no licenses for websites containing "any" adult content ?

Originally Posted by Bad Bunny

Katrina. First of all, a private message is intended to be private. Second of all, your message is a little different than the one I have in my email. Yeah, I get the first draft sent to my email by default since I posted in this thread.

You said early you wouldn't attack Juan in the thread, yet I have a hard time believing you right now. MoralSEO. hmmm

Whatever Juan's decisions are based on, he gave you his final decision. The way you are going after him and beating this dead horse is a little unbecoming. Use a different SEO product for your adult website. I don't feel Juan has to clarify anything more than he has, and I have no idea why he would. I really hope you asked if you could publicly display the private message he sent you. That is just bad form. Even if he had, I would make it clear that permission had been granted to make the message public.

You need to calm down with your criticism. There is nothing that "private" in the private message posted above. Juan said he was going to post a follow-up or decision. I know that he is busy. So I posted the extended explanation that he was kind enough to go into, in this thread. It make perfect, logical sense to me. It seems to explain his position "in general", not only relating to my forums. So I posted the message. If anything, I'm sharing my private situation by posting that. Juan has already made his opinion known, I believe.

And I am not going after him. There never was an answer on the branding-free option.

And obviously I didn't think that my first draft sounded professional or courteous, so I changed it. What is your point? Is it even really worth mentioning?

If this is really how it is going to be around here. I will be rude about this. Up until now, I feel that I have been more than civil. I thought this was going to be an ongoing dialogue, but I guess not. At this point, if given the choice, I WOULD NOT USE vbseo. And I am going to advise all others that I speak with to do the same.

*take a deep breath*

Jelsoft has a very reasonable approach to the way that they distribute their software. Simply put, they don't feel obligated to approve or disapprove of their licensees' website content. They also offer a branding-free option, which can be beneficial in many instances.

What is so striking to me, is that Crawlability (the creators of "vBseo") do pick and choose who can use their software. They do not offer a branding-free option either.

So, this product "vBseo" is really not at all in the spirit of "vB" (vbulletin - that is). It is not even available for use by all vbulletin license holders. It just seems strange that they would use the prefix "vB" for this product, yet disallow many vbulletin licensees from using it AND not even offer a branding-free option to solve this quagmire.

In my opinion, this product should not be named "vBseo" at all, it should be named "moralVBseo". Somebody needs to create an "immoralVBseo" because there are many adult sites out there who are very interested in vbulletin optimization.

I hope that Jelsoft will do one of two following things in the future:
- create a (paid) optimization add-on package for vbulletin, similar to "vBseo".
- simply integrate many of these optimization techniques into vbulletin itself.

Search engine optimization is a very powerfult tool. When you control what appears in the first page or two of google results, you basically control what people "do" and "don't" see on the internet. Any censorship or discrimination by companies such as Crawlability is going to directly impact the virtual tone and content of the internet itself. Because when people do a search, and only look at page one and two, they are only going to find the optimized (moral) content. To some, this may seem as a good thing. And to others, this may seem like a needless act of self-censorship that is a step backwards for free speech.

DISCLAIMER: No matter what you say (or type) on a forum there are always going to be people who disagree. I understand that. I also understand that no one can force somebody to run their business a certain way. That is not my intent. The same freedom that allows Juan to make stupid and unfair business decisions, allows me to complain about it.

I feel that it is now necessary to address this discussion before it gets further out-of-hand.

vBSEO.com provides a forum for professional vB admins who are interested in advancing SEO for their forums. While friendly debate of SEO, vBSEO, or other company related issues is encouraged, arguments or hostile discussions are not acceptable practices here.

I feel that this discussion has deteroriated to a non-professional level. Please note: The use of derogatory adjectives to describe any other vBSEO forum member will not be tolerated.

As you observed from her posting, Katrina has been informed of our official decision regarding her forums. Likewise, she has been invited to re-submit her request for a license for another forum OR her existing forum (if, after launching, it is modified to fit our current "Acceptable Usage Policy" and remains that way).

At this time I am making the decision to close this thread, since I feel that the discussion is no longer adding value to the vBSEO user community. If anyone has any objections or would like to make further comment, please send me a PM.

In general, I would ask forum members to exercise their best judgement and refrain from responding to members who are demonstrating poor forum etiquette. Doing otherwise, will only encourage them to continue. With that said, we are currently developing forum rules to be published soon.