Oh, gee, if only I had a citation that did that for me.

Oh wait.


Given that I've had contacts from this site, I've won. Yay!

I may have provoked you, though I was only exploring the implications of the ARGUMENT and not actually arguing that people not use your essay. I then backed off. You decided to keep it up even when I no longer mentioned your business in particular, or anything about you. You have now called my service "sorry" and maligned me in public. You have escalated far beyond whatever I may have done. I apologize if you felt that my response to your argument was a personal attack, but you have now crossed the line. Back off.

Yes, you are asking for union power. That doesn't mean that your claim that writers are powerless is TRUE. I proved it wrong, you offered an irrelevant corrective.

Okay, I've asked you to put your money where your mouth is before. Let's see it. Construct a feasibility report. Show us how many papers at what CPP it would take to provide a living wage for two people, assuming a manager and a writer, or whatever other business size you want to assume, while also providing whatever other benefits you're assuming. If you can construct a REMOTELY plausible business model with basic research, I will apologize and will encourage others to do the same. If you can't, then I expect you to apologize to everyone you've accused of exploitation.

Your claim that it's threatening to essay writer owners is also true, but misleading. OTHER ESSAY WRITERS HAVE BEEN TELLING YOU THAT YOU ARE WRONG AND THEY DON'T WANT WHAT YOU OFFER. Christ, do you LISTEN? Read? Pay attention?

Editor: It's really great how you assume, off hand, that my freelancers must be miserable, Third World sweatshop workers. Here's a hint: They make plenty of money and are deeply satisfied.

They have PLENTY of power, Editor! They could take an assignment and not turn it in, forcing me to rush and hurting my reputation. They could demand a certain CPP. They could lambaste me in public and hurt my business. I am a small business and don't know many good freelancers. I can't afford to alienate anyone I come across.

Also, you have NO IDEA how my business works. Let me be totally clear. I handle, myself, 99% of my business. I use freelancers when the work gets too backed up. My freelancers ARE NOT THE BASE OF MY BUSINESS. I am. Once again, you have put your foot into your mouth.

For Christ's sakes, I am a SOCIALIST and I think you are spouting idiotic drivel. Your last ally on this board has been lost. I am telling you that

a) Neither my business nor any other in the industry I am aware of can actually AFFORD to give their writers a good CPP AND any of the benefits you are listing

b) We CANNOT legally give those benefits without making those freelancers into employees, which involves changing their tax status, our tax status, keeping far more extensive of records, etc.

c) Legitimate essay writers DO NOT WANT your benefits because they would require being an employee which would mean they couldn't work their own hours, choose their own assignments, etc. but would have to be micro-managed and monitored

One of my family members is a French translator. Guess what? She doesn't have benefits, or health insurance, or overtime either. Neither do most freelance writers. It's the nature of the entire industry, not just the essay writing part of it. Grow up and learn some basic facts about the industry you are pretending to be part of.

I support an effort to "unionize" (not formally, but in practice) medium-level workers just getting started in the industry, both talented ESL writers and starting English writers, to protect them from exploitative CPPs and dishonest company policies. But what every single person here, freelancer and business manager alike, has been telling you, is that demanding benefits like you're asking IS NON-NEGOTIABLY OFF THE TABLE. You don't understand what actual unions do, do you? You're an armchair activist. Real unions exercise the art of the possible. They struggle for a $.25 to $2 raise, or a 5 hour reduction. When the people on the other side of the table, your EMPLOYERS without whom YOU WOULD NOT HAVE A JOB, tell you that certain things just cannot be done for legal, financial and market reasons, you BACK OFF and focus on gains you can win.

Even worse, even if your proposals were possible, they would effectively SHUT DOWN any of your workers who intended to go into business for themselves! Only large businesses could even possibly afford to offer the benefits you're suggesting. In the past, you were saying that those were only possible benefits. Back off - you left yourself room to do so.

No, that DOESN'T follow.

If a company pays their writers enough, then they've satisfied one condition not to be exploitative.

Maybe our hypothetical $10-to-writers/$30-to-clients company is exploitative, but it might not be. If the cumulative cost of web hosting, management, promotion, quality control, dealing with some customers who don't pay, hiring, etc. is high enough, the company might need to charge $30 per page just to stay in business. I personally split proceeds 50/50 or more with my freelancers, with a minimum of $10/pg for researched papers or $7.50 for unresearched for both me and my freelancers, but that's only because I am a very small business. If I had enough work for myself and, say, three freelancers full-time, I'd probably only take 10% off the top. Anyone else willing to describe their split with their freelancers?


This is stupid and shows you have NO experience with business.

Doing promotion COSTS. I've taken out ads with small companies and spent maybe $50 on it in total. That came out of my own pocket. And I'm not highly ranked on Google, doing the promotional work to get that done, doing targeted e-mail promotion, etc. I'm mostly using word of mouth and free classifieds.

If a company was big enough that it needed full-time web support staff, quality control, promotion, advertisement, accounts receivable/payable, accounting, paying taxes and incorporation fees...

What you're asking is for a freelance writer who heads the company to do, FOR FREE, all the advertisement, promotion and business management while you reap the money, benefits and clients. Sorry. Either everyone would do that equally, divvying it up (and even then, that means you need someone with EXPERTISE and need to have people's money partially be siphoned into subsidizing the business), or one to a few people handle all that.

Trust me, I'm about as pro-worker as you can get. If you can't get ME on your side, you have a big problem.


And what we keep telling you, which isn't penetrating your thick skull, is that MANY OF THESE THINGS ARE IMPOSSIBLE OR DEEPLY IMPRACTICAL. And many of us DON'T WANT THOSE THINGS.

Sick days? You take those off. You don't take clients that day, and transfer existing clients somewhere else. If you don't have any clients, you don't even need to call in! And unlike regular jobs, you can take them "part" off. You can nap, then work for an hour, then nap.

Other benefits? It depends. Overtime can't be a benefit because there's no such thing as "overtime" without time payment. But benefits and rewards for productivity is fine and is common among reputable companies. And "overtime" is simulated by companies charging more for rush jobs.

Health insurance is impractical. So is paid vacation.

No, as long as it's a chain of implications wherein the point is that the first leads logically and inexorably to the last, it could be. If you had done YOUR homework, you would know slippery slopes can be both causal OR verbal/semantic. fallacyfiles.org/slipslop.html.

You are making a SEMANTIC slippery slope argument. "X is sort of like Y, right? Where's the bright line?" There isn't one, but X isn't like Y. Sorry.

That's, "Oh, wait..." Did you graduate from middle school, or is trolling on t3h Interwebs your education and business model?


You let them butt the whole thing? This sounds like prostitution... ;)


Remember, folks, "Amon's" will provide you quality service while EssayWriter_Writer will engage in character assassination and mindless fallacy when his blatantly fraudulent and unethical business practices get exposed. No wonder he got taken in by the fine people at EW (at one point, of course) ;) .

To be clear: I mean EW no harm or offense, seems like a fine fella. But apparently he's decided to take a disagreement to the level of personal attack.

To be clear, since I am not able to edit: I am not accusing EW of fraud, hence the ;). I have an ethical issue with his stated business practice, and would be concerned about his legal risk, but I am not accusing him of illegal conduct.

I think that there's plenty of room between established, cream-of-the-crop writers and "substandard writing ability". Plenty of people just getting started, or ESL writers with plenty of skill, or just Third World writers in general, can be taken in by scamming or exploitative companies.

I support Editor's idea in practice, but at this point, he just hasn't offered enough practical or concrete to really comment.

You're the one making a slippery slope argument. "If this is okay, then this is, right?" I'm the one noting that the peak isn't the valley.

Any smart company or writer knows if someone is trying to buy, piecemeal, every part of their dissertation.


EW_Writer uses "ROFLMAO" on an actual Internet board. What is this, the 90s?

I backed off from personal attacks, and certainly never told your customers to avoid you.

Customers: EW_Writer engages in transparent logical fallacies, sources dishonestly and apparently doesn't care remotely about ethical behavior.

I disagree. It's like saying that, since sous chefs in prestigious restaurants in New York are doing well for themselves, people at McDonald's don't need a union. There ARE a lot of exploited workers in the industry, and it WOULD be good if someone did the hard work (which, frankly, editor doesn't seem to be willing to do - but I hope he proves me wrong) to bring them together, protect them, raise their CPPs and improve their treatment. Yes, some people are doing well enough for themselves without it.

The problem is that editor graduated from that entirely reasonable point to silliness like demanding overtime or health insurance. I take his claim that he was offering examples of potential improvements at face value, however. And I'd point out: If companies pay their workers $3 a page, then charge $20 a page... they can amply afford, if they're not going to raise their exploitative rates, to provide some other elementary protections for their freelancers.

Making actual arguments instead of logical fallacies? Yes, actually.

You're trying the argument that they tried in the Ronnie King trial. It's not police brutality at two cops, right? What about three? Four? Five?

Some degree of assistance on a Ph. D project I would find ethical. At some point, the person involved has no longer done the work that warrants the doctorate in the first place. There is not an exact point this occurs, but it does, and I am far from the only person in the industry who thinks so.


It's a matter of scale.

It's one thing to help someone finish one assignment for one class.

It's another thing to help someone buy their Ph. D.

If someone used a little money to grease the wheels and turn a B paper into an A with their professor, people would be appalled.

If someone tried to buy a diploma, they'd face fraud charges.

The law and morality is sensitive to matters of scale and degree, even if you're not...


The above statement, aside from missing a comma, contained not one single logical position, no nugget of evidence, no distinction or philosophical principle, and thus was... drum roll... vacuous. How richly ironic.

"Your arguments are plainly vacuous" is a fallacy.

"Nobody hires a hitman" is an analogy, one that you dishonestly cut from your quotation to focus only on the conclusion.

No, it's not, as I've explained and you've deigned not to respond to. I am willing to do anything from high school to Ph. D work. I'm just not going to do an entire dissertation that is supposed to advance the bounds of human knowledge for someone so they can get a Ph. D they don't deserve. VERY different.


Nope. I'd obviously prefer a Ph. D student did all their work, but I don't think that that is sufficiently illegal or unethical to be concerned about.


Nobody forces someone to hire a hitman either, doesn't make it an ethical field. Your arguments are vacuous.

Editor: For God's sakes, just try something realistic. WRT was talking about getting a certification program on to protect good writers and exclude scammers. Why not get into that/

I agree. I think that assisting on most elements is fine, I just wouldn't do the whole thing start to finish.

Editor: This has already been part of the industry. Rush jobs get paid more at any reputable company (not AR or EW, obviously). So do highly difficult jobs.

Okay, rwaimba, the educational system could use some pedagogical reform. But that doesn't excuse fraud.

"Lesser evil" is enough. There is no serious breach of social requirements when someone hands in a Hamlet paper they bought. No one will be listing that Hamlet paper in a database and doing citation off of it. That IS the case with fraudulent dissertations.


Yes, that is exactly my position. You doing their statistical analysis is also fine. What isn't is doing the entire paper. I've made this clear several times, the fact that you keep trying to worm out of it shows how weak your position is.

The coyness about handing someone a "model" paper works when it comes to undergraduate or graduate work. I guarantee you it would NOT if it came to Ph. D and post-graduate fraud.


I responded to a silly argument by noting what it meant. No personal attack meant or implied.

Besides, your initial comment was off the mark anyways. If one took into account the actual risk of detection and of the actual cost for assisting Ph. D fraud, it wouldn't be worth it to do an entire paper.


Then the client DID do some work and we're entering murkier territory. No "loss", I'm trying to stick to a very specific scenario that is clearly fraudulent, and I think I've made my point amply clear.

Yes, that's what freelancers DO. Sometimes they work more than they expected.

Again, let's say they work full time, get no benefits, but get, let's say, $65,000 a year, working from home, able to set their own schedule, can work with the TV on... That's not bad. Many writers here are okay with that.

The problem comes when, working full time, they're getting, say, $3,000 or what not.

If you think that it's feasible for companies to provide health insurance, etc., put your money where your mouth is. Make us a feasibility report that shows that, with reasonable CPPs charged by the company and paid to the writer, they can afford even one or two of your benefits AND retain profitability in the marketplace.

Pedagogical theory, common sense and psychology disagree with you. To paraphrase Humboldt: Nothing you own is so much yours as what you do. Dissertations are supposed to be a key step in someone's academic journey, a holistic part of their knowledge and experience. Buying it cheapens the process.

Getting someone else to edit it, or to help with a research section (which is usually by the numbers...) That's fine. But the whole thing? No. In any respect, this is a LEGAL, not a philosophical, matter.

It matters to you because it exposes you to legal risk. It matters to her for the same reason and because it prepares her less effectively for her actual job. And it's bad for the school, and the whole of amassed knowledge.

In any respect, your scenario is a dream. Exceedingly few people can purchase a 30-50 page paper then defend it like they wrote it. Yes, they might be able to beat suspicion, but they didn't actually learn anything within it.

Further, in many dissertations, you're supposed to be doing actual RESEARCH. Living in the country, doing a survey or study, etc. It's not just taking existing data and plugging in statistics. If you do a dissertation ground up, that's terrible.


Yes, yes I do. And the fact that you ask that question as if any response but the one you'd prefer is absurd shows me that either

a) You don't know the industry very well

or

b) You're making a stupid argument to cover up that this was an accurate critique.

Neither bode well.

My freelancer has just informed me that it seems like AR has begun to set up the ability to not pay him. Despite numerous positive reviews that I can anonymize, his last review by AR itself was not positive, and clients informed him that they were not even aware about the positive feedback system. Does anyone know if AR has a pattern where they begin to arbitrarily deliver poor reviews?

Oh, that's a totally fair point, Freelance. Then again, that's actually not as bad as it seems. Some articles DO need to be cited over and over again. Try writing a sociology dissertation without at least REFERENCING Merton, or "strength of weak ties", or anything in that vein.

But the problem is bad enough without adding onto it. It's one thing to fill out your reference sheets with more articles that you don't read. Frankly, I do that a lot, and it's a good thing. Your Works Cited / Bibliography / References SHOULD include more than you cited. If something's cited a lot, then it likely is important enough to be referenced.

It's another thing entirely to not even write the entire dissertation.

Uhhhhh, yes, yes I would say EXACTLY THAT. Doing the research yourself and having someone explain it to you afterwards are night and day. The idea of a graduate thesis is that it expresses some advance in the state of the art or some key part of someone's academic or professional work. You can't buy that. It's fraud, and there are pretty specific laws about that sort of thing.

In any respect, this is a silly handwave. Companies may claim to do this, but many don't. Further, what counts as "explaining?" Going over every sentence in detail? Going over each paragraph? Or just summarizing it in a few sentences? The slippery slope is too slick here.


Is it done WELL? I don't take anything unless I know it can be done well, and unless you have a degree in every relevant field at a graduate level or above, you CANNOT guarantee this to your clients.

Editor: You clearly don't understand the point of a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT.

My point, which you've apparently conceded, is that just because someone only pays a CPP and doesn't give benefits doesn't mean that they're being exploitative. I don't know WRT's business practices firsthand, but if they match the principles he states, they are more than fair. If $10 per page is the MINIMUM once you've been established, assuming the previous assumptions, that's $96,000. If you're up to $20, then you can get up to $192,000 if you're being efficient.

No one has any objection to seeing employees at many places doing better, but you're asking for highly impractical things.

Editor: Actually, some of those claims ARE libel. "Thief", for example, implies an illegal act of theft of some kind of property, which is libelous if it is false and if you know it to be false or are irresponsible about making the accusation.

Your claims are getting ridiculous. Let's make this clear.

If you could pay your writers $100 a page, provide them enough pages to work full time, and they worked 8 hours a day producing an average of 5 pages an hour...

They'd be making $500 an hour, $4000 a day, $20,000 a 5-day week, $80,000 a month, $960,000 a year.

This would be FAR more than enough to buy insurance, subsidize vacation, etc.

If it's $3 a page? That becomes more like $30,000 a year, under ideal conditions, before taxes. That's not enough.

It's simple. If you pay employees a reasonable CPP, they can survive comfortably. If you don't, you're exploiting them.

Oh, no, I am perfectly aware that the debate isn't "Which is good?" but "Which is marginally better?"

Fair enough.

AR doesn't seem to reply to any of this stuff here. At least EW.net has shills defending them. (Except for Rusty, who managed to screw up doing so).

I think he was listing potential benefits in general, not ones that would be specifically applicable to the essay industry :D .

Editor, people here have been more than fair discussing something like a union to improve wages and working conditions. But anything more than that is silly and would require undermining what people LIKE about working in the industry.

Uhhhhh, the number of living languages and dialects is far below 100,000,000,000. That'd be more than one unique language per person over all of human history. If you think of the number of global speakers of the big languages (bigger dialects of Chinese, French, English, Arabic), the likelihood that any two people share a language is actually fairly high.

When someone says that they can speak 10 languages, they imply that they can do more than a few words or phrases. You're not fluent in English, but I would say you can "speak" it.

Uhhhhh... why? WRT has actually been very patient with you.

The fact is that, even if a company WANTED to do all you say, they CAN'T without making those writers employees!


You transparently can't reply to actual arguments.

WRT's point is that you can pay writers EXCELLENTLY, letting them earn FAR above a working wage. I can tell you from personal experience: I work less hours than I ever have at "regular" jobs and make FAR more. Yes, this does mean I don't have health insurance or paid vacation or what not, but that's what FREELANCERS and contractors of all kinds deal with. NOTHING is unethical about that per se.

What is unethical is when companies pay writers $3-5 per page for heavily researched work so that they can only complete two to four pages an hour, when they effectively provide writers a poverty-level salary AND no benefits etc. That's what a writer's union should address. Benefits would be nice if it could happen, but I can tell you as a small writing business that I CANNOT afford to give writers paid vacations.

No. It is quite clear that some companies don't outsource. Trust me, some of these companies have barely enough work as it is for their English-speaking writers: Why would they outsource?

WRT is right. Do you know how many WRITERS of ANY kind, even really successful ones, are given guaranteed medical, paid vacation, etc.? It's just not the industry. When you're freelance, you get the advantages of setting your own hours, not having to take taxes out of paychecks, working wherever you want, etc. You get the disadvantage of not having insurance provided by the employer, not having paid vacation, not having an IRA, having to handle your own taxes and reporting of income and accounting, etc.

If a company COULD provide, say, lower per-page rates, or an hourly rate using a browser-locking and timing program, or by having workers come in, or whatever, and then provide insurance, paid leave, etc., that'd be just fine. Just know that many here would not work for that company even if it existed.

Thank you. I do agree: The whole society suffers tremendously if Ph. D papers are faked. But I would point out that part of the reason I, and other people, don't take them is because a) it is difficult to do such research and rarely worth our time, b) it exposes us to legal risk in ways that graduate and undergraduate work does not.


Well, no, I don't think that's a fair analogy. A liquor store owner's entire POINT is that they sell alcohol, and they're not responsible for alcohol abuse. People can buy their product and use it responsibly.

This is like asking a security company not to perform assassinations. The security company can still make money from other services, and assassinations are the direct responsibility of the company.

Really? Because judging by search results alone, AR, while certainly having a bad rep, isn't EW.net. AR paid at least one two-week period for my freelancer, so that's not too bad. They could easily have just not paid at all, apparently like some companies...

Your syntax is wonky as hell, which is somewhat suspicious. Anyways, I posted a meaningful comment, no response to that?

I'm not saying he is or should, I'm just saying that it's not a bad idea for writers, particularly the lower tier of writers, to coordinate. If the ESL writers demanded more money per page, and could enforce that with a union, then dishonest companies who hire and exploit these ESL writers would a) consider hiring more English writers since the cost difference would be lower and b) would see lower profit margins. I think it'd be a good thing.


Yeah, that's a tiny bit silly. But let's say one essay company COULD get big enough to have consistent employees, leave, etc. That wouldn't be a terrible thing, though many people here do like being freelance (as do I). I of course can't afford that, but my business is pretty much just me except for rush seasons.

But I was saying that Editor's idea, though some components are silly, is not entirely a bad idea. You've already sort of started that at EssayChat. I'd like to know a list of trustworthy companies that I could refer clients to if I felt I couldn't take their assignment, and you've given me a good number already. That's the start of it.

I'd say, though, that the union would have to make sure that it had at least SOME standards. I'd say from my experience there are two tiers of ESL writers, from what I've seen. (I've edited the work of both types).

One writes incomprehensible garbage. They shouldn't be writing for anyone. Whether it's the language or they're just not that smart, the papers have absolutely no merit worth salvaging.

The other makes consistent mistakes in grammar, vocabulary, spelling, etc., but actually put out a decent product in terms of research, creative thinking, argumentation, etc. If the union collaborated on making their work higher quality too, they could actually put out something that would be acceptable. In any respect, if that second tier coordinated in a union, it would probably improve the whole industry.

No, I am aware of that, I don't care about that. What I'm saying is that there's not even as many NAMES, fake or not, as they claim. I would guess there are two or three Ukrainians on the support end who just cycle through about ten different names. The only one I've seen have a consistent behavior pattern and identity is Victoria.

Tulom: A bank fraud report should work excellently here.

Sama: Try posting on essaychat.com and see if you can salvage it.

WRT: Given the questionable nature of the entire industry, I think that Editor isn't asking for a legally recognized union, but just a number of writers who, if one of them is burnt, the whole group strikes or refuses to work for a company. It's not a bad idea at all.

Rupysk: From what my freelancer has told me, I am not entirely convinced that any of these people are independently real. Sometimes, "Susan" will forget things that "Susan" has said. I'd imagine there might be two or three people cycling the names randomly.

Yes, I avoid doing dissertations like the plague for this reason. If someone asks me for help with some preliminary research, that's fine, but it is fraudulent, incredibly illegal, and immoral to fake Ph. D-level research. I will also do proofreading and editing of dissertations, but that is about it.

We can't specify individual companies, but just note: You get what you pay for. Try the recommended ones on this forum or go with a freelancer (they are listed as recommended too).

One of my freelancers reports that Academia-Research, at least on the writing side of the equation, isn't too bad. They apply fines, but not TOTALLY unreasonably, though fines themselves are highly dishonest and I never use them. Their claims about "premium writers" and their rationales for denying jobs are silly: They'll claim a premium writer took a paper but the paper will be available. They've paid him for two weeks worth of work - fingers crossed as to whether or not he'll get paid again.

On the client side of the equation? He's taken some jobs from other writers, which were not terribly written but did have many serious grammatical problems and no understanding of the basics of the topic. Essentially, you get what you pay for, and when customers ask for $5-8 per page, they risk getting poorly written assignments.


This is cr@p. Academia Research DOES try things like this. It is unacceptable. Stop taking work from them and publically note that you have done so to the customers.

I know, I was responding only to that sentiment. Also, since I didn't say "theorizing", that's a dishonest quote. You'd have to say "theor[izing]". I was saying in response to your point, amplifying your subsequent caveats, that while certainly many legitimate logistical services are provided by having a management company, many of these companies either don't provide those services or provide them as an inappropriately high cost.

Nor is it just being paid fairly that's a concern. Some companies allow customers to be deceptive, like blaming you if a customer never explained that a paper was single-spaced instead of double-spaced or demanded different margins from the standard. They often won't go to bat for their writers against customers clearly being unreasonable or dishonest. And one can think of many other concerns, such as the company assigning work after a due date then penalizing the writer for the late submission, or assigning more work than the writer agreed to.


Probably none that wouldn't count as illegal and highly unethical DDoS attacks or other forms of cyber-attack.