Being an animal lover, I must set this one straight before I address the real subject:
question is though will both dogs come back for another serving of what was thrown in the yard, I doubt it.
Neither dog will come back because chicken bones splinter and never should be fed to dogs. Both dogs died from slit intestines.
Now to the real topic.
IMO affiliates need to spend time on establishing contact with all the groups they advertise. If they don't bother to do that, they can't stand behind their players because the casino groups will just ignore them should there be a problem.
Casinomeister and my site likely agree 90% to 95% of the time on who is rogue. Occasionally he will rogue someone I don't, or I will rogue someone he doesn't. This isn't because we talked it over and disagreed, it's just based on player experiences from the different sites. It's not an exact science and has a lot of variables.
I think every affiliate needs to ask themselves:
"If something goes wrong at this casino, am I in a position to intervene?"
That is the first criteria I use. If I can't successfully mediate there, you just won't find the place on my site. This makes it very difficult for brand new affiliates, because it takes time to establish the rapport that later will enable you to properly represent players.
Casinomeister has always been incredible that way, he would mediate even for players who go to play at places listed in the Casinomeister rogue section. I am not sure you can appreciate how hard that is.
It's a lot easier if you stick with places you know you can talk to reasonably.
Not every affiliate can or needs to be a Casinomeister. Not everyone has the nerves to deal with Rogues. But every affiliate should be able to stand behind their player community.
Being an affiliate is a slippery slope. When you are new to the scene, you know as little as new players and will fall in traps and list bad casinos. New affiliates don't all find message boards like Casinomeister and CAP where they can gather information. I remember when I first started I listed Silver Sands because they offered free games for my site and I thought people would like to play and practice for free. It was months before I found message boards and heard about all the bad stuff.
So, while are a lot of scummy sites are from scamming affiliates who are just out for a quick buck, there are well meaning innocents in that group too.
Affiliates can't just gather info about whatever casinos they decide to represent and build sites and worry about google etc, they also need to spend time travelling the web, reading message boards and establishing relationships with the places they list.
While that quickly turns into more than a fulltime job, it's really the only way to provide a good service.
I don't think simply sticking to the Casinomeister rogue list does the trick, although it of course helps a lot. Each affiliate needs to establish a safety net and support system for players and limit the casino listings to places where they can be confident that things can be resolved.
And that is still no guarantee that a casino won't pull a fast one, but it makes things a lot safer.
There is one misconception often heard from players: The affiliate is beholden to the casino because of the money aspect. That's nonsense.
Firstly, the affiliate has as many casinos to choose from as the player. If a casino does badly by players, it most likely cheats affiliates too. Affiliates get cheated constantly, and most of the time it's by crappy casinos. DUH!
Secondly, whether casino A or casino B pays for my services is totally irrelevant to me. If A misbehaves, I drop them and put up B. This makes for a measure of "natural selection".
Casinos to advertise are a dime a dozen. No single casino has any power over an affiliate. Now if you see a site advertising only one casino group, you know they are dependent on that group for income, and hence can't be objective. But places that list a number of different casinos could care less if they drop some of them. It doesn't affect the bottom line at all, income just shifts to a more deserving place.
As player, I would also look at the usefulness of the affiliate site. Is there useful information? Has the affiliate done any legwork for you?
Clicking on an affiliate link is like a vote. Players have the power to keep useful affiliates online and make the bad ones close shop. An affiliate site that gets no clicks will shut down, no one can afford to work for free.
So if you click on spam mail and crappy sites that list rogues, you are keeping them in business and perpetuating the problem. And at the same time you are not giving places like Casinomeister the support they need to stay online.
Use your votes wisely! They matter and they shape the whole online gambling scene. Ultimately, all the power lies with the player.
