Suggestion Get the Link Peddlers out of the Directories section

Hi,
I too am fed up with the effects of link peddling. Because of the cheap link offering by directory owners, the real value of websites and blogs is on the fall. People dont understand the value of each link. Those who are new to this, see others selling links for cheap and they too do the same and just to make some quick bucks sell valuable links cheaply.....

 

(First of all many thanks to CReed for bringing this up).

Here is my take on this point. Many other forums maintain that the directories in Solicitations & Announcement section must be free (I don't agree with it). At the same time, totally new directories having PR (dropped domain or fake PR) tells me that too many people are trying to game the system.

We might want to have new guidelines for the solicitations section: (believe me I spend a lot of time there everyday ;-))

1. Free directories should be allowed
2. Paid (Pay for review or Bid) directories shouldn't be allowed unless the owner is announcing a discount / coupon or DP special offer for his / her directory.

Personally, I would prefer that quality directories are allowed to announce their changes and solicit submissions (including paid submissions), but at this point one has to some measures to keep scammers away.

3. New directories announcements touting PR must be discouraged. As a whole the directory industry needs to stop talking PR as a selling point.
4. Link Sales section can have a separate directory listings section or 'direct selling' requests can go to Link Sales section as well.

BTW, I think 'report post' works ;-) , I have often seen many threads moved to correct section after I reported them (I am sure others report them too).

 

Reporting post does not work, the reason it doesn’t work isn’t because as soon as a Mod removes or deletes a post, loads more are posted.

My post was not intended to offend any Mods, if the system was working, we wouldn’t be discussing it here.

The mods have a massive forum to run, having a few dedicated to the directory section would be a great help.

Thanks Brian

 

I agree wholeheartedly that its difficult to police without help from the active membership. The mods have a difficult enough time as it is without patroling any one section. I think overall the mods do a good job.

If the mods are willing to move these threads to BST and issues infractions, I'm willing to report them. It's easy enough to identify the threads of those looking to make a quick link sale or inflate their statistics for future profit, as opposed to someone announcing a discount code or special offering on an actual directory.

Seems the majority of the "free" listing announcements on these new high PR directories usually offer a paid option for "Featured" listings. Maybe these threads could be moved to the Freebies section of BST.

 

Whatever happened to mikey1090 who was supposed to be the savior/moderator for the directory sections?

 

Every section could use a dedicated moderator. It's not likely to happen though. What I'd happily vote for is to kill Solicitations & Announcements altogether -- everything in there is technically an ad and would be better off under BST rules (paid in link sales and free directory launches in freebies).

 

What moderator in their right mind would even want to be a dedicated moderator in the Directory section

 

Hi everybody, sorry for the delay in my feedback.

{mom passed away 2 days ago...}

I totally agree with CReed. It's unfortunate how the Directories section is being bastardized lately...
Most of the threads are pulled back from months ago! Many make short silly clever comments (that easily escape infractions) to increase post counts. As far as "new PR4" "free PR5" directory announcements go, I think it all started few years years ago when many webmasters started promoting their own directories by putting emphasis on this single variable as the most important factor when it comes to Web directories. Articles, posts, threads were being created to show how "important" PageRank is! This led to the creation of many crap directories under high PR domains. The saga still continues...

Therefore, many good directories with low or no PR are undervalued these days. It's almost parasitic! Nowadays, the first thing many webmasters care to question is..."Whats the PR of that directory?"

Does this kinda question really make sense?

I'm convinced many members report objectionable threads including myself, thereby making this forum valuable as it still is! But it'd be good if we could make an attempt toward helping people understand what is "going wrong". Some will probably listen, some probably wont! But we'd have initiated something nice...

At the same time, how many really care for the industry? Personally, I would not like to see search results filled with spammy sites in the years to come but I can feel the trend. If we, as directory owners, moderators, webmasters could help reverse this trend, not only the Directory section will survive but also could it help improve the directory and search industry altogether overtime.

Many thanks to CReed and all other members and moderators who shared their opinion. You guys are awesome!


(Now, do keep the discussion going if anybody has anything to add, please. I do not want for the thread to break due to family news) We need more threads like this!

 

It's definitely not the worst of them. Web hosting comes close. P&R though... that's the one I can't see any of us wanting to touch on a regular basis.

 

One vote from me to kill the subsection Solicitations & Announcements.

 

Instead of killing the section itself, it could be useful to ban the use of two words in that section: New PR and any single digit after that...

Also, I'd like to share something that you guys probably have already noticed: Some threads started by banned "new" members get bumped by other new members with short (sometimes useless!) comments...Peer webmasters/friends/partners may be? I understand there is probably no way to eliminate this type of activities totally but something could probably be done. How about closing threads if the OP is banned?

 

You can add me to the list of pro kill the subsection Solicitations & Announcements, that’s three of us, do we need more?

Thanks Brian

 

That was obviously a mistake.



With regards to Creed's plea, I wholeheartedly agree. There needs to be a real presence of moderation as well as compulsory actions taken by form of bans and/or infractions to really get the message across.

R.

 

Yes the S&A forum is a sub-forum of the Directories forum and so we get posts like this because of the connection. I've seen a few threads in S&A from proper directory owners which soon go off the first page because of the amount of spammy threads being created and because the people surfing that forum are just looking for free PR.

I see no reason not to delete that forum. Directory owners can use their sig link or Recent Blog link to announce solicitations, it could be made clear that solicitations aren't allowed in the Directories forum and it would make that one forum easier to moderate then the existing two forums.

I do think the Directories forum has been better moderated over the last few months and that's possibly why there's even more crap in S&A.

 

I'm not a fan of the idea of doing away with the Solicitations section completely. After all, directory submissions are far different from the standard link exchange. BST isn't really the right place either IMHO. And don't get me started about what I think about the Freebies section.

There's been a bunch of comments tossed in here and I would like to throw in my two cents on several of them.

NEW PR Directories
Whacking posts that use a come on of "new PR..." will just lead to the smarter scammers dropping those words and perhaps instead using different words to represent "just launched but already has PR".

Problem is that even when someone posts in these threads that the directory is on an unrelated domain, the PR is from a dropped domain or the PR is fake there are still idiots who continue to submit and even post "thank you for the opportunity" replies. Either those nubes don't understand what is being said, don't care or are more than likely involved somehow with the OP.

Is there a way to ban the site rather than simply ban the poster? If the URLs and other references to these sites were removed from the thread and the thread were locked, the benefits of posting this garbage goes away.

Again, that requires a decent moderator.

Is there a way to have moderators who have power in only one section of DP? That would allow for several people to be tapped to moderate this section without giving us as a group an undue over-representation at the moderator level across DP.

I can't imagine there's not 3-5 trusted directory owners who would agree to share the responsibility. I think asking one person to handle the moderation is asking too much - there's simply too much activity and it could quickly become a full-time job. Among the folks here that I would trust with that authority, they are located around the world which would also help provide more coverage.

If DP is worried about any one member/directory owner/moderator having the ability to block the advertising of another directory owner, maybe with the questionable solicitations it would take a majority vote of the selected moderators to get a thread cleansed of references to the site and locked? Set up a sort of review team? It might not lead to immediate removal of the no-good-nicks but it would do wonders to clean up the place.


FAKE REVIEW POSTS
I would love to see the folks in any area of DP who post asking for help with their site and it becomes obvious that they are simply trolling for traffic and a free link receive an infraction or even be banned. At a minimum, all references to their site name and URL should be removed and the thread locked.

When other members take the time to review a site and then receive abuse after taking even more time to post their suggestions, there should be some penalty for the OP. I've been burned by enough of these folks now that I truly hesitate helping anyone asking for help/reviews of a new site. The scammers are creating more long-term harm to the DP community than just the few free links they are gaining.


BANNING IS ONLY HALF THE STORY
OK, this one hasn't been mentioned but it is one of my personal pet peeves.

It seems if a member is banned, any threads of theirs in the BST, freebies, solicitations or other similar areas should be closed and locked. If later reinstated, let them start a new thread instead of leaving an orphan thread open.

Locking every thread where they are the OP, even if that means some useful threads get frozen would be preferable to leaving trade-related threads open and active. After all, if members are truly interested in continuing a conversation, they could always start a new thread to keep it going.

 

Isn’t DP trying to get away from duplicate threads? Members that want to leave feedback in a thread that he or she had dealt, would be unable to do so, if the thread was closed.

Thanks Brian

 

While that's true, I sincerely doubt it would create all that many duplicate threads as many of the folks being banned are not really creating conversations of value in the first place.

If by feedback you mean an Itrader, what's the point of leaving an Itrader for a banned member?

 

Not sure that is the right answer... I would just point out that if the solicitations and announcements sub section of the directory section were closed - they would just start posting everything in the directories section itself. Making it even worse than now.

Leave the solicitations section just ban all use of any reference to page rank - PR - whatever. Then ban any announcement or solicitation made for a directory established on a dropped domain of any kind. Create an example template which posters can use as a guide to see what they can and can not say in their posts in that section.

Any post violating that in any way is automatically deleted and an infraction given to the poster.

Then ban any post in the directories section which is already covered or answered in the sticky at the top of the page. Any post violating that gets deleted and an infraction. That would end all those directory lists and utter nonsense getting posted there.

As far as site reviews - there is a specific section for that and it is not in the directories area regardless of the kind of site it is.

Bottom line though is nothing will happen. I volunteered to be a moderator of the directories section several times and heard nothing back. Though many have complained over the past couple years still nothing has been done to clean it up. That is the primary reason I seldom post there, though I do still report posts as I read. Usually 30% of the posts on the first page or more but they still stay and more appear.

 

Many members make mistakes, I received a 7 day B/S/T ban. We should always leave an Itrader as some members do return.

If admins and Mods do go down the closing thread rout, buyers should still be able to request the thread to be opened.

Thanks Brian

 

1. The reason the threads get bumped from banned members is because the thread sorting is different there -- another good reason to move it into the BST section.

2. They really aren't different than other link exchanges / link sales. That's precisely what they are. That's the entire essence of their business in many cases. They are either A) a free resource people can use to build links (so advertising them as such means they'd be best off in freebies) or B) they're offering more moderated link sales for premium directories (regardless, it's still selling a link whether you say the fee is for reviews or not). In that case it should be in link sales or another BST section created just for them, where it's all subject to the BST rules like any other ad. I've always found it ridiculous that a section entirely about advertising isn't held to the same rules as the marketplace. It never made sense, so I'd love to see it change.

3. Dedicated section moderators isn't a new idea. We'd discussed it quite a while back when nominating new mods a few groups ago. We also decided against it because people have a tendency to be biased, and we don't need a dedicated mod who's going to go around slamming the competition and letting their friends off. I believe dmoz and Web hosting were the two areas we'd specifically discussed at the time -- there just weren't any people that have been completely unbiased in those areas that could deal with moderating them, so we stuck to everyone moderating everything. Of course since we do seem to spend more time dealing with BST issues, moving solicitations and announcements to BST (where it logically belongs anyway) would mean it would probably see more attention w/o a dedicated mod in directories. So again, I'd say, "kill it or move it."