[Senator_x]

Originally Posted by jayeff

Here's a few pro's and con's:

• I started a resource site at the beginning of September and began posting here (with a sig) about 10 days into the month. Despite that late start and its more restrictive sig rules, this board has generated the most visitors to date. GFY, where I have been posting since 2001, generated the fewest visitors of all the boards on which I post. However, Netpond and GFY visitors generated the most revenue. Make of those results what you will
• I started visiting GFY out of curiousity and then noticed that I was picking up maybe twice as much info about new sites and special promotions as I received by email. That had me double-checking that my sponsors had my current email address, yes they did, so in the end I came to the conclusion that many sponsors live in a world in which existing affiliates are supposed to visit their sites for news. The situation has improved a little in the past 5 years, but however much rubbish appears on GFY, I still don't know a single source more likely to keep one reasonably up to date.
• If you discount the obvious sig-whores and surfers, I would argue that GFY better represents a cross-section of the webmaster community than the boards which enforce their own standards. Certainly such enforcement makes the boards in question easier to use, but it also filters their posters, whereas on GFY you see everyone "in the raw" as it were. For better or worse, I like to see how people I may do business with behave when allowed to be themselves.

As to the XXXJay thing... I made my own observations about someone who runs both a sponsor program and a large traffic resource, apparently unconcerned that he was completely out of the loop on an issue which affected him directly (and negatively), but was nevertheless willing to take sides based solely on the personalities involved.

Unfortunately he isn't an exception and the reality of the scumware issue (and many others like it) is that they would never occur, were it not that those who decide to play dirty know that some will defend them because of who they are, while the vast majority of webmasters will stay on the sidelines. I doubt I shall ever understand why so few people in this industry are prepared to defend their business interests.

Ditto.. well said