Thoughts on "outing / sharing" websites on BHW

[jamie3000]

We've had a few posts recently where BH websites have been shared.

https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/how-do-i-find-out-the-owner-of-these-sites.1249179/
And there was another one recently where someone shared a website with huge BH traffic and it was deindexed the day after.

There is (that I'm aware of) no clear policy on sharing black hat websites here.

Some people will share a site and get loads of thanks/likes others will get people saying its bad BH etiquette.

I love dissecting websites and seeing what makes them rank etc but at the same time, I understand a share here can mean that person's income drops significantly.

I'm not sure how this can be addressed but its a frequent source of friction so perhaps we should throw some ideas around?

How about only "outing" websites in the jrvip section? I feel like that might be a sensible compromise?

We might find there is no way of having any sort of official policy and that's why there isn't one.

I've added a poll too just to get an idea of how people feel about it.

Obviously, the mods will be the decision-makers as always (I feel sorry for you guys sometimes hehe) but I'm sure they'd be open to hearing suggestions at least, they're normally pretty approachable.

Thoughts?

 

[Deleted member 1313244]

It looks like the easiest way you can kneecap a competitors website. Not sure what you can do unless you screen every forum post?

 

[jamie3000]

It looks like the easiest way you can kneecap a competitors website. Not sure what you can do unless you screen every forum post?

I guess the mods would delete it if there was an official policy that it went against. It would be pretty easy to add a JS confirm button that looked for TLDs in the message body and just reminded people of whatever policy there might be as a one-off.

I don't feel massively strongly about it, either way, to be honest. I just see a lot of people arguing about it because it's unclear.

 

[thebotmaker]

I guess the mods would delete it if there was an official policy that it went against. It would be pretty easy to add a JS confirm button that looked for TLDs in the message body and just reminded people of whatever policy there might be as a one-off.

I don't feel massively strongly about it, either way, to be honest. I just see a lot of people arguing about it because it's unclear.

Your idea sounds good, maybe the TLD checker could be implemented with a whitelist for sites like Google and other sites.
As this is an issue, yes some sort of compromise is needed to make everyone happy. Whether only posting URLS is only permitted in the Junior VIP section, your idea, or moderator removal when appropriate.

 

[Toz]

Perhaps this is a bit of a reach, but...

According to the BHW rules:

3.4 Engaging in, either directly or indirectly, or encouraging others to engage in, click-throughs generated in any manner that could be reasonably interpreted as coercive, incentivized, misleading, malicious, or otherwise fraudulent.

By "encouraging others", there's no clear definition on who [or what] is defined as "others". By this account, I'd consider us all to be others, just as I'd consider employees of search engines, who happen to have BHW accounts, as others. I'll even consider AI robots as others.
By directly or indirectly encouraging these employees and search engine robots to "click-through" these publicly outed URLs for a person's malicious intent, they are, in fact, breaking the rules, in my opinion.

These posts are for no other reason than the intent to do harm to the owners of the websites being publicly shamed.

 

[Sweely]

I would never want this happening to me. So for that reason alone I'm against it even though I'm the one who helped him find the owner of the site in that thread.

 

[Mr Positive]

share a relevant post fine, but sharing site names not fine this should be made as a rule of BHW who is with me let’s petition this to the mods

 

[DunderMannen]

Well... the example post you showed right here is very bad BH etiquette. Should rather have screenshotted a piece of content on the site + stats, and everyone would understand. Would result in the exact same discussion.

Kind of sad when people are outing BH sites that has a high chance of being created by one of us...

 

[sendlerad]

I don't see any justifiable reason for sharing actual website addresses, maybe ppl are careless, but I would assume mostly they are trying to out the competition, or being jealous... The relevant post is fine, and anyone smart enough would figure out sources anyway, but if it's out there in open, jelly ppl or competition will report, etc.

Also, anyone who is outed like this should have an option to direct contact Mods, and request post removal, via website verification, by uploading like .txt file with mod specified hash.

I second petition @Mr Positive

Edit: Mods here an idea, and another monetization channel, have an option to pay for blacklisting verified domain names from a discussion, like I have seen before for prohibited discussion terms: ''Something something *******.com***

 

[NawtyBoy]

If someone wants to share a BH site, they can share their stats (images of their stats, ranked keywords, etc, etc) and sort of while not disclosing their domain name.

This way everyone can study and the owner is also not penalized.

 

[fb3003]

Edit: Mods here an idea, and another monetization channel, have an option to pay for blacklisting verified domain names from a discussion, like I have seen before for prohibited discussion terms: ''Something something *******.com***

a bit agasint that. i share a lot of reference links in my posts from other domains to highlight a key seo event or strategy or what john mueller has said. also folks like @Rachmaninoff will no longer be able to share sources that we can get backlinks from. you limit his postings, you will get a backlash from BHW community like there is no tomorrow. it is like ww3

 

[sendlerad]

a bit agasint that. i share a lot of reference links in my posts from other domains to highlight a key seo event or strategy or what john mueller has said. also folks like @Rachmaninoff will no longer be able to share sources that we can get backlinks from. you limit his postings, you will get a backlash from BHW community like there is no tomorrow. it is like ww3

I mean any BHW user with like 100+ posts, etc. some kind of qualifying limitation, or only Jr.VIP's, would be able to upload .txt hash file (Just like Search Console verification) on their domains - that verifies that they don't want to be exposed here, and have those domains masked***.com.
And MOD's to limit that should charge some $ per domain, because another way, every other domain will be uploaded, and then, yes, it would get messy.

As for backlink sources, they should not be affected, as the key here is to protect your BH money sites, PBNs, etc.