[MUD-Dev] Re: Off topic! But please help

[John Bertoglio]

>Yesterday I got the following email  and I was wondering if anybody here
>knew anything about this. What am I to think about this and perhaps some
>even can tell me if I should take them seriously or just consider them a
>joke or a compliment to my website?  I am not so good  with this kind of
>things and you hear a lot about frauds and scams on the internet.  Would
>it be save for me to visit their website?


Good news and bad news.

The bad news. I get these kind of things all the time. No one has looked at
my website...just a robot reading meta tags combined with a form letter
generated by an mass mailer program. It is possible your site was selected
by a human being (BTW, what is the URL?), but I would be surprised...not
because of its quality but because of the sheer numbers involved...but I
could be wrong.

The good news. This doesn't look like a scam, exactly. Just another attempt
to make some money on the web. Kind of a good idea. Since they don't appear
to want you to give them money, you can be somewhat comfortable working
with them. In fact, they say will give you money ($100 US) in August. Not a
lot of money for maintaining a website, but still something. What these
folks are doing is building a Yahoo using independent contractors to do the
work. Not a bad idea, actually.

Some red flags: Two of the three "hot links" did not work. I was interested
in the level of expertise in the "Web Databases" since that is what I do
all day long (and in fact, should be doing right now.) Looked at the RPG
page and it was not bad. One problem is the links all retain the mining.co
frame set which causes some of the sites not to function. This is
considered tacky at best and specifically prohibited (though no mechanizim
for enforcement really exists) by some sites.

Summary: Kind of a good idea, but (probably) no way to get rich. However,
if I wanted to launch a website about a topic, using them as a vehicle
might be a good idea if their contract allowed such a thing (which I would
doubt).

Good fortune.

John Bertoglio