Go Guide Ethics

A case study

[scott]

I'm wondering if I can do anything about this, or is this the standard method of operation at go.com. Someone got themselves a nice high ranking (enough to where they could edit other sites ratings, reviews, etc.) then submitted thier own site with like a 3 or 4 star rating, then began re-reviewing all the other sites in that catagory, giving them bad reviews and lower ratings. One of them being mine. (I had noticed a big drop in referrals from go.com) What can I do?

[grnidone]

Good question. There has to be a process for that. I am such a low level go guide, that I don't know the process. I was under the impression that you could write to other high level mods and ask for help. Anyone here a go guide that can give Scott some help?

-G

[JamesR]

scott, review your Go Guides FAQ, they will give you instructions on how to handle problems with another guide.

[CoastalEditor]

A lot of times contacting the Go Guide and talking to him/her about the situation can get it resolved. If you have attempted to contact this editor and either they will not reply to you or will not correct the situation, I would write a complaint. Just remember that a complaint is the absolute last resort, but it is there to be used. If the situation is still not corrected, contact a high level Guide or Staff and have them get involved. Ideally it will be corrected via email with the editor, but alas we do not live in a perfect world.

[rtfmnews]

This happened to me as well, and so far no resolution from the "higher powers." Fortunately, a great ranking on Go Guides Directory meant absolutely zero traffic anyway.

:-)
Dan

[skibum]

I'm not much of an editor in GO, but drop by occasionally and submit a site or two. CoastalEditor has provided good advice. Best to try to deal directly with the person involved at first. If casual email to higher ups and the person in question don't do anything, then you can file a complaint. I think the loser of the complaint loses 35 points, and then you can appeal twice going approximately double or nothing on the points at stake each time. Ya gota be sure you are right to go full force and fight it.

IMHO, the GO ranking system seems SO arbitrary. The human edited directory will never seem fair to everyone, but that star ranking system seems to me to be rediculous. The cooling feature in ODP seems to have been turned off in many places, and it's a blessing. Google has got it right, I wish all the SE's would come up with a ranking criteria like theirs that mixes spidered results, and does a fantastic job of ranking human edited stuff.

[cyberbear]

How do I get the contact emails of Go Guides? I am looking for a guide who does ecommerce and hosting sites. I spent an hour looking around the go site and gave up. Just want to email one and have them index one of my sites. Thanks.

[skibum]

cyberbear - you are probably better off just filling out the editor form, and doing the submission yourself. It's easy to find the links to initiate communication with an editor, and once you fill out the app you can submit as many sites as you want. It doesn't look like the public Go page makes it possible to contact a specific editor. when you first sign up, you have no responsibilities and don't have the ability to do much aside from suggesting sites. Don't worry about having to dedicate a lot of time to editing if you don't want to. After a few months I have 2 topics, but have never had s site to review.

[cyberbear]

Thanks Skibum

Just submitted one of my sites and one of my friends. Any idea on how long they take to index?

[scott]

Here's an update. I complained and it was rejected. No reason stated. I wrote to Go and they suggested first, that it wasn't possible (no one could single-handedly rearrange a whole catagory), and suggested that I could solve the problem by submitting enough sites to build MY ranking up higher and put it back the way it was.

So I posted in the message board that I needed a higher guide's help. I explained that (the culprits site) was not three star material and I needed it changed. A high ranking guide acknowledged and looked into it. Turned out that the culprit also had another site in the catagory that mirrored the first site. This fact coupled with a lot of bickering going on between the culprit and myself (she decided to take our argument to the public message board) caused the guide to re-evaluate every site in the catagory.

All the sites in the catagory got very fair reviews and my ranking was restored. In fact, due to the re-wording of the review by the high ranking guide, I'm now getting TWICE the referrals I was before the whole thing started.

I love happy endings.

[2_much]

Congrats Scott! What is it they say about perseverance?? :)

2M

[rcjordan]

Great Scott! (couldn't resist) ...but did you end up out-ranking the "culprit" editor's site?

[CoastalEditor]

Thats great news Scott. It is rare to hear of such event, but it goes to show there are still decent editors out there. If you ever need help in Go, I would be happy to look into any issue that may come up. Just email me at [e-mail] .

Coastal Editor

[skibum]

cyberbear - It seems to take from a couple days to a few weeks. You will receive messages in your GO guides inbox (at least I did), relating to the status of the submission. I think a site has to be reviewed by 2 editors to get in, one gave it the stamp of approval, and the other told me I wrote a "commercial" for the description. You are supposed to write about what the site offers, not what the company offers. Perfect for content sites, and commerce enabled sites, but if you are a commercial services firm, like say SEP or web design, every single description would be about the same, and not be of use to anyone. Such as:

Webdesigns R Us - view client portfolio, services, flash intro, client testimonials, and a history of our company.

I just brought it up in a forum, and reached a compromise so that we went from a commercial to a book, but it made it in, got a decent rating, and a few keywords.

[msgraph]

I received the "description sounds like a commercial" bit too. Must have been the same guide. I went to go have a look at her own site, that was listed well in Go, and her description sounded like a Slick Eddie's Used Car tv ad.

The majority of Go Guides are amateurs who only achieved their status buy signing up at the right time. Then submitting all the popular sites on the net to boost their status before anyone else.

On another point...

I don't want to even go into how irrelevant their search results are. I would not recommend spending hundreds of hours of submitting sites just to boost your Guide level in order to boost your site. It's just not worth it.

[CoastalEditor]

Msgraph,
I would have to disagree with you on a couple of your points.

<<The majority of Go Guides are amateurs who only achieved their status buy signing up at the right time. Then submitting all the popular sites on the net to boost their status before anyone else.>>

This would indicate that they have been around for quite some time and probably are well informed of the submission policies and guidelines. Granted, many of the 'editors' are 'amateurs' which is why our submissions need to be reviewed by more experienced Guides. I have seen many submissions that look like advertisements for sites, and the word 'objective' is not in the submitting editors vocabulary.

<<I don't want to even go into how irrelevant their search results are. I would not recommend spending hundreds of hours of submitting sites just to boost your Guide level in order to boost your site. It's just not worth it.>>

From the results that I have been seeing from Go.com, I see that it is well worth the time and effort of becoming higher ranked at Go. Of course, all of this is just my opinion, and we all know that everyone has one.

For What Its Worth,

CoastalEditor

[cyberbear]

Just got listed in the Go Directory with a pretty good listing. Thanks everybody for the helpful advice, as it is always appreciated.