Site Discussion

It is not really that strange for webmasters to want to check which sites carry links to their site. You might not want a link to your site to appear on a porn site, for instance, or a site which distributes viruses, or expresses very different views from your own, racial abuse, etc. It's a question of your image. You would appear to approve of the site.
Since Wao's site has obviously been built by a professional company, I should imagine the policy statement is a standard part of their package which they offered to Wao and she accepted, rather than a hurdle she deliberately raised for owners of fan sites. It is cleary in her interests that her site receives as much publicity as possible among people likely to become fans, and since she has had it translated into English, she is now looking outside Japan. I can't see she would object to Takawiki.
That said, it's a real dilemna! It's polite to ask (especially when as in this case we're asked to do so), but it's prudent to keep a low profile.
I really don't know ...
Clare

Thank you all for your opinions!

I agree that it seems a bit silly to have a public website and not allow links to it, but I presume, as Kya said, that it's in order to know who you're being associated with.

I'm sure that plenty of people (including Hankyu) are perfectly well aware of TakaWiki by now and are no doubt turning a blind eye to it all, but we don't want to have to confront them. So I suppose the best thing is to just link away anyway, presuming that they know and don't mind...
In that vein, I'm fairly sure that if we just link quietly to the Wao site, nothing will happen. It's just that now I've gone and noticed their site policy, I can't do it with a clear conscience... x.x

Argh... *agonizes*


> PS: When you google www.yokawao.com only the website itself and your LJ appear...

Sugar, talk about ducking the radar... X.x;

Well, it was just a thought about the referrers, like I said, I figured it might be a bit paranoid. I only thought of it because it might not be often, but it does happen that referrers are backtracked, e.g. to check for copyright infringements or illegal content or (see below) unwanted/unwelcome association. (I'm coming from an area, though, where this is/was a real issue. Tiki certainly is tame regarding the amount and type of media content.) Seeing how they haven't gone after the most obvious (YT, VLOG) copyright infringement(s), the danger is certainly very small. It just doesn't help with 'flying under the radar'.


Regarding the reason for "ask before you link" policies - the simplest reason I can think of is that someone might not want to be associated with the website where the link is posted.


~edit: I'm just giving my thoughts here. I'm not saying any links should be removed. I appreciate every single link that is posted here and leads to more information or more shiny. :)

I too don't understand the concept most of the time. I'm actually rather surprised that a larger professional site such as Wao's would have such a courtesy policy. For small, personal websites, it's nice to see (especially when the site owner doesn't have access to a list of referrers). But for large official sites?

If you're worried about us showing up on the various Hankyuu referrer lists, it's probably less of an issue than you might think. Sure, we're on there, but are we high enough to really be of much concern for the time being? Have you ever looked at a referrer list for a website that large and which garners that much traffic? I have and I highly doubt we're one of their highest referrers. Even so, if someone hasn't noticed us by now, I'd be rather surprised.

Showing up as a refferrer on www.tca-pictures.net could actually be a good thing. While our presence may be noticed, it shows that we're not condoning piracy and in fact are pushing people to make purchases and support the revue. (Do you think this wasn't one of my reasons behind compiling the DVD/VHS lists?)

(As an aside, the Japanese community isn't ENTIRELY blind to our existance. I've seen the TakaWiki pop up in the related links on the Japanese wikipedia page for Takarazuka, even though it's since been removed. Not to mention some of the size dimmenisions of a few images I've seen shared on mixi communities are rather......suspicious. It's not as though at least SOME of the Japanese fanbase doesn't know we're here.)

Sorry this is so long!

I admit I've never asked when I've linked, and I haven't noticed if if the sites I've linked to had "Ask before linking" policies or not.

Personally, I've never quite understood the idea of "Don't link to my website unless you ask first." It's not like a link takes something from you or harms you in some way (with the exception of deliberate denial of service attacks and such). If you don't want people to visit your site, why do you have one? Put it up password protected on a secure server and just give logins to the people you know... Or mail them a newsletter. ;)

Er, that was rather a tangent, there...

This is a good issue to bring up. I haven't asked for permission for the sites I've linked, even if that is rude. :/ I think it could bring unnecessary attention to the Wiki. If people do check the referrer lists and find us, they can still turn a blind eye to us if they want, but that would be harder if we are straight out contacting them.

Of course, if we got any requests from the sites to remove the links, I'm sure we would immediately do so.

I like having the links to the official site is really helpful for Wiki users, though, and I hope we can keep them up.

> babylonclo:
> sort of trying to duck Hankyu's attention

I was thinking about that, too, when I noticed the links to Hankyu's official website (and tca pictures). Although that's far less blatant, with those links Tiki will eventually turn up on their referrer lists.
(But then I figured that thought may be a bit too paranoid. Webmasters of websites like Wao's official website might check their referrer lists more often, though.)


PS: When you google www.yokawao.com only the website itself and your LJ appear...

Well, the problem is not so much whether it's appropriate or not to link to it from an English website, but whether we on TakaWiki want to go around advertising ourselves to Japanese official websites. After all, I get the feeling we're sort of trying to duck Hankyu's attention... so it may not be a good idea to go around contacting OGs and things.

But as I'm not sure what TakaWiki's policy is in this respect, I wanted to ask people.

Well, I think it is feasible to ask, since most of the content is translated to English and Wao personally awares that she has oversea fans, right?