katieO may not be losing sleep over these suggestions, but Graham Young, and all who find OLO useful for ventilating subjects or expressing views that are seemingly censored out by the mainstream media, should be. I think I get it now, but just for clarity, I'll summarize the situation as I understand it:

1. It is asserted that possible improvement in the search ranking in search engines of sites linked to from posts on OLO (third party sites) somehow constitutes a problem for OLO users.

2. It is suggested that URLs in posts should NOT be automatically converted to weblinks by the OLO software.

3. It is suggested that all who wish to post links on OLO in expansion of post content should be required to link to content via a blog or homepage at a domain name registered to that poster, at an estimated cost of around $20 per year.

Forget about the financial aspect of the suggestion for the moment.

The immediate consequence of the second of katieO's two suggestions is that the security that OLO provides with respect to the privacy of the real identities of members of the Forum, by means of userIDs, encryption keys, and password access, will be breached. Is that the intended objective of what is presented as a seemingly innocuous suggestion?

Some OLO users post links to important authoritative sites, and use those sites to back up what might otherwise just be mere opinion expressed in their post. Sometimes the revelation of this authoritative information in conjunction with some topical matter is highly indicative of that poster possessing what might be considered 'inside information' in regard to the matter. Human nature being what it is, notwithstanding that the post may be in the public interest, witch-hunts and 'payback' can be on the cards if a userID alias is tied to a real name.

An e-Journal of social and political debate being forced (or tricked) into revealing its sources? Lionel Hogg snr would be spinning in his grave at the thought of it!

OLO must be landing some punches!

I suspect the main point was to make people aware that if they link to a site in order to criticise it, they also raise it's page rank. In my opinion OLO suffers far less from this than any other forum I use. There are plenty of hoax sites that prey upon people's gullibility in order to get them to promote it. Most of the ones I've seen work are to do with child porn, which people avoid investigating properly for obvious reasons, or to do with animal cruelty, which seems get the attention of a lot of very gullible and foolish people.

freediver,

I admit to exercising a bit of license in referring to a code of conduct that may not formally exist. I was jumping the gun. What I am really suggesting is that there perhaps SHOULD be a code of conduct applicable to this newly envisioned prospective situation that adoption of katieO's proposal would foreseeably entail.

Let's be clear. I do not suggest for one second that there is anything even remotely unreasonable about giving a URL but not a link in a post. What I am suggesting is that if this automatic conversion feature of the OLO site is deliberately circumvented by a poster (or is made only selectively available to users with registered domain names as proposed), AND A POSTER SUBSEQUENTLY CLAIMS TO HAVE POSTED THAT URL AS A LINK as being supportive or amplificatory of subsequent debate, THEN there should be a penalty of some sort against that poster.

I am not suggesting that there is or should be any requirement for a poster to be 'reasonable'. We all know many are not, and indeed, 'reasonability' is a subjective thing anyway. What I am suggesting, as a counter to what may now be able to be seen as an attempt at muzzling individual OLO posters, or even OLO itself, is that an objective measure of credibility and integrity in debate is created in the instant when a poster attempts to claim support for their argument exists in what they claim to be a link but which is in fact a URL that can not be clicked by other users or guests.

Maybe taking down such prospective offending post(s) might be too disruptive to the Forum. Perhaps other penalties, like imposition of posting right restrictions, for example, may be more appropriate.

To answer your question as to whether penalising a poster in these envisaged circumstances is going a bit far, my answer is no. These proposals look like a covert attempt at censorship of the Forum. And they have been introduced as a remedy to a problem that does not really exist for OLO members.

"THEN there should be a penalty of some sort against that poster

By penalty, do you mean erosion of their credibility, or censorship?

If it makes you happy, I will try to make sure all my links to OzPolitic are active.

"Perhaps other penalties, like imposition of posting right restrictions, for example, may be more appropriate.

You mean beyond the absurdly restrictive ones in place already? It is still a form of censorship over what is a petty technical matter. Who cares if someone claims to have posted a link when they posted an inactive URL? Do you not know how to copy and paste it into your URL bar?

"To answer your question as to whether penalising a poster in these envisaged circumstances is going a bit far, my answer is no. These proposals look like a covert attempt at censorship of the Forum.

Now I'm confused. Your proposed 'response' is some kind of censorship. The link vs URL thing is not censorship in any way.

freediver,

If you view erosion of a poster's credibility as a penalty, then it would be a self-imposed one, and nothing at all to do with a Forum administered penalty such as I have proposed apply in the event a text URL is misrepresented as being a link in any subsequent debate.

Neither do I propose censorship of any poster. Should any penalty such as has been suggested apply, it will do so only because the poster's own action in misrepresenting ordinary text as a clickable link has invoked it. Refrain from such foreseeable misrepresentation and the entire content of the post, no matter how arguably unreasonable, would stand.

"The link vs URL thing is not censorship in any way". Indeed, not of itself it isn't. However the combination of the proposed (and unnecessary) reduced functionality of the OLO site, together with a requirement that would create the ability to reveal the real identity of a poster in regaining that convenient functionality, would amount to effective censorship of some posters. Posters concerned to preserve their anonimity, and to enhance their credibility through the skilful use of links, could be intimidated in expressing a view.

As an OLO user, I have absolutely no objection to your own website (or anyone else's) gaining in search ranking because you have inserted a link to it in an OLO post, nor to its gaining still further in ranking because I or others click on your link. It is not a problem to me or any other user in the slightest. We will click if, and only if, interested. Indeed it is a form of back-handed compliment or recognition of OLO that its popularity is such as to have helped advance your own site's ranking so much. Should your site seem irrelevant to the content of your OLO post, or appear to be shameless self promotion, then it will only have been you who caused your credibility among OLO users in this circumstance to be eroded.

I hope this removes confusion.

BTW, I find your site quite interesting.

Forrest,

I just wanted to raise awareness in the OLO community that every URL posted is indiscriminiately endorsing sites. I’m not suggesting any action is needed on a policy level, just that OLOers might want to review their own habits. Transparency is a good thing, right?

I started thinking on this after clicking through to a site and finding porn (obviously, I was expecting something else). Complaining would be prudish: the poster hadn’t checked the content properly, and I don't want to encourage more of the same.

I have had such unfortunate random clicks in the past eg. for a school project on Sinn Fein, my son clicked into a “women of the IRA” site to find women who sent nude pictures to prisoners. Top of the list – by accident or design – but there it was for my 9 year old son to enjoy, all in the name of research too.

I like freediver’s solution. Self-referencing can potentially drive traffic through to a site, but at least you are not promoting someone else’s site involuntarily. And I liked the site too –

http://www.ozpolitic.com/index.html

oops, there it is again.

All these click-throughs are being stored in a little file at google (or hotbot, or whateverbot) to build a profile on the users tastes and interests. One day, search results will be tailor-made for the individual based on data collected from all previous searches. Apart from privacy issues, I would like to access content on OLO without giving a big thumbs up to an offsite link each time. And can you imagine what my "profile" would look like? Porn head, conservative Christian...

Thanks for the discussion, I hadn’t considered all the related issues: censorship, control, preserving anonymity, current OLO policy etc. I’m still trying to absorb all of that. Apologies for lack of response, I've been using up my max. 10 posts on other threads.