Re: Donation to W3C

[Content edited to remove identifying info from supporting contributor.  sjh]

Hello [...],

I understand your concerns. At this time, we do not have plans
to create a separate page for some W3C Supporters. It would be
very costly for W3C to:
 
 1) establish criteria for moving some links but not others,
 2) ensure that, on a daily basis, the linked sites did not change to
    include content that W3C finds objectionable, and
 3) ensure that all Supporters on a given page do not find the other
    sites linked from that page to be objectionable.

We can remove your organization's name and link from the Supporters page
if you so desire. Please let me know.

We are endeavoring to improve the Supporters program to avoid the
problems you cite. I believe it will be challenging to increase our
level of review, and to ensure over time that we are only linking to
reputable sites. I welcome your suggestions on how we might implement
such a plan.

Thank you,

 _ Ian

On Sat, 2006-09-30 at 21:20 -0400, <clasione@gmail.com> wrote:

> [Content edited to remove identifying info from supporting contributor.  sjh]
>
> Coralie Mercier,
>  
> Surely the W3C knows exactly what they were doing in this case. If
> not, why are they allowing donators to chose their anchor text? Why
> not have them listed properly by their company name as ours is
> "Searchen Networks Inc."?
>  
> We have no intention of manipulating search engines or pagerank, yet
> now we are stuck on this page with a ton of sold links to casinos and
> other non-sense links. Can you please have someone move our link off
> of that page and placed somewhere else?
>  
> Anywhere is better then that page. We did not expect our link to be
> near gambling and other low quality links. I am very surprised these
> types of links were even given the opportunity to be listed on a page
> of W3C. No wonder why the reputation of W3C is being questioned. It's
> not pagerank manipulation, it's the sites they decided to point ads
> to. Honestly, I don't even like our link listed near them.
>  
> Our company is not selling links and is a legitimate business and we
> did not expect to be listed with so many low quality advertiser type
> listings.... I would love to be a supporter long term sending money to
> W3C each and every year, but a trick like this doesn't get forgotten
> easily... W3C should attempt to rectify this to some point, at least
> for their true supporters. 
>  
> Sometimes when a decision isn't an easy one, you need to resort to
> what just plain feels right or wrong.... This just doesn't feel right.
>  
> It was clearly wrong to do something like this.
>  
> [...]
> 
>  
> On 9/30/06, Coralie Mercier <coralie@w3.org> wrote: 
>         On Sat, 30 Sep 2006 19:58:04 -0400, [...] <clasione@gmail.com> wrote:
>         
>	  >[...]
>         > Our company made a donation to the W3C in excess of $1,
>         000.00 US on
>         > 2006-07-11 and as a thank you we were listed on this page:
>         > http://www.w3.org/Consortium/sup
>         >
>         > I have now discovered that after many donations were
>         received W3C has 
>         > felt the need to add the
>         > "NOFOLLOW" tag to it's meta data causing a change to the
>         effect that our
>         > link will have on your site.
>         > I know for a fact that this tag was not on the page before
>         we donated as 
>         > it actually was a deciding factor of making the contribution
>         to begin
>         > with.
>         >
>         > I feel that this was a terrible decision to make, very
>         misleading to the
>         > public, and extremely disrespectful to supporters 
>         > of your cause. I am appalled that a company such as yours
>         would pull
>         > such a tactic and respectfully request some type of remedy.
>         >
>         > Frankly, I am shocked....
>         
>         Dear [...]
>         
>         We have instituted the meta element because W3C's reputation
>         was suffering 
>         due to links to sites that sell page rank. We do not wish to
>         be party to
>         that behavior and the nofollow approach ensures that we do not
>         inadvertently participate in that activity.
>         
>         We have not yet found scalable ways to provide links from the
>         Supporters 
>         home page that are not subject to pagerank manipulations.
>         
>         Best regards,
>         Coralie Mercier
>         
>         --
>         Coralie Mercier  Communications |
>         Administration  mailto:coralie@w3.org 
>                      World Wide Web Consortium - http://www.w3.org
>         MIT/CSAIL - 32 Vassar St. - Room 32-G528 - Cambridge, MA 02139
>         - USA
>         T:+33(0)872637890 F:
>         +33(0)492387822  http://www.w3.org/People/CMercier/
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
-- 
Ian Jacobs (ij@w3.org)   http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
Tel:                     +1 718 260-9447