Sheilah's dashboard

When – if ever – does linkedin plan to do something about the flagging problems? I realize linkedin believed it was dealing with a community of adults when they implemented the ability to flag. But as time has proven many of the members are childish and petty, they use multiple fake accounts to flag legitimate questions and answers.

Members have had their accounts deleted and/or suspended for having too many flags, yet 99% of those flags were not valid. Linkedin doesn’t review the flags and that causes people to continue to harm the very members that keep your site alive.

There are several solutions to this problem, the first being to have objective members review the flags and determine if in fact they are legitimate. Is the posting offensive, a recruiting message, an advertisement etc then the question or answer would be removed, if not the flags are removed.

Another is to limit the number of times a member can flag in a set period of time. Members should earn the right to flag and new members (no profile, no connections) should not be allowed to flag at all. The reason linkedin has so many fake accounts is because these juvenile small minded people keep setting up fake accounts so they can flag and remove the Q&A’s out of spite.

We have already lost some quality members and more are going each day. It’s time for linkedin to step up and protect the members that have support the site and contribute to the site in a positive way.

While I have your attention I would also like to revisit the issue of the experts list. That list is at the center of the flagging problem. Anyone appearing on that list becomes a target for those too slow to gain ground and also be listed. The list serves no purpose and is absolutely unrelated to true expertise. In my opinion it degrades linkedin. The number of open and reopened questions that have been answered by any member should never be associated with a professional networking site.

Linkedin continues to boast about quality not quantity yet you continue to waste space on a list that is nothing more than a numbers game.

The experts list does not add value, in fact if anything it detracts from the professional atmosphere. As some of you will recall I posted a question about that list last year and everyone who responded agreed that list should be removed. The space could be utilized in a more production manner.

Sheilah

In recent weeks I have noticed and reported to linkedin that there is a major bug in the area of privacy. Until the new layout was implemented any item; Q&A, inmail, message etc, we received would show the return email address of the sender ONLY if they were a first degree contact.

Once the new design came into pay ALL sender’s return addresses were shown in addition to the bounce@noreply......... In the “to” line. I reported this and was assured that the engineers were also concerned and working to correct it.

Since that time changes were made...... unfortunately, in the reverse of what they should be. Now it seems we get the bounce@noreply.... On our first degree contacts and the real return address of those outside our network. On occasion it is a mix and some first degree contacts do show a real return address, yet all of those outside our network are given our email address by merely hitting reply.

I am left to wonder if the right people at Linkedin are aware of this issue. I have always been an advocate of linkedin and your practices and dedication to maintaining our privacy. But this has been an ongoing issue for weeks. I know of several members who have considered leaving the site because their privacy is no longer being protected.

I believe in giving the benefit of the doubt and also prefer to believe that perhaps the right people are not aware this is happening.

Can any of you address this and ensure someone is trying to fix this? I have screen prints if you need them to see what I mean.

Thanks

Sheilah