After reading this thread, I have a question from a somewhat new submitters standpoint.
I believe it is the responsiblity of submitters to make sure they are on hosting services that are legit and respected within the community. I would not build a brick and mortar business in a horrible neighborhood with drive by shootings and crack houses, and then complain about lack of traffic into my store. Nor would I expect a large shiny store in a well-lit downtown area with plenty of foot traffic to want to be affiliated with me.
It's your business, it is your responsibility.
But I do understand the frustration on the part of honest submitters.
My question is this...how does a submitter...especially if they are new to the business...check on a host? I mean, I just stumbled onto Webair, and they have been great. But what if they weren't? How would I have known if they had all kinds of nefarious business practices? Especially since I knew zero about choose an adult host.
I know there is someplace you can go and see if a domain is banned, but is there a place you can see a list of hosts that are frowned upon in the adult community?
Can't you (meaning leading LL and TGP owners) establish some type of database or list of banned hosts, and link to it off your submit page? You wouldn't have to have an appeal process, just a simple listing. IE "Host XYZ banned by Link O Rama on 10/5/04 for hosting of questionable domains" or "Host TER banned by Tommy's on 10/7/03 for hosting redirect sites"
By doing that, you'd be offering a great service to honest webmasters who *want* to make sure they do everything to improve their chance of listings, including making the correct hosting decision. It would also give honest hosts a place to see what is going on on their servers that they might have missed.
Sure, you'd be making the information available to cheaters as well, and that might be a problem. I really don't know what kind of scripts or tools a host has available to keep less desirables from hosting on their servers. So the cheaters might well move to a now-respectable host, and ruin their reputation within the community. Or perhaps the host has every tool available to know these things, and can keep out cheaters.
And I know you guys/gals already have plenty to do. But you can't ban entire hosts often enough for it to be a major drag on your time. You'd just decide to institute the ban, would add it to the community list, and be done with it. No arguements, no why, just a "because I said so, here is the information, use it as you see fit" type of deal.
Just a thought or two from my not-awake-mind, and one that sympathises with both the owners, and the legit submitters.