Idiots autosubmit every day without regard for whether they are listed or not. They do NOT deserve to know if they are banned.

I too did NOT inform blocked/banned submits. Those people went right to the thanks for submitting page. I'm sure I banned them for a reason and since it had something to do with my rules then why do I need to let them know if they can't follow rules or read the countless reject emails I sent them telling them why they are not getting listed.

If webmasters are too stupid to check their stats monthly to see if certain pages are listing them then too bad for them.

The important point everyone seems to be missing here is that I am NOT saying "you should do this to be fair to your submitter" I am saying "you should do this to be fair to YOURSELF". The bottom line is: If you blacklist ANYONE who sticks to your rules, word will get round that you are a cheater (even if it is not your intention to cheat people). Not only will this reduce submissions, but most webmasters have friends who are not webmasters, but who surf for porn (i.e. your customers), and they will be telling these friends that you are a cheater too ("I wouldn't use that site if I were you, the guy who runs it cheats webmasters, and if he cheats webmasters he is going to seriously rip off surfers"). Those friends are also going to tell their friends, and because the original information came from a "webmaster" it is going to be taken even more seriously (inside info).

You don't really think people like Greenguy and Tommy became big by pissing people off do you? They got where they are because people (both webmasters and surfers) trust and respect them.

And before someone posts something like "I make a couple of thousand dollars a week and I ban IPs", think how much you would be making if you were more "submitter friendly". Probably well over ten grand a week.

RE: "do you really think that you would have time to send them and email to let them know?" I was actually referring to the fact that you automatically send them to a "thank you" page rather than to a "Sorry your submission is refused, please re-read the rules" page. However since you bring up emails, you should not have to send them an email. Any halfway decent script will automatically send out the emails when it junks the submission.

RE: "Any honest webmaster who feels he is unfairly blacklisted will contact the LL owner to ask why" I am guessing that you do not have many friends who are serious LL or TGP submitters, or you would not be saying this. Get talking to a few of your submitters, ask them if this is so, you will soon find that you are very wrong.

well ha nice answers all, and yes i also block by ip , not all most i do by domain and email, but the very worse ones i block with all, and ofcourse i dont wanna tell someone that they are blacklisted, but i was realy surprise to see the result of responding webmasters who would ask "hey i am on the blacklist whats up"......i quess i am gonna do the same thing on some other linksites , lol i am just gonna bann all :D

I think you've lost your mind.

Yup, you've lost your mind.

hahahahaha i am choking, i agree.

RE: "I think you've lost your mind." That is a much held opinion of me. However I cannot see how the piece you quote adds fuel to the general suspicion of my sanity. Just because you do not talk to your non-webmaster friends about your business, it does not mean other webmasters also keep stumm about their business or hobby.

i am not blacklisting people who are by the rules, well some i do because i believe there is something strange with them but i cant find out what, and yep then people who are honest will contact the linksite owners or an board to ask why they got blacklisted, i think its an great way to find out who is honest and who is not (although that "honest" word also dont cound everytime when they post on an board:)

(I wish you'd learn to use the quote button ;) ) The only thing anyone wants to talk about with me is this damned business, but I never suggest anyone's sites and I don't recall anyone ever asking where they should surf.

I have retyped this post about three times, trying to make it look like a serious point and not just a cheap insult, but cannot find a good way to word it. So please, when you read it realise I genuinly mean it as a serious point, not just trying to score points.

stuveltje do you actually know how the Internet works ? You say "i am not blacklisting people who are by the rules", but in a previous post you said "i also block by ip". That is like saying "I never hit anyone who does not insult me, but if someone called Dave insults me then I hit everyone in the area called Dave"

ecchi

Instead of trying to change the way established sites do business why not try changing your approach and move on?

I know how to use it, but a long time ago I got fed up of people who use it to quote an entire post instead of just the point they are commenting on, and stopped reading anything it a quote box. In case anyone else is doing the same, I stopped using the quote button myself.

Also I think using the quote button rather than the old fashioned method look a bit nerdy (sort of "Look at me, I am using all the gadgets" kind of thing). But I guess I am just showing my age.

RE : "Instead of trying to change the way established sites do business why not try changing your approach and move on?" I am not trying to change anything. Anyone is free to do whatever they like. I am just stating the facts as I see them, so that as well as being free to ignore me, people are also free to read what I post, think about it, and if they decide that I am correct change their way and make more money. It is called "helping other people out".

Although I agree with you, it would be better for me if I kept quiet. The more webmasters who alienate their surfers there are, the more unhappy surfers there will be looking for somewhere else to go for porn. By the law of averages a few will end up on my sites. So yes, if I kept silent I would make more money. Unfortunately that was not the way I was brought up.

No I don't, but I am a serious LL submitter. In my 11 months in this business I've subbed over 200 freesites to at least 150 LLs. Twice I've received BL notices, twice I've approached the owner and twice I've received courteous replies explaining it was a mistake.

As fucked up as the system is (due in no small part to the cheaters) it works. Play straight and you'll be fine. Try funny stuff and pay the consequenses.

I think you seriously overestimate word of mouth on the net. By your reckoning I should soon be without both submitters and surfers, yet both are increasing.

I'm really not worried about my own reputation in the business, especially since, as I mentioned earlier, I've deleted all IP ban records and now ban by domain. That said, I'm getting more trigger happy on the ban button.

Lemmy, I am curious, if you disagree with me then why did you delete all IP ban records and now ban by domain ?

And RE "I think you seriously overestimate word of mouth on the net. By your reckoning I should soon be without both submitters and surfers, yet both are increasing." Umm, if you have stopped banning by IP and both your submitters and (more importantly) surfers are increasing, I think that kind of [b]PROVES[b] my point doesn't it?

If you're old enough to remember Katy Manning / Jo Grant first time around (that IS her in your avatar isn't it? I recognise the Dalek, anyway.. :D ) then you're probably 40ish, maybe a little more.

With respect to your points about LLs gaining a bad rep from surfers, I'm sure such things happen, but I doubt it would have that much impact upon the list itself. Besides, there are enough porn surfers around for it not to really matter unless it becomes a BIG problem.

On the other hand, I don't agree with stu that "honest" webmasters will neccessarily bother to find out why (or if) they've been blacklisted by smaller LLs either. As I said earlier, at least some lists have a LONG review time, on the order of several months, and others may just have not liked what was submitted etc. By the time it's become apparent that your submissions are never going to appear, it's a dead issue IMHO.

As a newbie at this submitting thing, I'm always looking out for new lists to submit to, and for ones that for whatever reason don't work for me. I'm gradually building up a picture of reliable and unreliable (from my perspective) lists - if I were to be blacklisted and not told about it, I might well raise the point with a list that I'd previously thought to be reliable, but for others I'd probably just add them to the unreliable list and forget them until someone asked me for a list of reliable / unreliable LLs.

As UW says, there's very little point in trying to change the culture of a business; I always try to follow the rules out of respect for the LL owner's wishes, but if they were to blacklist me for an error rather than deliberate intent, well, that's up to them.

Rob.

Because I wouldn't want anyone to be unfairly banned due to another person's shit. I thought that was clear.

I changed my banning practises about a week ago. But I feel you're not going to happy unless I agree with you, so yes, it proves your point.

mmmm whats that internet? Probably i do know how the internet works if i am still here after 4 years:D grin ecchi, i dont always block by ip, but i will do if have some very bad cheaters on an ip, give you an example, yes there was ones a guy i believe an year ago asking why his ip was blacklisted, i explained to that webmaster that i had some bad stuff submitted from some other people who had the same ip, his answer to me was: oh no problem and he hitted up his host for an other ip! Sometimes there is no other choise for an linksite owner or an reviewer then to block all.

Ecchi, let me give you a "real world" example of IP blocking.

Let's say you run a restaurant, and you deliver. There is a certain apartment building in your neighborhood that has, hmmm, 255 apartments. Over a year, you make about 100 deliveries, and about 75 of them turn out to be fake, or people rob the driver, or people try to steal the driver's car, or they call 100 times per day to order food but never answer the door.

Would it not be reasonable to say "I don't deliver to that building anymore"?

YES, I know... keep a long list of individual apartments that caused trouble. Every time someone calls, go through that long list and look to see if that apartment has given you trouble before. Make sure that the current resident isn't someone who moved to another floor... then you might find the ONE GOOD CUSTOMER in a building full of theives and liars.

Nope. Ban the building, move on.

In our buisness, it's the same thing. We ban IPs, we ban hosts, and we ban domains. - often banning all domains from the same owner even if they have never submitted to us. Why? Because our time is worth something, and it isn't worth our effort to try to find the one good submitter in a pile of liars, autosubmitters, and theives.

We are not doing this randomly. This is experience in action.

Alex

I rarely ban by IP - its usually by host - and there are quite a few hosts banned (there's been loads of threads here about it) and if someone wants to host their domain on a host that seems to not only house cheaters, but offers ways around the LL bots checking things like whois and nameservers - then they are auto banned as well.

One thing I learned a long time ago - in this biz its a real good idea to research before you do anything - from running a LL to submitting free sites. I get submitters who I know from experience and from listings at other LLs that are good free site builders and probably never even changed a page after it was listed etc. BUT - they still dont take the time to read my rules - or they use one of the "hand-submit" programs that just loads the submit form without the rules - and they miss the fact that I have very specific requirements about who can submit - and I guarantee you I have no intention of cheating anyone - my rules - if they dont want to take the time to read them Ill be damned if Im going to take the time to chase them down and give them a clue - but I guess thats cause Im a very old man and dont have the time to play mr nice guy anymore.

If someone contacts me through this board which is exactly what I say in my rules, I can only think of one case where I refused a partner account - and I dont charge for them - just dont have time for the gallery4589.html's that show up in batches of 200 at a time. Makes my submitters happier as they get better treatment and placements and therefore better traffic which is my goal.

RE: "that IS her in your avatar isn't it? I recognise the Dalek, anyway" Yes, it is her. And, yes, I do remember her first time round.

RE: "But I feel you're not going to happy unless I agree with you" Oh grow up.

RE: "Ecchi, let me give you a "real world" example of IP blocking." I agree with your example, but my point is if you take payment in advance from the other 25% and don't deliver they are going to shout all around town that you are a crook. In the LL/tgp business, if you expect all submitters to put a recip on their free site or gallery before you post the link (which is the way this business works), you are asking for payment in advance, so do not be surprised when those you banned for being in a "bad neighbourhood" put it around that you are a cheater, even though cheating people was not your intention.

RE: "If someone contacts me through this board which is exactly what I say in my rules" Hmm. I have a newbie WM site and often get asked the same questions, so have "form" emails that just get cut and pasted and sent out to some queries. The things I recommend include reading this board, and one of the sites I recommend to submit to is Tommy's. I have had three emails so far saying effectively "how can I recommend Tommy when he is obviously just trying to scam some money out of me ?" Two cited this thread as "proof": http://www.greenguysboard.com/board/...ad.php?t=21431 and one cited this thread: http://www.greenguysboard.com/board/...ad.php?t=22773 So it is probably not a good idea to get people to post in an open forum, as everyone sees what they want to see in a thread.

Just realised that some people may skim my last post and assume I am saying that Tommy is a crook. I am not saying that, I am saying he is honest, but because of threads they read on this board three people have emailed me to say that they think he is a con man and that I am accepting bribes from him to recommend his site.

RE: "then you're probably 40ish, maybe a little more" Guilty as charged, but I just realised that according to your profile you are only 34 and you recognised Katy Manning ! (I'm also old enough to be salivating with anticipation over the fact that Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith) will be returning to the series next year.)

well the issue i have is not on an small LL its on some big LLs, although i dont see any reason why an webmaster wont ask a linksite owner of an smaller LL why he or she didnt got listed?