Forum Moderators: open
I am not going to tee this up to much or edit it. There are some references in here that may be a bit dated, but on the whole it is still valid.
The following is from a discussion the admins and moderators have been having on the issue of blog links. The following is my part in that discussion and I felt it was important to involve the members in the discussion. There is a bit of semi-confidential info in here, so I felt it was important that this stay out of the public eye - the best way to do that was here in the supporters forum.
The issue at hand is our policy on not allowing links to blogs. The main issue is that of trust and accuracy. While blogs can provide incredible vehicles to staying informed, they also pose a risk of misinforming us. The following covers some of those issues - a few more as well - and we'd enjoy hearing from you on the subject.
The biggest change I made recently was taking most of January-March to write the new mod reporting system and thread recommendation system. That system is/was at the request of mods going back 4-5 years. It was designed to reduce mod work load and make their life around here easier. From all accounts and comments - it has been the best addition for moderators ever. I have had mods all but cry on the phone thanking me for it. I think there is no question that it has been one of the most successful additions to the WebmasterWorld software since 1999.
Second, I do try to handle as much stuff in private as I possibly can. Public discussions of personal business are best avoided so that no one gets embarrassed or loses face.
> "no linking to SE blogs" come up?
Changing a major rule like that is not something that can be done over night. If we open up blog links, it is a flood. There is no putting that genie back in the bottle easily. It has to be done at a snails pace.
I have talked and talked with the admins about it for quite some time. We totally agree that there is the need to open things up a bit - the question that no one has an immediately answer for: is HOW can we do that? How do we do it and not get spammed off the net with junk? How do we say a link to Googles Blog is ok, but Fred Pharm and Phentermine blog is not? No one has come up with a line item policy that would work? It would be a nightmare to moderate and admin. Until we can come up with a policy that will work for everyone, allowing links would be a stake through the heart of the moderators. They wouldn't know what, when, how, or why to catch links and we wouldn't know how to explain it. It would turn the forums upside down overnight. Turning on blog links at this point with out a policy would be the worst decision we would make in 6 years here. Hence - I don't think it is going to happen until a policy is formed we can all live with.
I think part of the issue is that of senior member/moderator perception of the current posting policies. I don't think there is an appreciation for the mods that came before and all the work that was done in those early days to set the current policy. One ex admin said, "Other tech forums should get on their knees and kiss the feet of WebmasterWorld for getting the spam out of their own forum". In other words, we don't currently see much of a spam problem here because of all the work and member education we have done in the past.
If you haven't read the Professional forum spammers thread in awhile, it would be a good read:
[webmasterworld.com...]
There are hundreds of people now with the job of buzz marketing in forums. From simple whisper campaigns (we miss many of those), to pure drops, we don't get many serious problems any more. The "blog as propaganda and sales and self promotion" phenomena is growing and only going to get worse. There is no way, that we have the ability to determine the difference between a honest blog drop to an important breaking story, and a promo drop. We all have blogs and would like to promote them, but moderators not self promoting is one of the core tenants of WebmasterWorld life. We want people to trust as much as possible what we say.
What is a bit surprising to me, is the lack of appreciation for recent history here. Did you not see a few old members burn out and leave over the last few years? On their way out, in the Google forum several of them said (and have since maintained the view in public) that we were too close to some of the search engines. One exmember has accused me of working directly for Google in public. Most recently at another forum, someone posted that I clearly work for Yahoo because we named the last Yahoo update - Update Tim. Still another thinks I am Paul Gardi because Paul gets to speak at WebmasterWorld conferences. Therefore, I am hyper sensitive to allowing engines to come in here and drop self promotional/self authored blog links. It is why I tend to give 2nd tier engines some undue exposure to try to lean the other way as much as possible. Fact is, Google is running 60+% of the referrals on the net and getting 95% of the webmaster/site owners attention - so that is where we also focus and also what gets the attention.
It is also important to remember that people have figured out every way imaginable to drop links in the forum as false spam reports. From asking about the site in my profile (which wasn't his), to a blog drop that was really a spam report - we have seen it all.
We must provide a safe environment for people to read and work in. The golden rule of not reporting on thee neighbor is slowly getting tarnished. We don't want to be a contributing factor to that, but rather one that upholds and enforces it in our little corner of the web and encourages others to do so.
> suggestions 6 months ago
There are several in there that have been done and several that are on the drawing board (database forum etc, spam report forum). There are also many that are simply not possible legally (supporters forum suggestions, admin policies..etc).
> conference
Sorry the conference date slipped into the summer, but between new house, new wife, honeymoon, hiring/training people, and the inevitable post-vegas exhausted crash - there just wasn't time to get it done in march-april. Waiting appears to have worked out though with the largest conference we've ever done coming up (it is going to be a blast and we are planning on the biggest bash ever). I appreciate the vote of confidence that we can do all this stuff over night, but I don't have an S on my chest and going from one employee to 4 is a major leap for any business.
> search
I've asked and asked for suggestions on a search engine. I have tried all the major se packages from mngo to aspseek and nothing will work for here - it is just too much dynamic content.
> New mods
Are coming on line at a pace. Engine is slowly doing that for us. Thanks! It takes alot longer than one would imagine to setup a new moderator. There is alot of back-n-forth that goes on. I think a new mod takes about a month to setup and manage.
> Db/SQL forum
Will happen. Just a matter of finding a mod, and then the day it will take to set it up and move a bunch of posts into it.
> other stuff
Some of the other work has to be delayed. Like that recent change that took about a week to program, there is another one coming up after New Orleans that just has to happen. We are breaking the file system here with over 500,000 files now - that can't be continued. So, what I'm saying is that for every public minute we do something (like an sql forum), there are 10 support minutes (fixing the db system) that is going on under the hood.
Quote of the day:
One of the things I like best about WW is I perceive it to be a place that helps people learn how to learn about - almost how to think through - web issues and develop their own solutions, as opposed to only handing out solutions to immediate problems all the time. - ken_b
> but why not link to the actual source,
> and in some cases cover it first?
I still think that would have some serious repercussions. The biggest being deciding what is and isn't news of value.
The issue becomes even stickier when it is a moderator that is wanting to "break" the story on his/her blog site. We have had numerous incidents where mods have wanted to promote their own site in the forums. Sometimes in the past, we stuck our head in the sand and looked the other way.
See, policies are fine-n-dandy and look good on paper and give you a crutch to lean on. However, given the nature of the bbs system, the nature of human interaction, of our vast communication differences, not to mention sex-politics-religion, and the general nature of textual communication - the ultimate policy is simple: keep the peace. Sometimes that is easy to do and other times it requires bending a rule here or there. It also often involves me falling on my sword for the site or for a admin/moderator.
Then there is also the issue of keeping the doors open. Trying to do this site without any direct advertising income (yes *wink wink* on the "exhibitors" logos) is more difficult than people think. aka: [searchengineworld.com...] The subscription model is very difficult to sustain and has required many choices I have not been comfortable with. It didn't always work (eg: see WebmasterWorld 98-2003 in the hole for well over a hundred grand building the site and keeping it afloat. There were numerous days when the doors were almost closed. It was only by the good graces and commercial inspiration of a few mods that the system even exists today.)
Then there is the issue of competition. After doing forums/bbs's for 21 years... ummm, I've learned a thing or two you know? Given that some mods do mod their own forums, and others have come from/gone too other forums, - sure, I flat admit there are some strategy points I keep too myself. After all, I don't' know of too many people who put their own biz strategy on the web for all to see. Most of the bigger points about forums are already out there anyway. However, I get the question all the time about why WebmasterWorld can do 7 figure page views while others struggle to hit 5 figures a day? It is just an accident really - you can't do WebmasterWorld again today ;-) ya, that's the ticket, it's just an accident ;-). Then there is all the legal stuff and work that has been done. I know it grates on a few people here, but I do not talk about the legal work/rulings we have had done here, and on going stuff that is even being done right now. All that costs a fortune, but I feel it is the difference between being here and not. It is hard to see how that relates to this conversation, but when you think about some of the legal actions that have taken place by large companies/sites against bloggers, forums, and the like - it is very significant.
back to frogs and blogs:
Right now, there is so much junk on the web (multitudes more than ever before) that people don't know what to believe. They are reading stuff generated out of thin air and taking it as fact.
In the last couple of months, I have seen two blog stories go mainstream that ended up to be wrong. One even involved a top 20 sites legal department to get corrected. Those stories involved WebmasterWorld members to a certain degree. They also were blog entries that people wanted to put into the forums here as news worthy. At the time, I did not know if the stories were correct or not, but I knew we weren't linking a blog for the source on it. As it turns out, the policy served us in spades. We also did not get into a soap opera tit-for-tat drama-of-the-month with them on the story.
With soo much inaccurate info being shoved on the web, I feel strongly that we must link to accurate, authoritative, and generally accepted as high value sources. That is true for code and education matters, and it is 10 fold as true for timely news sources.
If we did implement such a policy (link to quality blog stories...which is sorta what we having been doing off-the-cuff anyway - eg: first define blog), it would come down to a judgement call on a per moderator basis. Those would sometimes be right, and sometimes be wrong. I believe those kinds of conflicts would cause difficulties on moderators and problems with members and hurt the quality of postings out there. I believe that the quality of the postings in the forums is a good - if not better on the whole - than they have been in quite awhile.
What I feel WebmasterWorld lacks is the expression of community spirit. Getting to know other webmasters, the inclination to feel empathy and concern for others surfaces in an oblique way in many threads. It exploded during the 'one of our Mods is missing' days. But I don't feel there has been a place where such relationships can develop. I know of a 'horsey' forum where the coffee lounge is incredibly active, members are getting to know each other, giving hugs, and revealing their depths all day long - my Ex spent most of her days and nights on that forum. Now, guess what, that is a female dominated forum - WW is a 'Guy' sort of place.
It feels a bit like going out for drinks after work with people from another department - you end up talking about work and never find out that the person you were talking to is the bassist in a Punk revivalist band. I think we need a place where we can put aside all this talk of Ad placement, CPM, and DCs. Of course, I really don't have a clue how you can achieve this - but I would know the end result if it was done! Its a lot more than Foo. For myself, I coukld see contacts with fellow bloggers, music bloggers, podcasters, music fans, UK webmasters, fellow reviewers, football fans, programmers, smokers.
Now to my point, I wonder whether the relaxation of blogs links (and perhaps URLs and Search Terms and specific Spam discussions) should take place in a different area and not in the existing forums. The existing rules have served you pretty well for that past few years. In this new area you could have disclaimers in the hope of minimising legal problems and a definite rel=nofollow policy at the very least.
Maybe you could look at different ways to moderate such an area - if the Report/Recommend function has been working well perhaps you could enlist Senior members+ to help to 'emphasise' certain threads so the worthless own blog drops disappear into obscurity quickly. I don't mean something as anally micro as Slashdot, but just a bit of member self-policing.
Taking off my Admin hat and speaking purely as a member,
What are Blogs?
Blogs are simply another form of online publishing using authoring software/scripting that separates the management of content from that of the layout and style. Thus it is easier for one or more people to add new, and maintain existing, content within a site without having to have any knowledge of the necessary markup code.
So do Blogs have a specific style?
Usually they are in a magazine format with periodic articles, commentary and other information on a particular topic, although not always. I have seen blogging software used in a variety of ways, sometimes to the point where it would be difficult to discern that blogging software was in fact used. There are some clever people out there.
So Blogs are just another person publishing their point of view then?
Not at all. Admittedly, the vast majority of Blogs at this time are personal commentary, but not always. Blogs should only be defined as to the publishing method used, not the content nor the intent nor officiousness of that content.
Blogs can be used for a variety of purposes ranging from personal commentary, to group/family communications, to archival records and even to the dissemination of official news and notifications by large companies and organisations. In short, Blogs are not only used by the Moms & Pops of this world, (nor only by Black Hat Artistes), but also by individuals who are authorities in their field and large corporations.
I might add that so-called "normal" Websites are also used for all the above purposes as well, and then some; the only difference between normal Websites per se and Blogs is the authoring software/scripting used.
So, why should we ban links to Blogs?
Well, actually, I don’t believe we should ban linking to Blogs as a broad group at all. If we are going to ban Blog links purely because they belong to a group of Websites that use a particular method of authoring, which, yes, some people abuse, then we might as well ban links to any Website as we all know that there are some bad Websites out there used in some not-so-nice ways. And of course, anyone claiming to be an SEO should immediately be banned as some SEOers are spammers!
Get the point?
We should be letting the Terms of Service and the Reporting System do their jobs in determining whether a link should stay based on the value of the target link to the discussion at hand regardless of the format/style/whatever of that target link. Thus, self promotion is out, that’s a given, and links to sites/pages of dubious value would also not be allowed, but links to Websites/Blogs/whatever of an authoritative or official nature that have a direct bearing on the discussion at hand, and add value to that discussion, should be allowed.
As it stands now, there are various Blogs, (some of which aren’t called Blogs at all), and some non-Blogs, (which are in reality Blogs by definition), to which we are allowed to link, such as [battellemedia.com...] [mattcutts.com...] and [seroundtable.com...]
Yet, there are various official sites to which we cannot link, such as [#*$!.blogspot.com...] [ysearchblog.com...] [adsense.blogspot.com...] and so on, and some Blogs that are authorities in their field to which we cannot link, such as [#*$!.com...] to name but one example. All of these sites contain important information for the Webmaster/SEO community, yet we cannot link to them. In fact, as you will see, some of these sites are even on the filter list, thus depriving our members of valuable information associated with current discussions.
We link to News sites, that have timely articles written by journalists, whom may or may not be knowledgable and/or authoritative about the topic of the article, but we do not allow links to Blog sites that also have timely articles written by people who actually are knowledgable and/or authoritative about the topic of the article.
Doesn’t make sense.
So, you are saying that we should allow links to all Blogs?
Not at all! As stated above and per the Terms of Service and Charters of applicable fora, we should only allow links to sites/pages that are usually authoritative or official in their field but will certainly provide additional value to the discussion. If it doesn’t pass that test, then no link.
Furthermore, in another twist, when we quote from News articles, we take a short snippet and cite the source with a link, thus complying with copyright laws and expectations of fair usage. Therefor, it stands to reason that if we quote from a Blog, we must per force also provide a link citation to that source to again comply with copyright laws. If we are not allowed to link to that source, then no quotation should be allowed either.
Well, that is the issue as I see it. I believe links should be allowed or disallowed based purely on their value to the discussion, not their authoring technique.
Onya
Woz
A great strength of this site is the sharing of information, help and assistance that is obviously genuinely meant and not offered in the furtherance of self-promotion.
My point of view, for what it is worth, is that should a story break that is so important that it require a link to a specific site/blog then you yourself can make the post, as you often have in the past.
The last thing this site needs is a load of spammy looking links and signatures etc, there are plenty of boards out there for those who seek such an enviroment
Take for example the current 40-50 posts listed on the home page. Everyone was carefully checked for quality links to stories you could trust.
Ap
Reuters
NY TImes,
Wash Post,
Wall Street Journal.
Not a bogus or low quality link in the bunch. Had we allowed blog links most of those would have been pointing at other pointer sites.
I think some members vastly over estimate the quality level of the typical blog out there. We are not talking the likes of the rarer Battelle link or even a good SlashDot pointer thread - we are talking Franks phentermine and south beach diet blog. They think they deserve to be pointed too. And if they do a rare quality post - why do we let them?
It is like the recent dust up with Google and BMW. I still maintain if that was actually a news worthy item, it would have been on google.com. If not - it is just hearsay and soap opera drama - which is what it was.
btw: all those you mentioned woz? have been proactively edited - including battelle and cutts when it was nothing but a pointer post. Both of which have been on the filter from time-to-time.
I will have to say that looking at the two positions presented by Brett and Woz there is quite a bit of similarity in the thinking. The ultimate goal here is really to link to authoritative/knowledgeable sources. Nobody would argue that we want to see links to blog pointer posts or the spam sites. We're all on the same page there.
The problem with the 'no-links to blogs' policy is that blogs are a moving target. The concept of what defines a blog is evolving so fast that our definition of even a year ago is no longer the same. A year from now blogs will have evolved even further. The truth is that everyone and their brother is using blog software or CMS software to make their sites today. The question is when is a blog no longer a blog? In that sense I don't think it's practical to have a blanket policy toward blogs any more.
As Woz stated above, we should only allow links to sites/pages that are usually authoritative or official in their field but will certainly provide additional value to the discussion. If it doesn't pass that test, then no link. The format or features of a site's CMS cannot be the determining factor of this.
The problem we always face is what's considered authoritative. As members of WebmasterWorld perhaps we could more clearly define an authority site/page. For example, tell people that we don't want links to the commentary pages. We want links to the original article that spawned the commentary. If you cut out those links and the self-promo links then the WebmasterWorld TOS really takes care of the rest. This could allow that good 2-5% of information on authoratative/offical blog sites to rise to the top.
I'm certainly not an advocate of opening any floodgate of links. However, I do think that we could selectively allow links to more sites which are today considered blogs. I have a lot of faith that the TOS and other guidelines set up here over the years could handle this challenge.
The question is -- is there a more authoritative site out there than the blog? If yes, the blog link should not stand. If no, then I say let it in. Some of the most progressive thinking I have seen have been in blogs. (Then again, some of the worst stuff I have seen have also been in blogs.)
<mod hat back on>
Regardless of the policy ... What I see more as a problem is why you link to something in the first place. If your posts is only a link, your post is useless. If it contains quality content, and then a link to an unbiased (at least somewhat) authoritative site to back it up ... I personally have no problem with it.
The problem I have with many blogs, however, is that:
1) the link sometimes becomes obsolete after a week or so once the content has been archived (people never post perm links properly)
2) some good blog content is frequently buried inbetween useless crap
