Please remove your link to my post

This morning I had an email in my inbox which sort of puzzled me. It referenced a blog post made on the very first iteration of this blog right here several years ago. Before I started taking classes to earn my Library Tech diploma, even.

Salutations,

I am Ted, and I am writing you on behalf of CollegeInfoWebsiteHere. It has always been our goal to produce and provide the most useful and up to date information on online colleges. We want to help take the stress out of the decision making process. We also provide pages and blog posts with random, weird, and amusing facts for distraction.

It is these pages that have us concerned. We have kept an eye on changes made to linking and webmaster standards, and we fear our blog posts will soon be seen as irrelevant fluff. Therefore, though I am glad you linked to us on FirstIterationofMissScarletHere, I must ask that you remove any links leading to the pages of CollegeInfoWebsiteHere. They can be found on FirstIterationofMissScarletHere/archivepost.

Thank you,
Ted FirstFirstNameIsntReallyTedAnyway

Here is my not-really-a-problem-but-what-I'm-thinking-about-anyway:

• The post my old post links to still exists. You click the link, their post is still there. 
• If you search up some keywords you will still find that post on their site. 
• Does having a link to their site from my site bump where their site comes up in, say, a web search? Signs point to yes, though this version of my site hardly causes internet tube clogs, much less that first version. But it's there and that contributes to search results.
• I can change the content of my post to not link to their site or even mention their site name. However, I still find the content of their post applicable/interesting and I still have an opinion on it (which is positive, though yes, it is a fluff post). If I ditch the link and the name, I then have uncited content. 'This one website has a post that I found interesting and here are the parts I found interesting, but no, you can't verify that without, say, searching the text from their post or the keywords involved'.
• I don't like having uncited content. It makes it look like I'm trying to pass off the work of others as my own instead of just finding the work of others and pointing to it/expressing my thoughts/opinions about said content.
• I am happy with the content of my site.
• They are not happy with the content of their site.
• They have not removed the post they do not want linked. 
• Should they delete their post, I then have a broken link. Would I rather be the person who runs a library-related blog with a broken link or the person who runs a library-related blog with a very vague reference to another blog? Or would I rather be the person who deletes their old blog post entirely?

If I'm happy with my site content and they are not happy with their site content, isn't the onus on them to change their content?



I started making websites and posting things to the internet when I was all of fourteen years old. Back then, I didn't have a concept of how long things would stick around and how things I posted would remain pretty much forever in one form or another. That was the mid-90s, however, and that girl hadn't even told Mark Zuckerburg off. Zuckerburg's voice may not have even changed by that point.




Someone who put up a post a few years ago doesn't so much have that excuse.


I like being polite. I like common courtesy. I will likely take my old post down, and I don't think it will break a bunch of links in the websites of others. I just find the situation interesting. Thoughts?