No Spam Here

Squidoo makes great efforts to stop spam, plagiarism, and other rule breaking lenses.

Inevitably, some do get through, though. Squidoo only has a small HQ staff and it’s impossible for them to catch all of these pages.

There certainly aren’t enough paid staff to check through all published lenses so they use filters to catch abusive language, spam, spambait, and pornographic subject matter. This is a less than perfect system and, of course, false positives do happen which then require review by a real person.

The network has volunteers who also check for lenses that contravene Squidoo’s Terms of Service (TOS) but, again, it’s impossible for them to find all rule breakers.

You might suggest that Squidoo should employ more people to fight the problem. Great idea, except they would have to be paid so the share of the advertising revenue available for lensmasters would decrease. How many of us would like that idea?

There is a solution, though. Instead of complaining in various forums about problem lenses, individual lensmasters should use the ‘report abuse’ link at the bottom of every lens whenever they see one that breaks the rules. When the report is received, a member of staff will look at the page and assess whether it does contravene the TOS. If it does, the lens is locked so that nobody can see it.

None of like to snitch but reporting abuse is in our own interests as lensmasters. Junk lenses give Squidoo a bad reputation and it rubs off on the rest of us by association. It’s up to all of us to protect Squidoo’s reputation by reporting lenses that could damage it.