Here's the bottom line on the top line. The links we present on our site come to us in several ways. We don't record which link came from where or when. Basically, we don't know how we found your site. We don't record when and which page your links was originally posted on either.

Here's a list of incoming link sources and a brief note about each of them.

• Webmasters and Site Owners: Web sites are online to get a particular point of view across. In order to get their message out, the people who create these sites look for other sites to post a link. We receive these kinds of requests for links all the time. Generally the writer states that they are an official of the organization and would appreciate it if we would post a link to their site. Sometimes, when reviewing their site we find out that their hit counter is below 10. Obviously they came to us first!
   
• Organization Members: In similar fashion, we get email from members of an organization. Some people write to say that they belong to a group that now has a web site and would we mind posting a link. Other times, we get email from people asking why we haven't included their organizations' web site link on our site. Evidently they are proud members and sometimes they indignantly demand that we post the link immediately. Hooray for Solidarity! We're more than happy to oblige.
   
• Other Site Users' Suggestions: Lots of surfers browse around from site to site and category to category soaking up what the world wide web has to offer. We get suggestions from these people who say that there's a great site at such and such an address that should be linked on our site. Other surfers, with clearly defined interests, just stumble onto a link to our site while looking for related content. We can get quite a few link suggestions at once from these users who feel we should look over these other sites.
   
• Inquiries and Questions: Lots of our email comes from people looking for a particular organization or service. Typically they state that they haven't been able to find a link to this or that and ask if we can help in their search. Othertimes, we get messages from people who have a personal problem they need help with. Sometimes they're looking for a job in a new area, sometimes they want a career change, sometimes they've got problems with workplace personnel, sometimes they just want to be union. It gets clear pretty fast that we don't have links for them. So we set out and if we find some links to post, we do so. Hopefully we can get back to the people with the info we've found. Most of the time we're successful.
  
  We also get questions from students looking for directions to where they can find out about a specific labour related issue they're working on at school. More often than not we find a site that we can tell them about, then post a link to it for others.
   
• Ideas, Comments and Remarks: Many surfers assume that by now every outfit in the world has a web site and that the site is linked somehow to somewhere. As far as labour related sites are concerned we know that isn't true. We estimate that less than ten percent of the existing groups have a web presence, and with new and different organizations coming into being daily, it'll be some time before our 'world of labour' touches all of these groups. In the meantime, we ask these surfers to use other means to contact their intended and to send us their link when online. When we get the link, we post it.
   
• We Scout Too: Online and offline media provides us with a whole host of interesting sources for a variety of links. With the dotcom implosion of '2000 there was lots of news about tech workers getting organized. We go out and look for links to these organizations. Also, the unending cascade of mergers, down-sizings and right-sizings provides clues to who is organized where. We scout them out and post these links.