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?

Ecchi: If a site asks for a fee for review (see Yahoo directory listings) it is to pay for the process of review, not for the product itself. A partner account fee is an "idiot filter". If you are stupid enough to pay $XXX without first reading the rules, well, you get what you deserve.

At the end of the day, you think you can do better? Start a link list, have open submits, and you can sit there and wade through the tons and tons of bullshit you will get.

Come back in a year and tell me how it feels to spend 6 hours a day manually filtering crap, getting vriuses and spyware installed daily, and handling irate emails and PMs because you didn't list some fool's latest attempt to scam you and your surfers.

Then we will have something to discuss.

Alex

RE: "i dont see any reason why an webmaster wont ask a linksite owner of an smaller LL why he or she didnt got listed" Way back when the majority of my traffic came from LL and TGP, I spent hours a day creating and submitting. I did not have time to email every WM who did not list me. I would guess that the only WMs who have time to do this are those who use auto submit software.

It has just crossed my mind that back then (when I spent a lot of my day submitting) the two biggest TGP sites were The Hun and Richard's Realm. Both of those sent out emails to tell you if you had been accepted or not. None of the minor sites ones did.

RawAlex - I think you totally missed the point of my post on the subject. I was not commenting on the good/bad points of partner accounts. I was using Tommy as an example to point out that people make a decision as to the honesty of a webmaster on what they hear about him. And that at least three people decided from threads on this board that Tommy was a crook (even though neither of the threads actually paint a bad picture of him). And incidentally decided I must be a crook too for saying he was OK.

And re "Come back in a year and tell me how it feels to spend 6 hours a day manually filtering crap" I have spent many years filtering crap on TGP sites thank you. And also ran a link list for a couple of years.

there are still linksites around who send emails, i was an free site submitter myself and handsubmitted my sites, and because i spended so much time with the handsubmitting i surely wanted to know why my site didnt got listed at an linksite, no use to submit to sites where you dont get listed. lol i do remmeber that time that i saw alot of postings from linksite owners on the boards, yelling and nagging and making their rules list longer....that time i thought geeze do they have to do that.....till some linksites owners showed me what they had to deal with all day and since more then 2.5 years where i have to deal with all day.

Really??? I'm WAY out of touch on my Who stuff - haven't even watched the last 6 or so of the last series yet, they're all on tape waiting for me to get a day free!

Rob.

Yes really. And if the 6 you have not yet seen include "Empty Child" then you owe yourself an apology, it was mindblowingly brilliant.

Probably for much the same reason why they won't say when they've blacklisted someone. By the time I've decided that they're actually dumping the submissions rather than hugely backlogged (had another acceptance today for a site that I submitted about 3 months ago) I'll probably have adjusted my submit list to include sites that DO accept.

Sure, for the sites that are really backlogged, I'll put em back on the list for new submissions, but I'm not going to go back and submit old sites to them any more than I'm going to go back and find out why others didn't accept. Even if I did, I doubt they'd know for sure after several months, and it would be unreasonable to expect them to IMHO.

As you say, it takes a lot of time to manually submit to a lot of lists, the return on that investment being traffic and, hopefully, conversions. Submissions to large lists = lots of traffic, submissions to small lists = small (sometimes very small) amounts of traffic. Is it worth investing yet more time in finding out why an old site didn't get listed? Depends on the list, how much time I have etc.

For larger lists, smaller lists that have previously accepted and any list that tells me I've screwed up then yes, it's probably worth it when I have a min. For smaller lists that have never accepted, no, IMHO, it's not. To take up the example Raw Alex gave, it's not unreasonable to say "I don't deliver to that building any more" if they say they want your food but never open the door. On the other hand, if they accept the food then call up and tell me the food was horrible, I'll do my best to make it better next time.

Rob.

Rob, I am soooo sorry, I'll let myself watch them later if I'm good... :D

A quick check of GallifreyOne shows John Leeson will also be returning - now, what role will he be playing? And no cheating by looking it up :D

Rob.

ha yep with that i have to agree, i did got some acception emails from some linksites a month ago , where i submitted almost an year ago, when i first saw the email i thought hey when did i made a free site for them ( or when did i made an free site at all this year), well an year ago, and yep just deleteing all t get rid of the backlog is bad, i never thought of the facked that an linsite owner would do that, well not if they are an seriouse webmaster.

RE: "John Leeson will also be returning - now, what role will he be playing?" If I remember correctly he is a voice artist, did the voices of "slave" and "Zen" in Blakes 7, so I guess he must be the voice of K9. And it makes sense since the Doctor sent one of the K9s to Sarah Jane Smith after she left the Tardis (for a God awful spin of series that only lasted as far as a pilot episode).

OK, I'll go check now, see if I am making an idiot of myself.

Yup, looks like I am correct. I also just leaned that he played Bungle (the bear in Rainbow) as well. Seems he got the "cult voice over" market all sewed up.

Apologies to the majority of people on this board who are American, and unless are very enlightened Americans, will have no idea what the hell I am talking about in my last three posts.

He was indeed K9, apart from one season (season 18?), reprising the role in the 5 doctors and K9 and company, as it seems he will be again. But he wasn't Zen, Slave or Orac - they were all done by Peter Tuddenham, IIRC.

Had no idea he was Bungle though! The things you learn here on GG&J |bananna|

PS sorry for hijacking this thread folks - I'll go back in my hole now :D

Rob.

hey i am an ductchie and i only can think about .......ecchi is very old:D Stu-------------->>> hiding now |couch|

RE: "he wasn't Zen, Slave or Orac - they were all done by Peter Tuddenham" Wow, I got the correct answer from the wrong reasoning. I guess it was either luck or I am a genius. I think I'll go for the second possibility.

RE: "hey i am an ductchie and i only can think about .......ecchi is very old" So will you be one day mate. Youth is the one disease that time can cure.

Being Dutch I guess you miss out on all the great things in life like Dr Who, Blake's Seven, and Rainbow. But then on the plus side you also missed what Gérard Depardieu said about Dutch people on British TV last Friday.

hahahahah grin i know doctor who, when that wa on dutch telly me was an youngster and i was always afraid to go to bed that time when i sa that, the rest i dont know about, Gerard depardieu, his name sound frenche i dont know him but dutchies are good and smart ( well i am then and i am an woman heay mate:D ) oh and i am 21 years old already for almost 16 years |pink

Gérard Depardieu Is probably France's most famous actor. He has also done quite a few Hollywood movies. Also a bit famous for his cookery book.

Good choice! "You can't kill me! I'm.. I'm a GENIUS!" :D

Rob.