Ethics/Responsibility vs Commercial Interests

for sites that try to make $$ while providing content

[old_expat]

I got to thinking about this today when I took a long look at my home page (travel site) and suddenly realized that in an attempt to provide important information, the first link on the page will take someone off my site.

The link has to do with ongoing political/terrorist violence in SE Asia. I'm not well-equipped to offer timely information on my own, so I linked to a targeted news resource

FYI: I have 450 or so pages of destination info (with adsense) and roughly 20 pages devoted to hotel booking.

So I'm wondering what you other webmasters/site owners consider as your/our responsibility to inform users about potential danger in the regions we cover .. and how you do it.

[physics]

There must be news feeds about that topic that you could get onto the page with an rss parser or javascript. That way your users can see the headlines and don't necessarily have to leave your site.

[old_expat]

Hi physics,

Seems you are the only one who will touch an "ethics" thread.;>)

Actually, I had thought of trying to do something like you suggested a while back. The only problem is that in my view, space is quite dear on my index page. I had a short one-line link to the appropriate Google news channel.

So what I ended up doing was putting that link (and a couple of other things) on an "Alerts" page which is on a right-hand side "features" menu of sorts.

Thanks for the discussion.

[etechsupport]

You could provide the link for your travellers about the update news topics of the particular distination which you cover or they are suppose to travel.

[physics]

You mean you made like an alerts.html and then linked to that from your home page? That was going to be my other suggestion but I forgot to mention it ;)

[etechsupport]

Exactly that!

[old_expat]

"You mean you made like an alerts.html and then linked to that from your home page? That was going to be my other suggestion but I forgot to mention it ;) "

Actually, I already had the alerts.htm. It has travel advisory sites listed (US, UK, AUS) and some current/new visa info.

I had a message about the tsunami (top of the home page) for probably 2 months, stressing the areas that were either not affected or were slightly affected .. urging travelers to go there so the locals could get their jobs/lives back.

I had a paragraph about the unrest on the 'alerts', but thought the escalation in violence needed to be addressed more prominantly. But that was dumb putting a link right at the top of my home page that took people away from the site. :>/

The link to alerts.htm is now in a less conspicuous place, although still on the home page, but quite visible for someone looking for that type of info.