From: "Ariel Poler" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 12:35:22 -0700
A couple of people have suggested that we should not include any list
information in our directory unless the list owner proactively contacts us
and tells us to do so. I wanted to highlight that we are not building our
directory from scratch, but by consolidating information from well known
public directories.
I think you're caught between a rock and a hard place. I would venture to
guess (based on talking to Stephanie and my own experiences) that more
listowners wish to be placed in public directories without having to apply
to all of them than listowners who want say over each and every one. I am
in the first category but believe directories should bend over backwards to
accomadate those in the latter category.
Several list owners from whom we originally got feedback
suggested that we should not contact list owners at all, since their lists
were already in these public directories. However, we found out that many
owners were not aware of the fact that their lists were in these
directories, and we felt it was important for them to know it (plus, we
wanted to make it very easy for list owners to modify or delete their
information).
I agree that IF you are going to include lists without asking the
listowners first that you should send each of the listowners mail telling
them about it. You get more nasty letters this way for sure but it is far
better than listing everyone and not telling them.
I see two other alternatives, only the first of which has been discussed.
1) Start your directory from scratch and get your listings from advertising
your existance (here is a good place). I understand the objections to that
one, but I also understand the position of those who consider this the only
way.
2) Put everyone in the directory but make it so no listing is accessable by
anyone other than your staff unless you get the go ahead from the listowner
(send each listowner an email saying how to check their listing (passworded
maybe?...or include it in the email) and change it. No response means the
listing is not available as part of the directory. Disadvantages include a
lot more time, energy, and money to implement and fewer listings overall.
OTOH, there would be a pretty high coorelation between email to listowners
that bounces and lists that no longer exist or have moved.
I'm not saying this last one is the best choice, but perhaps it placates
the most people.
Most people agree
(I believe) that services like Yahoo!, Lycos and HotBot have made the Web a
much better place. Yet those services would not exist if they had only
included web sites whose owners proactively contacted them with instructions
to be included in their directories. These services don't even give web site
owners any notification that they have been included in their directories,
or much control over their information.
This is not quite correct. Yahoo is a directory type service. Each
listing is added by Yahoo staff in response to requests from the site owner
(or someone else) to add the site. In fact, it's very hard to even get
listed these days.
Lycos and HotBot are search engines. They do not find mailing lists and
add them to a directory. They list websites only (if they have a separate
directory type listing I don't know about it...and it would be opt-in).
This is very different from listing mailing lists. It can be a pain if you
have some pages you want to keep out of the search engines, but webpages
are understood to be public while mailing lists are not. Btw, you can
keep pages out of search engines by having a domain name, forwarding all
calls for pages using the actual address to the virtual address, and using
a robots.txt file to keep search engines away from certain directories. It
may also be possible via META tags.
We realize that email lists are quite different from web sites (that is why
we are building a service dedicated to lists). Because of this, and of our
respect towards list owners and strong believe in their ownership of their
lists' information, we decided it was important to contact list owners and
give them control over their lists' information - even thought our directory
has been built by consolidating previously existing public directories.
The only reason I agree with you here is that your information was obtained
ethically from upstanding existing directories. Not all lists of lists do
that and it's little wonder many listowners are pissed off enough to want
nothing to do with anything that reeks of opt-out.
At the very least I suggest you add staff people to the job of looking at
listowner requests for changes or removals and make sure no more requests
slip through the cracks. Turnaround time should be a day or two. You may
have the best intentions in the world but every single slip-up is one more
chink out of your reputation.
Thank you for joining the discussion.
Cyndi (whose main list is in Topica)
--
_______________________________________________________________________________
"There's nothing wrong with me. Maybe there's Cyndi Norman
something wrong with the universe." (ST:TNG) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.consultclarity.com/
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