Questionable Quality of Linked Articles

[hockeyrealist 28]

This is indeed a "first world problem", but I am getting tired of wasting time reading articles that are linked from the site's main page. They are consistently poorly written (grammar, spelling, phrasing) as well as often offer no real insight or valuable information at all. They use an interesting title to get attention and then rarely answer the question posed in the title and often just regurgitate the same sound bites and opinions as mainstream media (TSN, Sportsnet, etc). They are taking advantage of the loyalty, curiosity, and dedication of the numerous Habs fans around the globe.

With that said, I know the site itself does not publish these articles for the most part and is just providing links to potentially useful information for the public. This service is what originally brought me to habsworld.net as I liked the centralized access to information and it was easier to load and navigate than my previous preference hockey inside out. Now that I have been frequenting this site for a couple years I have found myself getting frustrated by the aforementioned problem with the quality of the links provided. Is there no way that the administrators can screen articles that are linked from the main page of the site to ensure a minimum level of quality control? The habsworld.net articles are consistently of good quality and provide content with substance, so the administrators and editors obviously are capable of spotting/providing good content. I know, I know, I am whining but I feel this is one of those cases of quantity not trumping quality.

Thanks for your patience of you made it through my ramble. Keep calm and Carey on, Go Habs Go!

[dlbalr 1179]

Thanks for the comments.

I'm the one that does 99% of the linking so I'm probably best qualified to speak on this. I try to link not only based on content but also certain sites and certain writers that our readers tend to prefer. I do this by monitoring the hit stats for each link that is posted. Admittedly, there are some lesser quality pieces that make their way up there but if they're drawing lots of clicks, I feel obligated to provide the links since the readers are choosing to open those sites' articles.

With regards to blogs - where many of the grammatical errors and lack of content occur - it's a harder situation. I have a handful of blogs bookmarked on the links screen that I feel meet some semblance of criteria, whether it be interesting content, logically written, not many mistakes, more than two or three paragraphs (which isn't enough to get a quality point across), etc. Unfortunately, not every blog post meets those standards. As a result, I'm forced to decide on whether to put it up despite those standards not being met or not. But, back to the prior paragraph, it's the blog pieces that tend to get the most clicks, hence a bit of a conundrum. Interestingly enough, I find myself posting fewer and fewer blogs as I'm trying to be more stringent on what gets posted as I too find the quality in general dropping to a degree.

I'll also note that I don't speak French so I have to guess a bit on those articles as to whether or not something is worth posting. This is where I try to go by writer and also by the length of a column.

I'll toss this out there for everyone - are there sites/blogs out there that I'm not linking to that I should be taking a closer look at? Are there others that have similar concerns as to what sites are being linked to and if so, are there particular ones that stand out?

[hockeyrealist 28]

I appreciate the informed response, thanks. I understand where you are coming from and I admit that I still click on links that I know will be a bit of a let down because I, like many others, am a sucker for info. One of the benefits of being a Habs fan is the relative wealth of information available compared to many teams. Cheers

[dlbalr 1179]

One thing that some may like on the new site is the setup for the links. Gone are the 'categories' that saw all blogs listed under 'blogs' and any site we didn't frequently link to listed with a Google logo. The logos are gone and beside each article title is the site/blog that it was linked from. So for those who try to read pieces from specific sites/blogs (or those who try to avoid pieces from certain sites/blogs), the new links setup should help you.