Top Un-Recommended Websites - 2007 List

Everyone posts lists of recommended websites, so I thought I'd do something a little different, and present you with a list of websites I don't recommend. These are sites which, for one or more (often more) reasons, I don't like. Most of these are fairly popular websites, and I'll list them in order of decreasing popularity, based on Alexa popularity numbers. In the list below, the number in parenthesis after the site name represents (according to Alexa) the site's popularity. Example, MySpace is the sixth most popular website in the world, so it has a (6) after it.

MySpace.com (6)
I've written in other places why this is such a horrible website. My main beefs with this site are:

• Horrible design: it functions like it was designed by a first year programming student
• Horrible design: it looks like it was scribbled by a toddler
• Atrocious advertisements which no one (and especially not children/teenagers) should be subjected to*.

BeliefNet.com (7,197)
I've only spent a few minutes on this site. At a quick glance, it appears to be a site whose purpose is to make everyone feel good about what they believe, regardless of what they believe. Which goes along with our society's horribly irrational version of a "pluralistic viewpoint". But since I try not to be irrational most of the time, I don't buy it.

But that's NOT why I don't recommend this site. I don't recommend for a couple other reasons. One is, they do that annoying thing where, when you click on a link, instead of getting the page you wanted, you get an advertisement, and a "click here to skip this ad" link. But even worse than that, the advertisement page has a javascript error in it, which means if you are a developer, and have a debugger active, the page just continually pops up error messages over and over and over and over again, making it impossible to navigate away.

But even that isn't the REAL reason I don't recommend this site. I spent a total of five minutes on BeliefNet. And in that time, I accidentally clicked advertisements TWICE. You know what this means? It means that they have placed advertisements inappropriately close to navigation items (like menus, scrollbars, etc). And what does that mean? It means they are probably making oodles of money off accidental clicks.

I don't approve sites that engage in that sort of questionable behavior.

And, by the way, if you are one of those poor companies that is spending advertising budget money on space at BeliefNet, I would seriously re-evaluate whether you want to put your money into accidental clicks!

KidsInMind.com (81,884)
This is a movie review website which is designed to help parents decide whether or not they should take their children to see a particular movie. I used to recommend this site, until one day (for some reason) I disabled my popup-blocker, and discovered that this site regularly harrasses the visitor with pop-under advertisements. Very annoying. In addition, they do that annoying thing where, when you click on a link, instead of getting the page you wanted, you get an advertisement, and a "click here to skip this ad" link.

Aside from the fact that this is just plain annoying, there's also the fact that the "skip" link often doesn't work.

Dove.org (522,709)
This is another movie review site. This site, instead of just giving information about the kind of content a movie has, will make a "recommendation" about whether you should watch it. If you want to know why I don't recommend this site, which "appears" to have Christian morals, just go to Google and search for "Dove Foundation Telemarketer" and you will discover that this organization is involved in fairly questionable telemarketing tactics. Let's just say I've been contacted by them on more than one occasion, and was thoroughly unimpressed by their tactics**.

* advertisements regularly featured on MySpace include the "It's Okay To Look" and "It's not Okay To Stare" ad campaigns, both of which are ads for an online dating service, and seem designed to encourage teenage boys to ogle (ie, stare at) scantily clad women. In addition, I've seen a "flash game" advertisement in which the player is encouraged to "kill his friend's mother".

** My run-in with the Dove Foundation: An Informational Call, Dove Foundation Follow-up