Report: 95% of user comments on Web sites are spam or malicious
http://bit.ly/bu8VdX (Websense)
--Lauren--
NNSquad Moderator
This is another very good reason why I believe web-annotation projects like Google's Sidewiki are a problem for website administrators. For those who don't know, Sidewiki is a Google project to that gives users of the Google Toolbar (one of the most prolific of its kind) the ability to share annotations on the web with other users. While, I've made my personal and professional complaints known to Google, about the service, the fact remains that Google is leaving it up to webmasters to police
the comments left throughout all the pages on all their sites. Unfortunately, the analogy of policing is all too true; each comment flagged as abusive is passed along to the great, and almighty judge which is Google, and resolved in time-frames that mirror our own justice system.
While the service and its participation are entirely optional, for now, Toolbar is not the only place we're likely to find Sidewiki in the future. Google has made a Sidewiki SDK available to allow more native integration into browsers via plug-ins, and add-ons. Once activated, it's easy to assume that Sidewiki is part of the page you're using, as they occupy the same browser frame. Aside from leeching user-contributed content from site-specific channels, Sidewiki will be largely unhelpful, and likely harmful to the sites it rests upon (read: every site on the web) given Websense's latest report. Google's best answer to any of these problems
is "we've developed an algorithm for that." Forgive me if I don't trust an algorithm to understand what constitutes as malicious. Without opt-out, or even opt-in mechanisms, Google has already alienated webmasters who are now seeking to prevent Sidewiki interoperability with their sites--going so far as to pay for services that mask URLs or by banning Toolbar users outright from their sites (Toolbar adds itself to your browser's announced type and version) and redirecting them to pages explaining why they, the webmaster, feel its important to control the user experience on their site.
How can Google, or any other web-annotation project, hope to preserve relationships with webmasters, if they overwrite the conversational channels and forums that their sites provide? Sites like Digg, Fark, and Reddit have perfected this equation by hosting the conversation themselves, without adjunctly imposing their content upon the experience of
the user in the point-to-point communication to websites. It should be up to the webmaster to decide what, if any, visitor contributions may be made to his/her site, and by what channels they are allowed.
That said, I take the report from Websense as a sign that Sidewiki will ultimately fail to be useful, and all the woes and concerns I and other webmasters have had about it, will naturally resolve themselves. And for the first time, ever, I find myself thanking the penis-enlargement crowd.
-Dave Berry