I agree that it's important to distinguish between the different types of content everyone is registering grievances against... Scraped content and empty direc

I agree that it's important to distinguish between the different types of content everyone is registering grievances against... Scraped content and empty directory pages (that washing machine reviews page that has nothing more than an H1 and some crummy auto-generated sentences) vs... Mediocre human written content from sites like e-How and other Demand media properties. The first kind of content is pretty clearly spam, and doesn't deserve a place in the index. Everyone can agree on that, and I'm perplexed as to why Google hasn't taken more action against these types of sites. I have a hard time believing they can't do it algorithmically. The second type isn't as clear cut. Most of the readers here and on the cited tech/search blogs know what this content is and where it comes from, and are probably a bit more critical of it than the average user for that very reason. I agree that these article directory pages are usually painfully mediocre, but I wonder if they aren't "good enough" from the point of view of someone who doesn't know better. After all, I havent seen much of an outcry about search quality coming from the mainstream; it seems limited to HN and other tech circles.