Tom_Dalton - 10:17 pm on Apr 29, 2005 (gmt 0)

And does it seem a little unsophisticated to assign pages a simple "spam" or "not spam" attribute?

I guess the TrustRank, as it spreads out across sites touching the "seed" sites will have the effect of assigning partial 'spam' values to pages.

Still, in the initial seed set, I think a black-or-white call is crude. This is a subjective thing, unless we have clear enough rules that really, we ought to be able to program a computer to make the determination iteslf anyway. Barring that level of specificity in the determinations the human "experts" make, a binary decision is not as accurate as would be a finer instrument. (A 1-10 or 1-100 or something.)

Even still, we should be asking, "What are the experts looking for?" Are they reading the content? Are they analyzing subdomains, or looking at the use of alt tags? Surely they're not just tuning into astral vibrations and making these decisions.