Yahoo's Front Lines: A Surfer's Perspective

Site owners may get frustrated at the inability to get listed in Yahoo, but I challenge any of them not to like the people who oversee the listings.   The ones I've talked with are nice people, very dedicated to their jobs and sincere in trying to build a great guide that lists resources from across the web.

Ms. Tracy-Proulx is a good example.  A former university librarian, she's a two-year Yahoo employee and oversees the metro guides.

"We're basically people who love the Internet and think it's wonderful," she said, talking of the surfer staff. "We do think there's value in most everything we list."

They have a big job before them.  Each surfer deals with a few thousand submissions per week, and they must choose which sites will be personally reviewed, then approved for listing.

"We try to be as fair as possible," Tracy-Proulx said.

While the surfers want to build a guide full of the unique, great and wonderful, they also want to keep Yahoo a very complete resource.