL!! I saw all those writing errors too! He must have been pretty hot-headed when he wrote is stupid little response huh?