No cross-posting and No hotlinking

[julien]

Hello,

I would like to precise the following points in order to preserve the integrity of this website:

1) Cross-posting similar messages is not allowed in this website (this includes posting the same message twice on this website or posting a message on this website which would be similar to another message on another website). Double-content is severely penalized by Google. If you intend on posting the same problem on different websites, please take the time to reformulate it.

2) For the same reason, please don't quote whole posts, but only selected relevant areas of the messages you are replying to.

3) Don't hotlink to other websites, this is illegal by US law. However, you can provide regular links if they are no spam.

Thank you all for your attention !!!

[Infinity]

What should we do with posts that contain images that are hotlinked? Should we just delete the images?

[julien]

No, it's fine for those already posted; as CRGreathouse noticed, nobody is going to sue for this. Especially when the hosting server is specialized in image hosting services. But I prefer hotlinking to be limited to these cases & not to smaller-scale personal servers. The cross-posting & quoting issue is a more important one, as whatever we post which contains too much double content is not indexed, and penalizes the website.
That is not a big deal, but I have noticed that lately some "forumers" almost systematically quote the whole messages before replying to them.

[CRGreathouse]

Google does recognize forums for what they are, and I've not heard of one getting penalized for quoted messages. But of course unnecessary quoting is annoying, so I'm with you on this one.

[julien]

You are not penalized for quoted messages, you are penalized for massive (in terms of proportions) double content in general. First, the pages containing double content are not indexed. And second, there is a decremental system which deprecates your website's PR as a whole (and can ban it completely) depending upon the level of double content it includes. Of course, we are dealing with small amounts here. But thats still a pity that some interesting threads do not get indexed because of this (actually I did run quite a few checks and this is actually the case of a few threads).
This is the same problem faced by articles writers who submit some of their papers to free online databases. Sometimes they end up getting their own original website banned because of this.

[Infinity]

Is there any way we can upload pictures directly from our hard drives? This is possible on some forums, and it tends to eliminate hot-linking.

[CogitoErgoCogitoSum]

Whats hotlinking?

Im confused about something. In another post about the earthquake in Taiwan, and cables being cut... I was under the impression that you are based in China or Taiwan. What does US law matter on a Taiwan-based website?

[cknapp]

Whats hotlinking?

Im confused about something. In another post about the earthquake in Taiwan, and cables being cut... I was under the impression that you are based in China or Taiwan. What does US law matter on a Taiwan-based website?

Julien is currently living in Taiwan, but as far as I know he is a US citizen, and this site is based in the US-- I believe he left around a year ago. (maybe earlier?)

Does that answer your question?

[julien]

Almost I am actually French but I have been living one year in New York and working for almost two years in China before coming back to France last year. The server is indeed based in the US, and on top of the legal argument, I believe that hotlinking and cross-posting are practices which tend to deteriorate the overall quality of boards (cross-posting is punished by Google, and hotlinking may yield empty links, which is not so great when people are running through the archives looking for some specific information) ...