Online recommendations on Linkedin.

I want to ask one question.

If I recommend you in a public website such as linkedin, will I write bad or even average about you? Pay attention to the fact that the requestor can choose not to publish recommendations if he does not find it appropriate.

In other words, does it even make sense to write unending paragraphs glorifying a person? (unless of course the readers are pointy haired bosses who dont have a clue)


I would even go the extent of saying that online recommendations should be completely discouraged. Because, any public recommendations are by default useless. As mentioned earlier, nobody will publish a bad recommendation. For that matter nobody will even write a bad public recommendation (its easy to get your hands on a knife).
The only reason I would still believe in them is the fact that the person recommending is putting his/her neck out for you. However two things should then be strictly followed

1. There should only be one line saying : "xyz recommends abc" Anything else is useless.
2. The person recommending you should have been in a position where he/she has supervised you. No friends, no colleagues. Recommendations from them are useless


Apart from the above, online recommendations are nothing but blinding flashes of the obvious. I recommend to keep recommendations private.

Cheers
Rishi

P.S. I myself have a couple of online recommendations. But I cannot remove them unless the other zillion idiots remove theirs. Otherwise I stand to be a loser. Maybe this is another reason why online recos are still popular. But that's herd mentatlity, no?