My guidelines for what pages get thrown off and what do not are not that complicated, but I do have them. Several of you might have received notices that your page was off topic. Since the message doesn't tell you why your page was off topic, I will tell you the reasons I use to justify pulling a page off.

The first guideline when I remove a page is whether that page is there or not. If it isn't, I yank it. Period. I also yank pages that have relatively no content and say "Under Construction". Why? Because I think that you should have the page pretty much done before you submit it to the Pod as a Pod publisher.

I do have a little loophole, however; if there is a page there, and it does have an "under construction" notice, then I will wait two weeks before I finally pull the plug.

I also have problems with the following:

• Window dressing pages (essentially pages that say, "Hi, to go to my real web site click here, and the link leads off your web site and off Tripod.
• Pages containing illegal software, viruses, hacking tools, etc. (These will be reported to Tripod). Cheat codes and FAQs to games are okay, just use common sense.

• Pages containing racism, sexism, homophobia, etc (Again, reported to Tripod).

Off-topic is the tricky part. A page dedicated to poetry obviously does not belong on the TechBits Pod, it belongs on the Writer's Block Pod. I don't mind you listing with PC Computing Pod, Tech Bits Pod, and Page Slave Pod; just have something that will fit into the discussion.

Generally speaking, I am leniant about truly being off-topic. You essentially have to not even have a link to a tech related site on your page before I consider booting you off. Then again, this might change depending on circumstances.

Hey! My page doesn't have any of those things and you still booted me out!

If that is the case, then you can do several things. First and foremost is to e-mail me at kalvin_richter@tripod.net, with a nice note containing the URL back to your page and a description of why you think that it should be on the TechBits Pod. Note: do not be offending or rude as I have a tendency to ignore such people.

Also, you can contact me during any of the regularly scheduled chats. During that time I will answer questions regarding pages that were pulled from the TechBits Pod.

Then again, if you clean up your page and resubmit it, it will be viewed with new eyes.

One final note: I do not relish throwing anybody's page off pod. The main purpose of advising site owners that they are off-topic is to keep the discussions about computers to a maxinum in content and structure.