Surf+ or eZula Tags?

[Hope]

When uncle bill was talking about using this wonderful technology, he was going to offer meta tags for webmasters to pervent these links.

I was wondering if either of these companies had considered providing us with these meta tags. I know that I would be much happier if we had them. That way I could add them to every page on my site and that would be the end of it. Granted we are dealing with some obvious spammers at Surf+, but I think eZula would have enough common sense to consider using them.

How would you all feel about such tags? Would they make you feel any better? Would you trust these companies to actually respect these tags?

Heidi

[MazY]

I think you are bang on, Hope.

At the very least, they should offer a choice. That would be a step in the right direction.

I am actually waiting to see how the MS gang play this one. On the one hand they can't really be seen to shout and ball about the concept as they themselves were and are planning exactly the same thing.

On the other hand, they have to do something or else these other companies get a stronger foothold on the very technology that I am guessing Microsoft are putting quite a lot of hope towards.

My guess is that their response will be along the lnes of "at least we were givng webmasters the choice."

Interesting times ahead methinks.

[Mel]

HI Hope:

While this is one potential solution to the problem, I for one do not like it as it seems to admit that this bunch of slimers (In my mind I think of the green links as Page Slime - If we could get that nickname stuck onto this technology it would also help) have the right to deface our pages unless we prohibit it.

This solution not only gives some legitimacy to the concept, but there will be literally millions of site owners without the knowledge or time to impement this, and thus all these individuals and sites become their unwitting victims. There would also be support from Big Bill in Redmond for this approach since that would tend to legitimize their own smart tags.

A solution along these lines that I would like to strive for is a meta tag which would ALLOW them to use page slime only if the meta tag is implmented, meaning that by default page slime is not allowed. If you do nothing it is not allowed.

[Hope]

I think that is a better idea.

[ihelpyou]

Yep. I'm with Mel also. This from of advertising will eventually be illegal. The suits that are coming will prove this. No site owner should have to deal with this sort of thing.

It truly will be interesting when Mr. Gates gets involved as he is sitting back and taking in all of this with great interest.

[Blue]

I'm right behind Mel & Doug!

[JuniorHarris]

Great thread!~ Great idea Hope and a wonderful suggestion by Mel!~

Yes, for God's sake give us an opt-in option, instead of forcing us to always provide [and code] work-arounds to opt-out!~ <Jeesh!~> Though the opt-out tags are a nice [feeble] notion, they could easily be ignored just as some robots will do referencing the robots.txt file.

But I say let's not give any ground, I want no stinking tags fouling up my code, and I want no stinking software legally available for all to knowingly/unknowingly, willingly/unwillingly alter ANY of my pages content!~ :mad:

[ihelpyou]

yea, the thing about a meta tag is that if this is allowed to go on, every different software co. out there doing this would have a separate tag. :barf+:

[Hope]

That is a scary thought Doug. Could you even imagine how big our tags would get? Our page sizes could triple.

[ihelpyou]

oh yea, a stop will have to happen. Period. Law would have to be passed to not allow any of this.