claus - 9:33 pm on Jun 6, 2005 (gmt 0)

I noticed the job postings a short while back, but as far as I recall those were limited to the US. Perhaps those were not for the "eval" team, but for something else?

Nevermind, I for one welcome... uhm... For a long time I've been thinking that a higher degree of human involvement in web page rating was indeed necessary. Not just "nice". Humans simply perceive things in another way than bots (if one can indeed speak about bot perception).

>> Why is Example¹ on Google's whitelist

I haven't seen said list, nor evidence² that it exists, but if it does, that would definitely not be the way to go. A "spammer" is a "spammer", regardless of site name or URL. There is more than enough confusion about what "spam" is and isn't without such a list confusing matters even more.

Webmasters routinely become both confused, misinformed, and scared, even paralyzed for fear of doing the wrong things. This does not benefit the www, not the webmeasters, and not the search engines. Openness, clarity, and firm clear-cut principles that are valid for everyone (and either are enforced across the board or not at all) is the only way.

If it isn't "spam" when "Company X" does it, but "spam" when "Company Y" does it - then what is it, exactly? And with such an attitude, how are we (webmasters and advisors) going to take anything on this matter seriously, ever?

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1) voelspriet, you might want to hold back on direct references to external sites due to board TOS
2) I haven't read the full thread, or the /. story, or the blog, sorry about that. Too little time...

[edited by: claus at 9:51 pm (utc) on June 6, 2005]