Professional Chutzpah

Have a reciprocal link to Meetup.com? Something for you to think about ...

Today, I got a rather bizarre letter from a representative of Meetup, who wanted to know what had happened to my reciprocal link back to meetup. The answer was, of course, absolutely nothing - the link was (and still is at the time of this writing) where it always has been, and where it has been since the time I exchanged links with Meetup.com - on the page I send people to, if they are looking for other worshippers of the Olympians, a page clearly visible from this one, appearing logically enough underneath the link for "helpful resources". Making sure to reciprocate that link from the mirror to that page at Bravenet, avoiding even the appearance of impropriety, as far as reciprocity was concerned. (The link on the Meetup page in question went to the FreeYellow copy of the Almond Jar).

Where else would I have put that link?

Shooting first and asking clueless questions later, our representative yanked Meetup.com's link to this site on the basis that it wasn't being reciprocated, when in fact it was being reciprocated and had been, without interruption or evasion, for months. I found this rather annoying, and frankly a little suspicious, because Meetup asks you to tell them in advance where your reciprocal link is located, and mine had never moved. I was curious enough to look around the Reconstructionist Meetup Page, and guess what I didn't find?

Reciprocal links.

Not a one, nor did I find any clearly marked link to a list of links. Going to the sitemap for the Reconstructionist Meetup page didn't turn up any such links either. Where I finally found the links was on the actual physical map of reconstructionist meetup groups in the US. Why would it occur to anybody to look for links there, on a page few if any visitors will have much of a reason to be, anyway? If one is looking for a chapter in one's own local area, one doesn't look at a global or US map, one enters one's zipcode and does a search. What Meetup.com had done was take its supposedly reciprocal links, and obscured them by shoving them in an obscure location, offering not a hint as to where one might go to look for them. To make matters worse, if one views the links, shoved down on the bottom of that map page as they are, in my current setting (width=1000 plus change), the notice "1 day until United Reconstructionist Religion Meetup Day" drops down over the links, chopping off the beginning of the title of each link. Having shoved us into a table in the kitchen, one might say, they've gone on to drop the oven door on top of us.

There have to be standards. Meetup is clearly not living up to the spirit of the agreement it made with the webmasters it exchanged links with, when it places its own links in a place where so few will find them. Those of us who've engaged in that exchange in good faith shouldn't have to put up with that, and there's little reason for us to do so. Culturally encouraged timidity aside, what reason does a webmaster have to want to hold onto a link to his site that has been rendered useless? And when you consider how many Meetups have closed down because of lack of interest, in many cases nobody being interested in taking over as their organizers, one is left with the fact that Meetup.com is not a site on its way up. So why take any fertilizer out of them?

The stupidity of this woman's actions, making a fuss about a meritless complaint at a time when her company, itself, was glaringly guilty of the very practice that they were wrongly accusing others of, was striking. It's like walking into a convenience store, starting to lift a pack of gum - and then pointing to the cashier and yelling "thief! thief!". What could one possibly be thinking about? If you're going to do something wrong, common sense should tell you to lie low - or better still, that you shouldn't be doing it. But I guess that's too much to hope for out of a "professional" these days?

I wrote back to our offending party, and having reminded her of where my nonconcealed link had been all along, told her that either Meetup.com would start living up to the spirit of the agreement that had been made, or that I'd yank my links and pass word along about what they were up to, so others who had exchanged links with them would know that they were being had. How a webmaster responds to that reality is completely up to him, but if somebody manages to browbeat one into giving him something for nothing, I think that it may be time to consider a little
assertiveness training. YMMV, my backside.