I have apologised already for my comments. But can somebody speak English to me rather than jargon.
Was that directed at CBMatt?
That last post that I presume you posted from the other site makes sense to me. Of course it's not
perfect english, but it's understandable. There doesn't appear to be much jargon. Basically- the site is detected by the scanner because it refers to the histats host, because apparently there is a concern about their website. I thought you were using google analytics anyway.
CBMatt is right about the "acting out" bit. You seemed fine until that one guy rated your site red, and soon afterwards you started flinging the personal insults. That's why I said you should walk away- so you could cool down and respond with something sensible.You never actually fully explained why you had that clause, you just kept saying "because I can according to the law"; that's not really good enough, though. As I mentioned earlier, it generally entails the use of snail mail and "official" type documentation, not simply e-mailing a few things. That incurs costs; but for some reason you decided to insult their intelligence rather then provide that reasonable argument; also, I might be entirely wrong about that. best to research exactly what said law being invoked would entail.
regularly neglecting to include links to original source material
I'm pretty sure he resolved this with NASA as well as another foundations website; now his articles have the appropriate links, he literally has a contract with them, I think.
Of course, he seems to skim over such truths rather then actually try to articulate them to the people whose english is probably a second or third language, preferring instead to waste time with insults. I think the problem is he's taking the red rating personally. I find it rather ironic given that he asked them to rate the site as well as saying "all constructive criticism welcome".
Some points:
A:) it doesn't matter how long you worked on a site. Nobody cares. Fix the issues, or don't fix the issues, your choice. What are you expecting them to do, go "oh, you work hard, here, I'll change the rating despite the fact that the issues are still there and you haven't provided any explanation for their presence". No, that's crazy. You've been referring to your use of "ratemysite" in terms of an "advertising" thing; but that's not what it is. It's for rating your site; basically, the same way any number of visitors to your site would. The fact is, unlike those otherwise uncontactable visitors who might rate your site red (yellow would probably be more appropriate, but oh well) for the same issues, you can actually respond to them and fix said issues. For example, rather then repeating "it's the LAW why don't you get that OMFG!" type crap, you could link them to something that explains said law; when I said it
probably entails official documentation, I assumed you might actually either already know wether that's the case (and it needs to be snail-mailed) or wether there are other provisions. Additionally, you could provide a link to said act, because much of it deals with the privacy of the information gathered.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Act_1998Wikipedia is hardly a perfect source but that outlines a lot of their concerns with what they think might be done with said data, I suppose.
Also, this:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/29/section/7(1)Subject to the following provisions of this section and to [F1sections 8, 9 and 9A], an individual is entitled—
(a)to be informed by any data controller whether personal data of which that individual is the data subject are being processed by or on behalf of that data controller,
(b)if that is the case, to be given by the data controller a description of—
(i)the personal data of which that individual is the data subject,
(ii)the purposes for which they are being or are to be processed, and
(iii)the recipients or classes of recipients to whom they are or may be disclosed,
(c)to have communicated to him in an intelligible form—
(i)the information constituting any personal data of which that individual is the data subject, and
(ii)any information available to the data controller as to the source of those data, and
(d)where the processing by automatic means of personal data of which that individual is the data subject for the purpose of evaluating matters relating to him such as, for example, his performance at work, his creditworthiness, his reliability or his conduct, has constituted or is likely to constitute the sole basis for any decision significantly affecting him, to be informed by the data controller of the logic involved in that decision-taking.
(2)A data controller is not obliged to supply any information under subsection (1) unless he has received—
(a)a request in writing, and
(b)except in prescribed cases, such fee (not exceeding the prescribed maximum) as he may require.
Doesn't seem to restrict your communication of the information to a official document; it could easily be done through E-mail. Basically, the 10-pound charge is now rather superfluous, because it's not going to cost you 10 pounds to aggregate the information (there shouldn't be much, just what's in their forum profile, I would imagine) and toss it into an E-Mail. It might be a pain in the *censored*, but at the same time, it's highly unlikely that anybody will ever request it; *censored*, how many people do you think even read your privacy policy? Not a huge number, probably. Only reason the people on WOT are paying close attention to it, is, well, because you asked them too. Seems rather childish (as CBMatt put it) to respond with insults. The only thing on there that didn't make a whole lot of sense was the "stealing bandwidth that U.S taxpayers pay for". You're not taking content from NASA; in fact, it's just the first paragraph is copied on your site, followed by a link to the full article on NASA's site, as per the terms of use with NASA. Mulreay, if you are using images directly from NASA, you should download them and upload them to your site, and use them that way instead. I think that's what "hot-linking" means, I've always considered it leeching but meh.
For histats, I think there is some issue with the histats site and their use of data; remember that you are giving them all your statistics on visitors, including OS, browser, etc. and if there is a privacy issue with them, then you sending them all that data means that there is a privacy issue with your site, as well. Since you are already using Google analytics, you could probably disable that; I think it's in the cpanel somewhere.
basically, you asked them to tell you about privacy issues and WOT related problems with your site, and then they find some, and you respond with "well, I have worked on it for 5 hrs a day!" that's hardly a response!
This response is somewhat the opposite of my previous reply; this is because I looked up said law and there is no restriction to mailing "official" documents to people; therefore they can be e-mailed and therefore the cost incurred is practically nil, especially since it's unlikely anybody will request it. Do you have the right to charge that much under the law? Yes. Will it cost that much to get and send the information? No. That's what they take issue with, it seems.
