Mon Dec 24 00:03:20 PST 2018

59
Be Trustworthy
Webmasters, site users, directory editors, and search engines may look for things
like a privacy policy or a physical address as signs of quality. In Beyond Algorithms: A
Librarian's Guide to Finding Web Sites You Can Trust, Karen G. Schneider highlighted
many things she looked for in a trustworthy site, which included:
1. Availability
2. Credibility
3. Authorship
4. External Links
5. Legality
Why did I Make Search Engine Sites?
I am fascinated by search engines. I can build a site about search engines only
because I am extremely interested in them. Reflecting back upon my decisions, I
would probably be more successful today if I would have picked just a specific
engine (most likely Google
or a specific type and expanded from there.
My general rule of thumb is to search for what you want to promote, using your
favorite search engine. Click on the first listing. If it is not good enough, then you
should be there. If they know more than you, learn from them. If you devote
yourself to becoming a guru on a topic that you already love, there is no reason that
you cannot eventually be the first listing. You are only limited by your own
courage, creativity, and efforts.
You cannot learn too much about something that interests you. If someone
wanted to make a network of local sites, I would tell them to research Craigslist.
You need to know what worked and where your topic has been to be able to do
well with it going forward.
Tragedy of the Commons & Being Worthy of a
Subscription
The Tragedy of the Commons is a story based upon farmers sharing a plot of land, with
each owning a few too many cows. As the land exceeds its usable capacity, each
farmer fights back by adding a few more cows. Eventually the land is destroyed.
Nothing of value can be universally accessible and free. Since it
costs virtually nothing to create information (or have a machine generate code for
you
, a lot is lost on the web if we trust everything we read.
As more and more information is created, more and more unoriginal information
is duplicated. It gets to the point where sorting through the mess becomes more