The Editor

‘Web resources’ is going to get modified, and most things in it will be recategorised.

It will gain the new label, “programming resources.”

We are getting to add a LOT of categories, including a woodworking category and a building&construction category.

In the meantime. here are a few things that will get your link rejected or deleted.

Excessive popups. We are focused on sites that offer, not sites that take. If your site does not have genuinely useful DIY info, doesn’t offer services that are useful to the DIY community, and/or doesn’t serve a purpose that empowers people to create something, we’re not going to surf past three pages of popups to get to it. We try not to editorialise or censor, but we do really try to offer sites that care about the user experience. This is our reason for being; we’re here to let you learn stuff and support each other, not to steer people to your ads or sell your stuff.
The real exception for content is hate speech and porn. We can deal with anarchy (we even created a section for anarchy blogs; while we may not be anarchists, we will respect your right to representation online. We do, however, get a real chuckle out of the ‘down with capitalism’ ethic blogs that are covered in capitalist ad banners) but we will not support links that are explicit in nature. (I don’t mean mild swearing. Gods, i’d be out of a fucking job.) All it takes is one banner ad with explicit graphics, so watch who you take money from on that. Know who’s sharing your web space. It’s important. Other than that, we don’t care what banner ads you run.
Sales sites. We don’t care about teaching people how to make a million dollars online. If you want to learn how, just google it; there are plenty of people trying to make their million by teaching you to post ads.

we also won’t help you sell your self-help videos, push your newsletter lists, or anything like that. (side note: I’m tempted to make a ‘newsletter’ category, to be honest. There are some interesting ones out there. I’ll have to police it pretty closely if we do. if having such a category seems useful to you, email me. If i don’t hear a convincing chorus asking for it, newsletter-only sites will continue to get weeded out.)

WE REALLY BELIEVE IN PROVIDING WORTHWHILE CONTENT.

WE REALLY BELIEVE IN THE DIY ETHIC AND COMMUNITY.

WE REALLY BELIEVE THAT PICKING UP A HAMMER, OR A GUITAR, OR A GLUE STICK, CAN HELP BUILD A BETTER WORLD.

To do this, we want to give you things that help, and let you have a great big wall to put your work on.

Keep doing it.

I see dead links.

They don’t know they’re dead.

Those don’t worry me so much. The ones that worry me are the live links, that don’t know what they are. Is it a blog? Is it an e-zine?

The rules are not hard and fast, but there are some pretty big differences. A mailing list is not a zine, it’s a mailing list. A yahoo! group isn’t a zine. It’s a group. A zine is a periodical, something that’s available in final format after you get done with it. It’s a magazine, available online. I’m always blown away by the creativity and unique nature of the genuine zines out there. I despair quietly as i travel through the list of dead links, the ones who don’t know that they’re dead, and find living links that don’t know what they are either.

With that in mind, we already have a section for blogs, and i can’t encourage people to use it enough. We are changing the format of my side to make it easier for me to reclassify items- as well as instituting a ‘random check’ system that will automatically queue up a certain number of links for me to check the classification of. It will also come up as a category (not yet, but soon, that’s Dave’s department) when you report a link, allowing you to flag a link for reclassification. You’ll have to tell me the discrepancy and why you see it there, but it will let you flag it as something other than a dead link. I’m asking you to please hold off on reporting misclassified links for a few days so that i can catch up and we can get the proper reporting system in place.

But… man, you folks are creative. Keep adding your links!

What it is, what it does.

We’re attempting to codify (further) the terms of service- what kind of links i’m to delete.

Yes, any legitimately broken links would fall under this heading. Keep reporting.

However, we have a pretty strict view of the DIY ethic here, and don’t want to become an advertising clearinghouse. Does this mean we don’t want you coming on to tell us about your new album on your underground label? Absolutely not! We love that! If we were to find out that your album label were an Atlantic offshoot hoping to hit the underground demographic with a gritty little website just for sales, though… that results in a nice letter from us offering to sell you advert space (and we delete your link.)

If you ever, ever, feel that it was deleted unfairly, contact us. We do evaluate these things on a case by case basis, and sometimes we are wrong. (We will discuss it with you. You must be the owner or the webmaster of the website.)

We like record labels. We like zines and underground publications. It’s hard to know where to draw the line, and for us, it’s always going to be fuzzy, but for the most part, it ought to be a homebrew. That means self-published stuff is great; if you’ve already been signed to Random House, you probably should be relying on them for their marketing. We’ll delete it. No ad brochures, no commercial press.

If you’re a band label that started as a DIY and is now making a profit, yes, that still counts as DIY, but after a certain threshhold you should contact us to talk about sponsored link options; you’re who we had in mind.

Things that are NOT allowed. This is a much easier, brighter line.

Violence, self-harm (we don’t mean song lyrics) and hate are going to get your links deleted. Every time. We mean it when we say we have a zero tolerance policy for harassment, hate speech, racism, sexism, the whole bleak spectrum of pain that people can inflict on each other. We don’t require that you be cheerful, happy people all of the time- but we are going to ruthlessly delete anything that actively hurts people, and we’d appreciate it if you’d report anything that falls into this category. We’ll be instituting changes in the reporting protocol to encompass a greater breadth of detail when telling us about a link. (Watch for this in the near future!)

No business opportunities, franchises, pyramid schemes, or catalogue stuff. There is a world of difference between Harley-Davidson bikes and a guy making chopper frames in his garage; that difference comes down to whether it’s considered a retail or wholesale item, most of the time. If you make one-of-a-kind gizmos that people need to make their gear, you’re who we’re here for. If you sell hammers that you got at the Hammer Store Down The Block, we will delete you (and possibly send you a ‘keep off our lawn,’ letter.) If you happened to find that the Hammer Store Down The Block has a huge DIY instruction site and ALSO sells hammers, yes, submit the link. We’ll evaluate it, and it may be something that proves very useful to us all.

Business advice is generally going to run up against the same screening process. Telling someone how to manage petty cash in a startup label is very different from offshoring advice; we’ll do our best to weed out everything that isn’t unique, relevant, and useful.

All this aside, i’ve spent a lot of time reviewing links today. I’m consistently blown away by just how unique, relevant, and useful some of your stuff really is out there. Keep it up, and we’ll keep connecting you.