Monday 20 October 2014

Reviewing Sites you Hate

I don't (yet, at least) review other websites, but I could conceivably want to comment on something I was criticizing. I'd probably want to link to it so readers could read it, if they wanted to check out whether my comments were accurate or off-base. In fact that's probably basic responsible reviewing -- a special case of responsible journalism, and something that is routine in academic writing.

The trouble is, that would increase the site's view count, which for some sites generates revenue. It would also increase their ranking in search engines. I wouldn't want to do that if I disliked the site enough.

I just discovered one solution for the problem: donotlink.com. You paste a URL into a box and it gives you another URL to use in place of the original -- one that avoids generating another page view. At first I suspected it used cacheing, but they are cleverer than that. So, if you ever want to link to something questionable (presumably because you're dissing it), check it out.