lunarsoft.net

[anonymous74100]

http://www.lunarsoft.net/

Affiliate links on the right side

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||lunarsoft.net/images/affiliates/*

lunarsoft.net###Mod44

[Michael]

Added (https://hg.adblockplus.org/easylist/rev/2004da2b14e4)

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||lunarsoft.net/images/affiliates/

lunarsoft.net###Mod44

[Tarun]

Added (https://hg.adblockplus.org/easylist/rev/2004da2b14e4)

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||lunarsoft.net/images/affiliates/

lunarsoft.net###Mod44

Hello,

I'm the webmaster of Lunarsoft and I would like to understand why this is being blocked suddenly. So, I have a few questions.

What is the purpose of blocking these? Also, why are they seen as advertisements? Why block links/image links to other sites that are being suggested as good sites to visit? Linking to affiliate/recommended/suggested sites certainly does not seem to be advertising in any way. Has recommending other websites suddenly turned into a form of advertising?

Related:

• Neowin has a section with text links that says Affiliates in the title towards the bottom right.
• MSFN has a Recommended Sites section towards the bottom right as well and none of those images or that block are blocked.
• OSNN has an Affiliates section too that isn't blocked.

Any reason that those are not blocked?

To me, advertising is displaying advertisements such as Google Ads, Adbrite, DoubleClick, etc. which allow people to earn money. But offering friendly links to other websites doesn't count as advertising. Advertisements are usually paid for by sponsors. Are webmasters no longer allowed to give a nod or recommendation to other websites?

From looking around, anonymous74100 came here and posted this from Fanboy's List forums to cause trouble instead of help out.

[Michael]

Our definition of adverts is currently quite vague; we intend to open a discussion about it shortly. My temporary definition has been that an advert is the promotion of a third party product. Personally, I do not require there to be a monetary transaction, merely an exchange of support, which evidently occurs in this case: both parties provide links to the other's site. The reason that the items on the other domains have not been blocked is because we were not aware of them.

However, due to the vagueness of our definition of advertisements I have removed the filters for your domain from EasyList and would propose the following course of action: I will open a topic on the definition of advertisements tomorrow and anyone is free to contribute ideas. After community discussion, I will post a blog article on our definition of "advert". If the images on your domain still match our criteria, we will then filter the items.

As an administrator I cannot reprimand anonymous74100 for opening this topic - he proposed filters for a website in accordance with our policy. Whether his selectiveness was appropriate is an ethical issue for him to consider...

[Tarun]

Michael, thank you very much for your reply.

I took some time to look into this as well and I felt that there is no clear definition as to what an advertisement can be. It's seems to be a widely used label for anything a user doesn't like to see. I did refer to the definition of advertising on Dictionary.Reference.com and found that for the most part almost every definition refers to an advertisement being paid, offering a reward or having something to do with money.

As a webmaster, I would love to see some sort of standard where there is a clear definition of what is advertising and what is not advertising. I'm very willing to work with people to help resolve such issues as I personally do not see how linking to other websites is advertising; especially when referring to the very definition of advertising being that there is money or profit gained. Seeing as there are no referral links in the links going to other websites (or basically there is no way to track clicks, etc like Google does with their Google ads) I would not see that as a reason to block said links. To me a referral link that renders profit would say Site A referred this user to Site B, pay/reward Site A with x amount of dollars/cents.

Don't get me wrong, I find Google ads and all sorts of advertisements annoying. But I honestly don't mind Affiliate/Recommended links. Simply saying on a website, "I recommend these sites" is more of a "Hey, check these out" than any type of advertising. I mean, if we block sites that say "Check this site out" it can hurt users as they may not learn of other websites that they could be interested in.

I hope I've made some sense, as this can definitely be confusing. I admit, I feel a bit confused with all of this.

[fanboy]

"affiliates" image links, can be listed as unnessary ad links (advertising for other sites), even if as minor as they are. I won't be white listing it, but if you change your directory names I won't actively block it either.

[Tarun]

fanboy, what would you recommend using as a directory for recommended/affiliated sites? /recommended or /friends perhaps?

I'd like to use something that will be acceptable with both Easylist and Fanboy's list.

[Michael]

I would recommend using a "friends" directory - no sane subscription should block this keyword generically. Alternatively, naming a directory "lunarsoftfriends" is more specific and would mean that only filter lists that block your lists of affiliates would be those that intend to.

[Michael]

The policy forum is open for business, along with the new topic "What is an advert?".