That's a completely fair analysis of that page: the experience on that page is not great, and we realize that we're not presenting the value to a user who lands on that page in a compelling way. We need to work on improving pages like that, and I'm fine with devaluing those based around a quality metric.

But what about a page like this: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=9727120. Would you classify this page in the same way as the category page you reference above?

(a) What value is there on that page?

(b) Knowing the person asking you the question had just selected and reviewed a sample of 12 of your content pages at random, what would you say the average Questia page looks more like: the Pabst sample you provided, or the sample Patrick provided above?

You can't review twelve of their content pages at random. After the second page of one of those public domain books, you'll be hit with an unskippable signup prompt. (One day free trial with CC.)

That's actually within the letter of the Google guidelines for First Click Free, but you could be forgiven for not enjoying the experience as a searcher.

I assumed the content was the paragraph above the listings for paid ebooks. My mistake.

It's not in the same category of burning uselessness, but speaking as someone with no taste or design talent por exerience it is ugly.

I'd easily say the site is useless.

It only contains the bare minimum level of content to try and get you to click on an ad.