A Thousand Hall Monitors
Now anyone can provide feedback on our network
Like a cross librarian “shushing” noisy students in the book stacks, YahooSarah last week showed how good publishers have gone bad by folding, spindling and even ignoring our Terms and Conditions and our Guidelines, as well as our ad code. But as some of you have pointed out, a few, very “naughty little publishers” continue to ignore the rules and go right on abusing their privileges. Until now, many of you conscientious teacher’s pets who might have wanted to report abuse, have not been able to for lack of an appropriate channel.
Report abuses
Today, we’re pleased to announce that the blog will now feature a permanent link to our feedback email box that anyone can use, located under “Network Feedback” in the right-hand column. If you, our network’s volunteer hall monitors, catch someone placing images next to ads, splattering ads willy-nilly all over their pages, nicking other sites’ content, or running with scissors, let us know and they’ll be sent to the Virtual Principal’s Office.
We won’t be able to respond to all feedback that we receive but, rest assured, we will be monitoring all submissions and, perhaps, doing show and tell later on.
Email feedback to ypn-feedback(at)cc.yahoo-inc.com or click on the mailto link at right, under “Network Feedback.” Remember, if you’re already in our beta program, you can continue to submit feedback directly.
—Michael Mattis, Blog Vice Principal
| Post Comment | categories:: Announcements
July 31st, 2006 at 7:03 pm
About time
Expect an email from me shortly.
July 31st, 2006 at 8:12 pm
I sent an email with 20 idiots’ sites, can’t wait to see some results *finally*.
August 1st, 2006 at 6:15 am
[…] Yahoo is making it easier for its publisher network to “turn in” those not abiding by the rules. Now that’s a way to build community - threats. I can sort of see this playing out… “Mr. Vice Principal, that viagra-cialis site stole arbitraged traffic from that download-ringtone site. I just thought you’d like to know.” Nothing like a truly open environment for communicating. IMHO, something similar should be made available (if it’s not already - maybe in Q4) to advertisers - those that are footing the bill for all the fun that is this perpetual beta. […]
August 1st, 2006 at 8:00 am
At least you’re into the spirit of the thing, Pete.
-M2, blogman
August 1st, 2006 at 9:55 am
Pete has one of those generic article directories you can pick up on ebay or piles of sites for $20 - $200, and plenty of other people do the same.
For instance, this article on learning to use business directories. We head over to Yahoo and throw in the first sentence in quotes and get 102 sites that also have that article.
Since there’s usually little or no unique content traffic is unlikely to arrive naturally so there’s nobody to click on the ads which are the whole point of the exercise.
It’s kind of a “reverse scam”, you buy the script thinking you’ll make $x - $xx a day from your funky new “made for ads” site, but the only one that makes any money is the person you paid for the content.
It’s just a shame he’s using AdSense and not YPN, otherwise I could report him for duplicate content mentioned in the rules :(.
August 1st, 2006 at 2:50 pm
Does this mean there’ll be more spaces available in the beta?
August 2nd, 2006 at 5:32 am
You’re so right, ben_. I mean it’s practically impossible that any visitor could get value from the content of the article you mentioned (even though there were a few good references - business.com for one, bigbook.com for another) as it probably is duplicated somewhere else - maybe even on Yahoo! Groups. And it certainly goes without saying that a visitor would not find any value in the advertising presented. I mean, who clicks on contextual ads anyway? Everybody knows that it’s not the interest a website visitor shows in what’s being offered through the ad but the search engine the visitor came from that matters to CPC advertisers. Give me a freakin’ break. Just because a site or its content offends a publishers subjective sensibilities doesn’t mean that an advertiser isn’t going to want to pay for a quality visitor - something which an advertiser (and not a publisher) is only qualified to determine. Mr. Vice Principal, that’s why turning publishers on publishers is a bad idea.
August 2nd, 2006 at 7:32 am
We understand your concerns, Pete, and thanks for writing. “Turning publishers on publishers” is not our intention. We won’t tolerate “witch hunts” and other such antics within our network. Our intention is to facilitate greater communication between the publishing community — in and out of the beta program — and Yahoo! Publisher Network. We published the feedback link in response to public demand. The tone of the blog post announcing the link was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, designed to bring a little levity to the subject.
- M2, blog editor
September 4th, 2006 at 10:31 pm
[…] Read straight from the source, A Thousand Hall Monitors. Now that they have an email, its up to us to make our voice heard. Think it will work? […]