[thelist] An interesting encounter with thelist archive ...

[Rob Sylvan]

Greetings All,

I had an experience that I thought some of you might find interesting (or
amusing or perhaps even alarming). Awhile back I had sent out a request for
a site-check on a site that had been redone entirely using graphics for
everything (prior to the makeover I had been doing volunteer site
updating/maintenance). The feedback received from thelist was very helpful
and spot on (thanks to all). I passed this feedback on to the client (who
then forwarded it to the people who had developed the site).

A good discussion resulted about usability, maintenance, search engine
listing, etc., but the outcome was a bit disappointing (they are keeping the
graphics laden site and are going to add a text based version), but it's so
far out of my hands.

Anyway ... my FYI is this. I recently got word that the developers of the
site had been googling to check its ranking and came across the site-check
discussion on the evolt.org/archive.

[insert ominous music]

Suffice it to say that they were all bent out of shape because this
discussion was sometimes coming up (depending on the search terms used) as
the second link after the site itself!

None of the feedback was news to them, but they didn't like the idea of the
site critique following the actual site around in the search engines. Oh
well, what can you do?

So, I pass along this heads up, you never know when your old posts will come
back to haunt you.;-)

Cheers,
Rob