u/RMorguito

I'm sure everyone who's been on Upwork for a while noticed that new jobs are getting 50+ proposals in minutes, and it's only getting worse lately.

We all know this isn't possible without using AI automation tools for proposals.

This is extremely damaging to the platform, because clients get overwhelmed with generic AI proposals in minutes, and many of them simply leave the platform without hiring anyone.

That's the biggest reason there are so many jobs with zero hires.

That's why so many people are complaining that their genuine proposals aren't even getting viewed. AI proposals have been drawning clients in meaningless noise.

If you do a basic search on the unnoficial Upwork sub, which has a bigger database, you'll notice that are many posts by clients complaining about this.

So, my question is, shouldn't it be easy enough to implement a verification tool to prevent these AI bots from flooding job posts with fake proposals within minutes?

I'm not an expert in this field, but shouldn't something like captcha (or equivalent) work?

Also, I'm sure it's not so hard to detect patterns indicating the use of automated proposal tools on profiles and punish them accordingly, right?

This is killing Upwork guys. It's doing massive damage to the platform, scaring all clients away.

You need to do something about it. You know it.

Hi everyone,

I've been on Upwork for a while. $200k+ earned, 100% JSS, Top-Rated Plus for context.

Right now, I must have at least 20 dormant contracts, meaning that there hasn't been any interaction between me and these clients in more than 12 months.

Some clients just don't bother ending contracts, and it can snowball really fast into this.

Obviously, I know I can end these contracts myself, but they would show up as feedback gaps on my profile page, which certainly doesn't look good. Some of these clients might not even remember who you are, or these contracts can be currently managed by a completely different person from that company, and they might decide to leave bad feedback, which is even worse.

Also, there's no way to prevent these contracts from piling up since you can't know if a client will get in touch again until they don't. I've had clients getting back to me on the same contract after six months of inactivity. However, I think a 12-month period would be a reasonable limit to define a contract as permanently inactive.

To make it worse, these inactive contracts show up on your profile as "In Progress" which might scare prospective clients away since they might lead them to believe that you already have too much on your plate.

So, here's a simple feature suggestion that should be easy to implement: Automatically end contracts after an X period of total inactivity and prevent those contracts from showing up on your profile page after they are finalized.

The least Upwork could do to mitigate this is to prevent these contracts from showing up as "In Progress" on your profile page, I think.

What do you think?