Would Private Message Board help solve Buyer- Provider dispute

We clearly need some in-app messaging to enable the accountability you are talking about.

Two possible paradigms:

(1) A bulletin board in each team room that each team member can post to and read

(2) Enable messaging between users via the oDesk Message Center. The Message Center is threaded, so you can email your team or an individual team member and follow a discussion, similar to Gmail.

We are leaning towards #2, for two reasons: (a) it leverages our existing Message Center, and (b) we think that discussions between a small group are more common than messages for the entire team.

What do you think?

Michael

Hi,

I have seen two kind of buyers in oDesk.

1. Buyers who prefer to be communicated *only* through an Instant Messenger (IM) like Yahoo, MSN, Skype.

2. Buyers who prefer to be communicated *only* by email.

I've never had or heard any issues while working with second kind of buyers, at least until now. Even if there are issues while communicating by email, all communications could be recorded in the 'Message Center' by adding such a feature in it.

IMO, it's better to encourage all the buyers and providers to communicate *only* by email so that it could be recorded in 'Message Center' when there is such a feature in future.

Pothi.

Hi Michel & Pothi,

Glad to have your response on that.
Integrating with the message center is a great idea.
Just like Pothi has pointyed out.. some prefer to communicate via IM only .. even text msgs can be archived, but some invariably go for voice chat.
It would be rude to refuse, so this is what i do " to keep track".
After we arrive on a decision over VChat, i just prepare an email outling the decision taken and ask the buyer to confirm back - via email.
Has been workig out for me so far.. and buyer also seem to be ok with this.

Bullettin board might be useful when more than 2 proivers are working on the same project , and both dont want to end up doing the same task . But there is more to it just than the bullettin board isnt it ?.. then that would again mean oDesk have to integrate a Project management system. But thats reinventing wheel, not all system work for all.

A simple message center ( one-to-one : buyer - provider) would solve a huge chunk of problem, and this also gives a subtle suggesstion to use "only" this system, they want a back up of all conversation, without being too obvious about it. Plus, this message board will become readonly to both parties after the project is "completed".

Just a thought - how do you guys see it ?.. would this be feasible ?