Why a site is in the picture
Pixeloom lists two kinds of website: ones that asked to be here, and ones we chose. This page says which is which, what each one means, and how to have yours changed or taken out.
Inclusion is not endorsement. A site marked Curated by Pixeloom is one we selected from the public web because we thought it was worth finding. It is not a customer, a partner or a sponsor, and it has not agreed to anything. Sponsored placements are labelled separately and always.
The four labels
Every listing carries one, and it answers a single question: why is this site here? It says nothing about who controls the listing — that is separate, and covered under claiming below.
Curated by Pixeloom
We found it and added it. Nobody paid, nobody asked, and nobody at that site has been contacted. We write the one-line description ourselves, in our own words. We do not use the site's logo — a curated listing shows its name and its initials, which is also why a curated tile looks different from a paid one on the artwork.
Submitted
Someone filled in the form and we reviewed it. Most listings are this. They carry no label, because being submitted is the ordinary case.
Sponsored
A paid placement, labelled on every surface it appears on. This is different from a sponsored day, where a brand pays for the artwork's shape and colours rather than for a tile; that is disclosed in the caption above the picture.
Partner
An actual working relationship — a campaign, an integration, something agreed in writing. We do not use this word for a site we merely like, and we have not used it yet.
Getting your site removed
Email [email protected] with the domain and the word remove. We do not ask why, we do not counter-offer, and we do not require proof of ownership for a removal — the cost of taking down a listing somebody did not want is far lower than the cost of leaving it up.
We answer within 3 working days, and a removal takes effect on the next mosaic that is generated. What comes out:
- the listing on the directory, immediately;
- its page at
/site/your-domain, immediately; - its name from every archived board it appeared on. This is a deliberate exception to how the archive normally works — a site that signed up and whose run ended keeps its name in the record of the days it was part of, because that record is what the archive is for. A site we added without asking does not, because the record would be of something it never agreed to.
Corrections
A wrong name, a stale link, a description that misses the point, or the wrong category. Write to the same address with what it should say. A correction is not a claim — we will fix a description for anyone who can tell us it is wrong, without asking them to prove they own the site.
Claiming a site we curated
If you run a site we listed and would rather run its listing yourself, there is a Is it yours? link on the listing's own page. It asks for your name, an address to reach you at, and anything that helps us check. A person reads every one — there is no automatic approval, because a listing that can be claimed by whoever asks first is worse than one nobody can claim.
What settles it is usually one of two things: an email address at the domain, or a short token published as a DNS TXT record on it. Ask for the DNS route in your message if the address you use is elsewhere. We do not ask for documents, and we do not ask you to prove anything at all if what you want is removal rather than ownership.
Approving a claim hands you a private link to that listing's report — how many people saw the artwork it was in, how many stopped on it, and how many clicked through. The link has no password, which also means anyone you forward it to can read the same numbers; ask us and we will issue a new one. It is the only thing a claim gives you today: there is no login, no dashboard and no self-serve editing yet, so changes still come through us.
Claiming does not change how the site arrived. A curated listing that is later claimed is still recorded as curated, because that is what happened; what changes is who we take instructions from. It also does not make you a customer, does not cost anything, and does not sign you up for anything.
How we choose
By hand, one at a time, by a person. We look for sites that are useful, well made, or worth the click — a mix of names you would recognise, which explain what a category is, and ones you probably would not, which are the reason the directory is worth reading. There is no score and no ranking algorithm.
We do not use a language model to write anything published here. It may help us find candidates; the description under a site's name was written by a person who looked at it.
What we will not list
- anything that would be unsafe to send a visitor to;
- sites whose main purpose is to attack, harass or impersonate someone;
- anything that would make Pixeloom look like it is claiming a relationship with a brand it has none with.
A site that stops working, redirects somewhere else or changes into something we would not have listed comes out. Where it has already been in the artwork, the picture stays as it was — a board is a record of a night, and we do not repaint one — but the outbound link goes.
Why we do this at all
A directory that only contains people who paid to be in it is an advertising list, and an advertising list is not worth browsing. Curated listings are what make the directory and the nightly artwork worth a visitor's time before enough sites have signed up to fill either — and a picture worth looking at is the only thing that makes a tile in it worth having.