This is one of those things which is pretty uncertain and many are taking the route of playing it safe, and probably a wise decision.
There has been discussions on this thing for quite a while. Some directories were getting hit a few months ago. No-one was really sure what was happening and some beleived it was a change in the google algorithm which was penalizing some sites it didn't neccessarily intend too. It could also be some of these directories were the linking to scraper sites (not realizing it) as these directories tend to link to other directories and a good percentage mey be scraper like.
As far as i know it has not affected the porn sites. And i would imagine its because they have nothing to do with scraper sites and thats probably what is effecting the mainstream directories.
Also I would think you cant really be penalised for inbound links because otherwise a competitor could just give you thoasands of shitty inbound links and get you suspended, so worrying about making your Recip table variable may not be that important, although there could be some advantage by not keeping them all the same, but I think the act of having category recips does that anyway.
However the link farm point brought up originally I think could be important as you dont want your freesite to look like a link farm and you certainly dont want to link to it if your a LL owner and google might think it is a link farm.
However some of the biggest sites on the net are practically link farms
www.weeklybikini.com - the biggest site for bikini porn coming top for many phrases including "bikini" is just one big page of links and so are TGPs, and to a lesser extent link lists themselves. But SEs fucking love them. So i dont think they will be too bothered about a few extra links on a freesite page.
So in all I dont think it is anything to worry about. Its just my opinion on the thing but I wouldn't bet my life on it.
However, It is probably best just to play it safe, just in case. Anyway I think LL owners having excessive amounts of links in their recips is just been greedy. Freesite makers can only have 3 per page yet a LL recip can have 10??? I think keeping it to two makes everyone happy. One link to your main page and one too the category.
No need to be greedy
