<html><body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div>I say a little of both works great, in my experience. Link if they link to you but only if the link adds value to your users. Further, Id bet anybody we ask for a link will give it to us, so the link back thing really shouldn't be an issue. Still, I wouldn't be stingy, a good resource might be in your link directory, regardless of linkbacks</div><div><br></div><div>And don't believe what you read, search engines absolutely do reward this behavior, though theyd like you to believe otherwise.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.289062); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.222656); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.222656); font-family: Arial; "></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.285156); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.21875); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.21875);"><br></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.289062); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.222656); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.222656); font-family: Arial; ">In my experience, adwords is for websites devoid of useful content. We should never need adwords.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.285156); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.21875); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.21875);"><br></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.289062); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.222656); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.222656); font-family: Arial; ">The biggest win on link exchange is to get our interactive banner all over the place, making web ratings really accessible and ubiquitous. Maybe I should make a mockup to explain this better. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.285156); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.21875); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.21875);"><br></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.28125); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.214844); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.214844);">Now about the curator role, w<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 17px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.289062); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.222656); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.222656); ">ho will be the curator? I thought we had no curator... I sure don't want that job ;) if we are to use Sashas idea of crowd sourcing, we need to get past the idea of a single moderator. How does that work on a wiki?</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.285156); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.21875); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.21875);"><br></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.28125); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.214844); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.214844);"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 17px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.289062); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.222656); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.222656); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.289062); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.222656); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.222656); ">Sent from my iPhone</span></span></span></div><div><br>On Jun 24, 2010, at 1:22 PM, Tom Clegg <<a href="mailto:tom@tomclegg.net">tom@tomclegg.net</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><div></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><blockquote type="cite"><span>Are you familiar with the webhosting "link exchange" strategy?</span><br></blockquote><span></span><br><span>IMO our decision to advertise/link to x, y, z should be completely</span><br><span>independent of whether they [intend to] link to us. Much better to</span><br><span>select them based on how useful they are to our users.</span><br><span>Philosophically, but also because I assume search engines do their</span><br><span>best to distinguish "link exchange" links from "honest reference"</span><br><span>links. If we need some more publicity, I'd be more inclined to use</span><br><span>adwords.</span><br><span></span><br><span>In any case, based on Trait-o-matic's search index performance, I</span><br><span>predict GET-Evidence will do extremely well on Google et al. based on</span><br><span>content alone.</span><br><span></span><br><span>I do like the ideas about providing incentives for "all-star</span><br><span>contributors" and "all-star referrals".</span><br><span></span><br><span>More ideas for collecting info to rate editors (with basically random # values):</span><br><span></span><br><span>* curator accepts edit: editor gets +1 (basically "non-spam edit")</span><br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div><span>* user endorses edit: editor gets +10 (e.g. curator hits "non-trivial</span><br><span>edit" when accepting?)</span><br><span>* user endorses page: each editor gets +5</span><br><span>* user endorses editor: editor gets +50</span><br><span>* max +score for a single article: 50</span><br><span></span><br><span>AFAIK the reason robots.txt is still there is that we don't yet have</span><br><span>"curator" functionality (i.e. newcomers shouldn't be able to post</span><br><span>publicly-viewable spam). So, we should focus on doing that in such a</span><br><span>way that editors accumulate points as the edits are accepted. Then</span><br><span>add other ways of accumulating points.</span><br><span></span><br><span>I think it would also be helpful if editors (who have had edits</span><br><span>accepted) can provide some basic info like affiliation or an "about</span><br><span>me" page, so users can get a better idea of whose stuff they're</span><br><span>reading/editing.</span><br><span></span><br><span>(Ideally all openids would *be* "about me" links, like Madeleine's...</span><br><span>but afaik there is no way to achieve that with Google, for example.)</span><br><span></span><br><span>Tom</span><br></div></blockquote></body></html>