http://web.archive.org/web/20040410102442/http://www.westvillage.nl/how_to_put/condom.html

It’ll be a little slow because it’s using the Web Archive database; which is fantastic for finding those lost “dead” websites!

After all if I like the ideas expressed maybe I’ll find some opinions on other things I never thought about that are interesting as well. (such as shave all pubes when casting a mold of your privates in plaster, thank you Bacchus)

A web site sits waiting to be discovered and although you might consider a blog to be in exactly the same position there is that fear that your writing daily entries and what could be some of your best work is archived away before it is discovered. Who really reads blog entries more than a month old?

I have been slowly cutting back on my reciprocals, its a catch 22 you want to delete them as they were a bad idea at the birth of your blog but then you did approach the other site owner asking them for a link in the first instance.

Tina

Thanks for taking this the right way, it could have gone different.

I just realized there’s one more piece to this. If someone writes and asks for a link removal, no matter how polite their request, it’s going to be experienced as an aggressive condemnation. I’ve gotten these requests — “Remove my link at once, I don’t want to be associated with your stinky porn, the story on my site was educational and not intended to be erotic you sicko!” — and it really is an “I despise everything you stand for, I don’t want any of your stinkiness to get anywhere near me” gesture. Nobody — not even would-be pedophiles — reacts well to that sort of attack.

I thoroughly related to the crazy cat lady analogy because that’s ME. So that helped alot.

I agree that link association should be entirely one way but it’s not. I’ve been asked “do you know you are linked at ’such and such’ site?? Do you KNOW what they talk about there!!?” As if I’m supposed to have some explanation for the content and why I’m in it. The only content I can control is mine.

But I cannot stave off the stupidity of others by responding with equal stupidity. Two stupids don’t make a smart. So thank you for pointing that out to me.

“I’d no more pull a link at the source’s request than I’d pull a book I wrote from publication at a reader’s request”

That puts it into perspective for me.

Obviously I need to explain that.

As I said in the FAQ, the act of putting something up on the internet is an open-ended invitation to the entire universe to link to whatever you put up. Linking to things is what the internet — or rather, the World Wide Web — is for. In most cases, putting something up is an eager solicitation for linkage.

So, for you to put up a web resource and then to ask someone — anyone — to take down a link they put up, is going to strike netheads as bizare, crazy, irrational behavior. You ever see a crazy cat lady come running out of her apartment and scream at the garbagemen for stealing the dirty cat litter that she, herself, put in the dumpster six hours previously? I’m picking a deliberately extreme example for a reason. To someone who is, like me, a passionate fan of the internet because of the organic way it organizes the world’s data, link removal requests trigger exactly that intense “What the hell?” reaction the garbage men are going to feel toward the cat lady. And the next reaction is “Fuck no! Putting up links is what I do.” I’d no more pull a link at the source’s request than I’d pull a book I wrote from publication at a reader’s request. It’s not a reasonable request, it’s destructive to whatever I’ve been working on, and I’m going to ignore it (at best) or be rude (on a bad day).

I am, obviously, an absolutist.

However, note this has nothing to do with “freedom” — although that’s out there. It’s not that I refuse to honor delink requests because I can get away with it — though I can — it’s because there’s something fundamentally wrong with the request itself. It’s not about “freedom” to do something rude or tasteless, it’s about the lack of any need to cater to somebody who doesn’t even understand that they are asking me to commit a minor act of destruction.

So no, in my ethics there’s nothing rude or tasteless about refusing delinking requests. And, indeed, honoring them comes perilously close to the “blog vandalism” I’ve ranted against previously. Accomodating delinking requests is, in my view, active badness, albeit quite minor.

That said, I do from time to time get incoming links I wish weren’t there. I had a link for awhile from a quasi-Gorean who liked to talk about how slave training was much easier if you started training your slavegirls when they were thirteen or so, ugh. But I didn’t ask for the link to be removed, for the reasons above and because a link from him doesn’t associate my views with his. Link association is *entirely* one way, there’s no contaminating backflow. We have neither the right, nor the duty, nor indeed any reason, to attempt to police incoming links.

Whew! Enough answer for you?

I used to be of the mind that if someone linked to me, out of some warped politeness, I should link back. Then it occured to me that my link list is a reflection of my interests and, as an extension of that, my approval. So I became a bit more selective on links.

Now I find my link on sites that I don’t like, don’t approve of, and want in no way to be associated with, yet the site owners claim internet “freedom” and refuse to take it down.

I guess I can’t argue with internet “freedom”. Links are free and I certainly can’t tell someone else what do with their own site, but this has to be some form of bad taste at least. I’m not making a big stink about it. I asked if they would remove it, they refused and I left it alone.

So curious, since you posted your link policy, what your opinion was on that.

Thanks. :)

These days I send a reply that I’ll look over their site and consider them. If they don’t fit with me I don’t put them on the link list and I don’t feel guilty about it.

Looking at stats is so entertaining for me. I love seeing what countries readers are from or what search terms brought them to my site.