Squidblog

In last week’s post I mentioned that we’re embarking on an exciting, proactive approach to combating spam at Squidoo. We’ve learned two things in the last ten days or so: First, that spammers will flock when they find a hole they can exploit, and second that our users and others are incredibly helpful in finding the holes and working with us to plug them.

At the heart of our new efforts are six new structural changes that we’ll be focusing on over the next week or two:

1. First, we’re implementing a Bayesian spam filter to screen all newly published lenses at the front door, and those that look like spam will not be allowed to be published in the first place.

2. Next, because computers aren’t perfect, we’re adding an editorial review phase with actual humans reviewing each and every new lens that gets created, to make sure they comply with the rather lengthy spam guidelines in our Terms of Service. We may end up with some false positives, but we’re going to make it easy for you to tell us if we accidentally step on a good lens you’ve built.

3. Third, we’re implementing IP-based tools to help us analyze multiple accounts created by spammers. When a spammer hits our radar, we won’t just kill the reported account…we’ll kill them all.

4. Once our new anti-spam technology is in place, Squidstaffers and trusted community volunteers will also be reviewing all existing lenses to sniff out the bad guys. I have no doubt that this isn’t the perfect solution, but it’s a huge step in the right direction. In the end, it’s just going to be easier for spammers to go somewhere else.

5. We’ve created a Report Spam form and linked it from every page on Squidoo. It’s a fast, easy way to report spam directly to our editors, who will monitor the feedback and delete abusive accounts daily. Our users have been incredibly patient and helpful, and we’re going to make it easier than ever for you to keep the lid on the few (we think it’s only about 30 people!) bad actors that are spamming all of us.

6. Finally, last week we implemented a new internal classification for lenses: “Featured” lenses and “Work-in-Progress” lenses. Featured lenses are those with a LensRank above a certain threshold. We’ll be playing with this threshold number quite a bit in order to find a sweet spot. If your lens is featured, it shows up in Squidoo search results. Work-in-Progress lenses are lenses with a LensRank below that threshold. If your lens is a work-in-progress, it won’t be featured in Squidoo search results. While we passionately believe that everyone deserves a voice, and access to free tools for creating web pages, we also believe that to be featured in Squidoo search results, and to our community, is a privilege. As with all success online, the best way to get featured and make sure your lens shows in Squidoo search results is to share good content, stay authentic, and don’t spam. For 99.9999% of the people reading this, that won’t be a problem at all!

The bottom line of this entire post is that authentic pages built by real people with good intentions are the future of the web, and we’re more focused than ever before on making it easy for you to do that.

We’re really proud of the good stuff our community has put out so far, and prouder still of their help kicking spammers to the curb.

Thanks, guys.