INTRODUCING HALFSITE MODE

This site has been online for more than a year. Indextar now has approximately 1500 listings and over 2000 reviews. At this time, we are changing how Indextar operates. This is to further promote Indextar's mission of being a review site by and for reviewers.

Our goal is to encourage people to contribute to the site and at the same time to improve quality of listings and reviews by thoroughly verifying submitted information.

We want listings owners to contribute to the project but without sacrificing system's integrity and objectivity. That means we are still not going to rely on company advertising, since we present views of people and not companies.

HALFSITE MODE

We call the new system "Halfsite Mode" because basically what it means is that only half of the listings are shown to all site visitors, the second half will be shown only to active members.

ACTIVE MEMBERS

People who contribute to the site: write reviews, post listings etc are called "active members". Active members can see all the listings in the directory. As it was before, there are no membership fees for site visitors: people do not have to pay anything to achieve "active member" status.

SELECTION OF LISTINGS

Once a week half of the listings that will be shown to all the visitors is randomly selected. The second half will be shown to the active members only. Percentage of active members is small - only about 5% or so. That means that approximately half of the site is hidden from regular visitors at any given time. Listings that are not shown to all visitors one week have 50% probability to be included another week. That means that by default all listings have 50% average exposure.

SUPPORTERS AND PREMIUM LISTINGS

Listing owners who want to support the website can upgrade to a Premium Listing. Premium listing owners can choose their listing to be either always included or always excluded from the half that is shown to all visitors. If their rating is high and they have many have positive reviews they may want their listing to be shown all the time to everybody (100% visibility). Otherwise they may opt for their listing to be shown only to active members (5% visibility).

We believe that implemented changes are going to improve quality and ensure continuing development of the website. Please be patient as it will take some time to update documentation on the site to reflect these changes. If you have any questions or suggestions please send us an email to webteam@indextar.com.