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(PopularWireless - Huntingtown, MD) We link to content at other sites. The Internet has always been a place to do that. Niche communities like this one have a way to direct readers to other web sites when the content at those other places is cool enough to link to. Our blog roll is built on the same premise.

Our own content is also posted on these pages. Using the blog format to create content is so much easier than developing a website using the formats we all grew fond of in the 90’s. More articles have appeared here than in the past because of the switch to blogging. PopularWireless began as GMRSWEB.COM in 1997. We may look new but we are ten years old. Blogging brought our community up to date. Maybe we should call it magazine-ing?

It did not take long to discover that the new blog format attracted what lurked beneath the pond-scum of the Internet - spammers and sploggers. We have had our content swiped and linked back to us by splog sites. Over one-hundred comment and track back spams have been attempted but blocked. Thankfully, comment spam and track back spam is easier to control because of Akismet. None of it has gotten through to perplex, insult, and annoy our readers.

The whole situation has made us think whether or not linking to content not our own is even a good idea anymore. Why not just let our readers find their own interesting stuff? The site would seem a much lonelier place and finding interesting content would be dependent upon reader participation in social networking sites and using the search engines. No independent thought would go into building a list of interesting stuff for our readers.

We are looking for an honest way to remain an informative site during a time when the sleaze drive what we do and how we do it more so than perhaps our readers do. What we have done with many of our shared posts from other sources is identify the post as being from another valued source and to encourage our readers to visit the site where the original content lives. Many of our referrals come from DIGG so we bold the “read more” link and italicize our own comments beneath the shared content used to tease the reader into clicking “read more.”

We’re open to other suggestions, because as a serious site we want visitors to keep coming back and we certainly do not want to offend.