David
Moderator
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2003
- Messages
- 912
- Reason
- Other
- Diagnosis
- 00/0000
- Country
- CA
- State
- ON
- City
- Cobourg
Hello everyone,
I recently removed many links to many sites across the site. A few people were surprised and/or upset and touched base to inquire why I would do such a thing.
I hope the following helps shed some light on my actions:
We often remove links that are blatant advertising; other times, links are removed for a variety of reasons, each time sites are reviewed, specifically if they are not authoratative in nature. Authoratitive sites are government sites, non profit organizations and similar, educational institutions, and large multi-user moderated sites such as Wikipedia.
I recently removed links to a lithium trial site based on the following reasoning:
The site could not be quickly verified and has yet to be validated.
Furthermore, the purpose of the links on our site was to send members (and annonymous visitors) to the advertised site so that visitors would "sign up". Visitors (from our site) would be providing their personal information to join a study that is not run by any reputable government organizations or registered non profits; making it very difficult to qualify as legitimate.
In lieu of the above, we cannot be certain that registrants of the site and their personal information would be protected, and that their information would not be shared with other individuals, organizations or email spammers.
If we can't verify the ownership of the website and the intentions of the site owners the site is not welcome to be advertised here on ALSFORUMS.
To reaffirm, outbound links are left on ALSFORUMS at the discretion of moderators and should be limited to authoratitive sites only.
It's a hardline we have to take, but we take this line to protect all our members and the annonymous visitors to our site. As you can imagine, it's a lot of work to manage tens of thousands of pages of content and we must do so quickly, efficiently and regularly.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, thank you for your understanding, and most of all, thank you for your participation here at ALSFORUMS.
Regards, David.
I recently removed many links to many sites across the site. A few people were surprised and/or upset and touched base to inquire why I would do such a thing.
I hope the following helps shed some light on my actions:
We often remove links that are blatant advertising; other times, links are removed for a variety of reasons, each time sites are reviewed, specifically if they are not authoratative in nature. Authoratitive sites are government sites, non profit organizations and similar, educational institutions, and large multi-user moderated sites such as Wikipedia.
I recently removed links to a lithium trial site based on the following reasoning:
The site could not be quickly verified and has yet to be validated.
Furthermore, the purpose of the links on our site was to send members (and annonymous visitors) to the advertised site so that visitors would "sign up". Visitors (from our site) would be providing their personal information to join a study that is not run by any reputable government organizations or registered non profits; making it very difficult to qualify as legitimate.
In lieu of the above, we cannot be certain that registrants of the site and their personal information would be protected, and that their information would not be shared with other individuals, organizations or email spammers.
If we can't verify the ownership of the website and the intentions of the site owners the site is not welcome to be advertised here on ALSFORUMS.
To reaffirm, outbound links are left on ALSFORUMS at the discretion of moderators and should be limited to authoratitive sites only.
It's a hardline we have to take, but we take this line to protect all our members and the annonymous visitors to our site. As you can imagine, it's a lot of work to manage tens of thousands of pages of content and we must do so quickly, efficiently and regularly.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, thank you for your understanding, and most of all, thank you for your participation here at ALSFORUMS.
Regards, David.
