SEW Forums & Spam Reporting Policy

[dannysullivan]

We've had discussion among both members and moderators in the past about formalizing a spam reporting policy for the SEW Forums, such as here: Reporting "Spammers" at SEW.

For the record, we generally do not allow it at the moment. But we haven't updated our FAQ to reflect this, and we're overdue to make that happen. So, we'll get it done this week.

This is what we're considering:

Spam Reporting: The forums are not designed to be a way to report spam indirectly to the search engines. Instead, the major search engines provide ways to do this directly via these addresses (INFO WILL BE LISTED HERE).

Instead, we'd encourage spam discussions be oriented toward particular tactics. In other words, don't ask if a page is spam. Ask if something in particular on that page or some particular tactics might be deemed spam and provide some specific examples that illustrate without actually showing the page in question.

Posts that do name specific sites will be edited or deleted per the moderator's descretion. If you are concerned about a post that violates the forum's spam reporting policy, contact a moderator directly for action. Do not attack the poster within the thread.

In some circumstances, direct references to sites may be allowed. This are likely situations where well-known companies or web sites may be involved in a spamming incident that is being widely discussed among search news resources.

OK, comments welcome.

[Nick W]

Instead, we'd encourage spam discussions be oriented toward particular tactics. In other words, don't ask if a page is spam. Ask if something in particular on that page or some particular tactics might be deemed spam and provide some specific examples that illustrate without actually showing the page in question.

The bit i've bolded leaves too much to misinterpretation assuming, as i hope, you mean that pointing at specific pages is NOT allowed?

Maybe this:

Instead, we'd encourage spam discussions be oriented toward particular tactics. In other words, don't ask if a page is spam. Ask if a particular tactic might be deemed spam and provide some specific examples that illustrate without actually showing the page in question directly or indirectly. This includes things like "if you search for...".

Of course, all of this would be helped if some active mods where around when these things kick off. Weekends in particular are a great way to report spam at SEW becuase often either no one is around to do anything about it, or if they are around, they're not doing anything about it.

Bringing in some more mods might be a good idea, you must have a feel for who would be suitable by now, i can think of a 4 right off the top of my head (and i most certainly do not include myself)

Some of your current team are inactive as far as i can tell, time for a cabinet reshuffle?

Nick

Edited because i didnt get my point across clearly.

Spam Reporting: The forums are not designed to be a way to report spam indirectly to the search engines. Instead, the major search engines provide ways to do this directly via these addresses (INFO WILL BE LISTED HERE).

Posting names of spammers was/has never been about "indirect" reporting to the se's, but it's ALL about warning the general public about spammers and scammers. Places that don't warn the public "until" it's too late are simply protecting the spammers.

I actually agree with Nick on that point: You cannot possibly "point" to specifics of spam without actually pointing to specifics of spam IE: examples. That statement is certainly unclear. I've read at other places where someone posted a spam example on a page, the url was then deleted, and the thread stopped cold. Why? Because no one knew what the heck the poster was talking about at that point. The thread was then useless to everyone unless you PM the original poster to get the example. Not helpful at all.

This only further hides the spammers and makes them very happy. Good for you all!

[Nick W]

You want to do something about this public execution then danny?

If the above is to become policy, then having your admins allow public spam reports before it comes fully into effect will not help will it? - that thread is a disgrace, and it makes some people very nervous about posting here at all.

In fact, one guy told me that the reason he wont post here is becuase of this tendency for public outings.

that cant be good...

[dannysullivan]

You want to do something about this public execution then danny?

Actually, we did kill that thread. I logged in today, saw a number of things to deal with and decided to get this new thread going first, then pick up on the others right after.

In fact, one guy told me that the reason he wont post here is becuase of this tendency for public outings.

My problem with that, and with your own thread on the issue of spam reporting here, is that you make it sound like the forums are rampant with public spam reporting. They aren't, nor have they been. That's why we haven't formalized a policy on this until now.

It is appearing to be a problem, but it is not dominanting the forums. We will get a policy in place that we think benefits the entire community -- but I think we deserve a little more credit than you're giving us.

Some of your current team are inactive as far as i can tell, time for a cabinet reshuffle?

From what I can see, folks have been plenty busy doing moderating this weekend. Weekends ARE slower. That also means that if something stands longer than normal, a few hours or a day, it's also likely to be seen by far fewer people. So some moderation about the real impact would be considerate.

The bit i've bolded leaves too much to misinterpretation assuming, as i hope, you mean that pointing at specific pages is NOT allowed?

Yes, the idea is that you'd explain what you saw, not point to a particular page.

Having said this, I'm sure there will be times when we do decide to point at a particular page. Personally, I can find it maddening for people to talk and talk about a search for "widgetA widgetB" bringing up siteA that has X which doesn't seem right in some cases when just showing the real example is much clearer.

One thing that might help is to also in the policy say something like "if you do want to name a site, get moderator clearance." Then the mods could sort of peer review if they feel something should be named.

We're looking for a balance of people feeling comfortable taking part in the forums with also being able to learn rather than guess sometimes about what's being discussed.

[Nick W]

One thing that might help is to also in the policy say something like "if you do want to name a site, get moderator clearance." Then the mods could sort of peer review if they feel something should be named.

Then you wont solve the issue. It will be luck of the draw whether it's allowed or not depending on which mod you pm.

Danny, you either allow spam reporting or you dont - i appreciate you like to be balanced, it's one of your greatest qualities IMO but allowing some finger pointing, and having that decision made by individual mods will not help.

If i want to report a competitor, or show an example that could well be another members website at SEW i just have to pm the rght mod, i know who they are so i assume others do.

In a case like M$ doorway pages i agree with you, but pointing out specifics is a frightening prospect to some and it will hurt your forums I think.

If a member does not know enough about web dev to be able to describe the alleged spam, then they really have no business drawing it to everybody's attention. More often than not it's not spam at all.

Describe the technique, give code examples if needed but do not point directly or indirectly at individual websites or individual serps - that's the way to go IMO

Anything less is just avoiding the issue and keeping the same potential for abuse and mistrust and anxiety that you already have in place.

This is fun on a sunday morning eh?

Im off to walk the dogs... cya

Yes Nick. Your reasoning assumes that the majority on the internet and who view in these forums are well versed in spam techniques and can figure out for themself what exactly the thread is discussing without seeing the actual page.

Far from it. The majority out there don't have a clue, including those who view and read in here as "guests". You forget that the numbers of members in forums at one time are "less" than the number of "guests" in forums. You don't realize that people are not knowledgeable. You are simply looking at things from your world and your circle in this industry.

I've received countless emails and PM's thanking me for naming spammers. It's saved many from SEO's claiming this and that. People will say anything to take the money. Protecting the spammers is what this industry is known for.

Remember, this place is not a half private forums where only people in the know communicate with each other. It's very open and many out there have zero clue about anything.

But anyway; JimWorld and mine are the only places that will name spammers and scammers. At least there are two of us.

[dannysullivan]

If i want to report a competitor, or show an example that could well be another members website at SEW i just have to pm the rght mod, i know who they are so i assume others do.

So some credit here that no, it's not going to be a backdoor that you know the right moderator, so you can out a competitor. Or at least credit until proven incorrect, that's what I'd ask.

In a case like M$ doorway pages i agree with you, but pointing out specifics is a frightening prospect to some and it will hurt your forums I think.

I think it would be very, very rare and much more like a case with the Microsoft doorway pages. If it's very prominent, and people are talking about it in various public places, then looking at what exactly is going on may make sense. And again, I'd urge, don't assume the worse -- that we'd just willy-nilly let stuff through. Our primary interest is not to be the spam reporting tool for search engines. The search engines have their own channels for that.

This is fun on a sunday morning eh?
Im off to walk the dogs... cya

I'd prefer to have waiting until Monday, but I was online, saw the issue come up again and figured I'd get things going. But I'm heading offline now to see the kids and so won't get back to responding until the work-week.

[Nick W]

Guess we'll see how it goes then danny, have a nice sunday mate...

Nick

[Marcia]

One of the issues is that of disguised spam reporting. Someone can post asking about a site - which may or may not be their own site (it's been known to happen in this lifetime), or may just reveal search terms that out a competitor who's using less_than above board methods.

Another is unintentional spam reporting. That may not be the motive, but may nevertheless accomplish it - or could be misinterpreted by some when it really wasn't meant to out anyone at all (and I have seen both such cases just recently).

I think that possibly a more general statement than just addressing spam reporting could better serve, in cases where that isn't the intention or when the person may not even know they're doing it - which some truly don't. Sometimes it just flat out takes a judgment call being made in individual cases.

While I agree with the principle that when people take on the responsibility of moderating there should be a level of participation and visibility, if nothing else but being fair to others who have to take on more than their share of the workload when some are MIA. we also have to keep in mind at this point in time that this is the height of busy holiday shopping season, and some people are just flat out too busy with their own or client sites to have much time available for much else. Not a problem, everyone understands and pitches in as they can.

Besides - and this is a very important point - moderating isn't done in a vacuum. There's a team approach here, and what anyone does or doesn't do is quite visible to others which is a very GOOD thing. Not only that, but mods also seek input from the others on questionable issues. In addition - also very important, if not critically important - management is extremely attentive to, communicative with, and supportive of the crew. I don't think I can stress enough how important that point is, especially as it will eventually prove itself with respect to moderator retention and the continuing health of the community.

That is exactly what policy issues like this one are to address and accomplish - to ensure the growth and health of the community and the general welfare of the membership long term.

There is not a moderating environment here of politicking, gossiping, favoritism and factions or discord and dissension, but one of harmony and cooperation, which is not only extremely pleasant, but will eventually prove itself to grow the community in the most positive and productive of directions for the membership at large.

No, so we can see that there's no need to be concerned about "corruption" or differences in mod opinions - not in the moderating environment we've got here, that's so forthright, harmonious, and transparent among the crew - who happen to be among the finest people I've had the pleasure of being associated with in all the years I've been serving in online communities.

[Jill Whalen]

Not allowing spam reports has nothing to do with protecting the spammers, Doug, despite how often you like to say it does.

It simply protects the forum from every other post being someone trying to out their competitor. If you want a forum full of those types of posts, then more power to ya. Most forum owners would prefer a variety of topics instead.

It's the same thing with allowing linking. If you allow any and all links to be dropped, you're basically going to be overrun with spammer link-droppers. Again, if that's what you want your forum to be, then no one will stop you. Most forum owners would prefer not to be overrun with those types of posts and therefore have policies about it, as well as effective moderating to catch it so it doesn't spiral out of control.

I think SEW has doing a pretty good job on both counts, considering how new it is. We forget how long it takes to figure out exactly all the rules and procedures on a forum.

I've been surprised when looking at old posts at my forum from when we first began, to see what sort of crap we let go! I have to slap myself and think "what the heck were you thinking?"!

[ta2000]

There should be a hard 'n fast rule against anything that even approaches a spam report in the SEW forums.

Even if somebody says, "go to G and type in 'buy phentermine' and look at the 3rd listing. Is that cloaked?"

If the issue is truly that you cannot discuss a technique without showing an example, GG was able to show several examples at the latest Vegas conf. without divulging URLs. And others on a panel were able to explain techniques with slides. The slides illustrated techniques but no URLs were given. So, it is possible to have a discussion about these things without showing live production examples.

That goes to education rather than outings. If a potential client wants to educate themselves about what an advertising medium has to offer (risks and opportunities), they can make an educated decision regarding whether to proceed. Outings don't work toward that end. If anything, it likely impedes the process.

Having a solid rule for these SEW forums would lessen the effort the admins and mods would expend to patrol the threads.

To me, forums seem to thrive when a high level of education is offered and discussed. Veterans hang out because they're appreciated for their experience and knowledge (and they enjoy teaching). Newbies hang out because the forums become a treasure trove of useful information.

Outings (both aggressive and subtle) may turn the SEW forums into a cesspool of informants.

Protecting the spammers is what this industry is known for.

Yep.

Ask Doug or ask John at JW if that is not absolutely true.

Those who cry the loudest are those who have websites that might be outed by my forums or by the JimWorld forums. If a site was not doing anything spammy, then that site would not care about this "no outing" rule as they don't have anything to worry about when they get up in the morning.

Link dropping? My mods have no problem with it. Promotional drops are simply deleted. Easy stuff.

[mcanerin]

The other issue I have with spam reporting in a forum is administrative.

When you post here, it doesn't just go away after awhile - it's here for a very long time (much to the embarassment of those of us who wish they could take back some of their less inspiring comments from the past ).

So what happens if you say that so-and-so is cloaking or might be doing X,Yor Z? And 3 weeks (or months, or years) later the site is clean or, worse, now owned by someone else? First, you have potential libel issues both as poster and forum owner, and second, it's totally useless to anyone reading it. Worse than useless. Possibly damaging to a newbie trying to learn the ropes on what's OK and what's not.

The same can be said when talking about a site that is a paragon of virtue, currently. Any DMOZ editor will tell you about the old "bait and switch" issue.

Even stupider, I can't believe someone would say "so a search on Google and look at number 3". Huh? What search engine was that again? Have you ever done a search and had the exact same listings come up consistantly over time? Wow! That's great! The rest of us actually have to run ranking reports routinely because every once in a while Google changes the order it lists sites in, Maybe you haven't noticed.....

Very likely number 3 is totally different next week, and now you are accusing someone totally different publicly and in writing, and within a very short time period of your post. Definately legally dangerous. Admittedly I'm a lawyer and react slightly differently than other people, but if number 3 turned out to be me or one of my clients (and there are lots, in very different areas) you'd be hearing about it, and I suspect you would not like that.

If the forum had a time sensitive area that deleted posts automatically after a week or month that would be fine to post there (maybe), but in the rest of the forum it's a waste of disk space and makes it hard to find real, useful posts.

Talk about technique. If you don't know what the person is doing well enough to describe it, either don't post at all and spend some time learning about SEO instead, or post the best description you can and ask if someone can PM you for more details - there are plenty of experienced posters here who could help you with a clearer description. And if no one responds, then you pretty much have your answer as to how important the post is to the welfare of the rest of the forum.

It's OK to try to learn this stuff. No problem. But ask yourself why you are posting. If you are asking if so-and-so is cloaking, have you bothered to even find out what cloaking is? I mean really? Not just vague descriptions and ideas? Why not ask how to spot a cloaker, instead. That would be much more educational and productive. Not to mention a rude awakening...

But if your real reason is to get a bunch of other people to do your dirty work for you because you can't be bothered to learn about your own site and the things that affect it, well, you are in for another rude awaking, I think.

Learn, don't leech.

My Personal Opinion,

Ian

[Nick W]

Nicely put, same thing applies to "look at this page, why is the left menu doing..." ----> eventually the problem is fixed isnt it? Used to have cut'n'paste stickies for removing those links in the css forum on wmw lol!

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to mcanerin again

Protecting the spammers is what this industry is known for.

Yep.

Ian: If your site or url was outed one year ago in my forums for spam, and it was spam, and one year later the site is not spamming, so what? If you found the url that's a one year old post, you email the "forum owner" to ask to remove. If you don't do that, tell me again how the forums owner would be responsible?

Sorry, that's not true. You are assuming a forum owner actually reads every post made in their forums on a daily basis, and then, is completely responsible for what every member posts in the forums on a daily basis. Again, not true and is impossible. Yahoo groups was sued for almost this exact same thing and found "not lible".

I have zero problems posting spammers.

Besides, to each his own. I'll gladly warn people. Others won't. No big deal. The thing is, if more forums would have outed Traffic Power along time ago like others did, maybe it would have saved some websites out there from hiring them in the first place.

It's a case of blaming the website owner more times than not. It's not the spammers fault, but it "is" the se's fault, and of course, it's the website owner's fault for hiring the seo who spams and risks their website. It seems to never be the spammer seo's fault. I wonder why that is?

That's fine. Carry on.

[rustybrick]

Is a forum owner liable for what members post in the forum they own?

I know at SEO Chat, anything goes, and Dev Shed is not worried about law suits.

This forum is new, and I have yet to come up with a post being pulled because of fear of a law suit.

No, owners are not. It's impossible. These are discussion forums. Many precedences have already been set about all of this.

If a reason to not out a spammer is because of worries like that, they are unfounded. SEO Chat has it right. I did not know they were like that as well? Cool... interesting.

[rustybrick]

Wooo...

I did not say SEO Chat had it right, or that SEW forums has it wrong. I just explained how SEO Chat worked.

I think by Danny stating "Instead, the major search engines provide ways to do this directly via these addresses..." he is giving a structured avenue for members to report spam, if they want to.

Please do not take what I said earlier to mean that one forum is better then the next. Forums are different and that is what makes them fit a certain type of member (see this thread for that discussion).

I did not post that Barry. I posted:

"SEO Chat has it right."

I posted that. You did not. Where did you get your reaction from? Because imo SEO Chat does have it right. Other places have it right as well. No forums owner is libel for postings made in the forums. Period. I believe it's stated as such by Jupiter Media when you register. If not, it should be stated. It's certainly stated that way in mine.