Zeal

Spammers

[Fiver_321]

Hi,

I have evidence of mass spamming and editor corruption in Zeal. Who would like to know about this? Who do I contact to get rid of them? The daft schmuck got greedy and stands out a mile!

How come a zealot who only registered about ten days ago can get away with stuffing the directory with porn?

Cheers - and if you are on these boards - youre about to loose about 8,000 USD per month.

;)

I am out to get spammers and I get good results.

[digitalghost]

Who would like to know about this? Who do I contact to get rid of them?

Don't care to know but I think you should contact the good folks at Zeal...

[Fiver_321]

I cant find a link - for editor abuse, do you have to be an editor to report abuse?

[digitalghost]

They give this addy to report any abuse of Zeal policies:

[e-mail].

[rfgdxm1]

I am a Zealot at the Expert Zealot level. Offhand I don't see a specific public abuse address. However, presumably if sent to the usual default e-mail addresses at Zeal and Looksmart it ought to get to the right people. If you stickymail me the person's Zealot userid and the cat s/he is doing this in, I know how to get in touch with the right people at Looksmart. Considering Zealots can't add porn in any cat, if this stands out a mile like you say, I think that in this case we should quickly be able to say "squish". ;)

[Fiver_321]

Right - I will sticky you - I havent done that before.

ermmmm

Ok Ok - dont laugh - whats "sticky mail" mean.

(Red in the face isnt the word - sorry)

:)

[Fiver_321]

Oh I can see it - its ok rfg - I have mailed the looksmart address above.

We shall see.

[JayC]

Fiver, just click on the "Sticky Mail" link on the left margin by rfgdxm1's post. It will let you send him a private message.

[edit -- oops, you found it while I was posting!]

[martinibuster]

Wow. That's incredbible.

I don't see how someone who registered ten days can stuff the directory with porn.

I just submitted one of my fabulous awe inspiring web site creations :) and it took about a week to have it approved. Someone had to approve it.

I'm interested in finding out if this is true, if someone was able to go around the built in controls. I love the zeal database and think they have a great system out there.

[Fiver_321]

Its true,

Does this mean then that the person "above" the offesive spammer is also contributing to the admission of the porn?

And in-turn, is there someone above that person aswell.

Cheers
Fiver.

[rfgdxm1]

There are cats at Zeal martinibuster where one can become Zealot with 75 points. One can get up to 75 points with as little as having 10 sites you have submitted appproved by others. Just raid the ODP for suitable non-commercial sites to add to Zeal, and submit them. Once you get enough approved, become a Zealot and engage in abuse. What surprises me is that their isn't some internal control that would mean some editor wouldn't double check early self-approved submissions. It is possible though Fiver_321 spotted this almost immediately after it happened. Thus, maybe the Looksmart editors just hadn't caught it yet on their own. Looks like the person's big mistake here is that "daft schmuck got greedy and stands out a mile!" If so, the next person who looked at the cat would have immediately known something was wrong.

[rfgdxm1]

>Does this mean then that the person "above" the offesive spammer is also contributing to the admission of the porn?

No. You'd need to send me the specifics and I check the transaction logs. However, a single person who knew exactly how Zeal works and all the angles could do this sort of thing quickly after joining. AFAICT, Zeal doesn't have as good of internal controls as the ODP.

[Fiver_321]

Hey

rfg, how do I know it wasnt you? I'm not saying it is - as I havent got a clue who it is, but from my point of view, I will be telling you the magic words in a sticky.

That could be dangerous for my own business, as I also (in a legit fashion) promote the words of mister Zeal Spammer through standard seo.

I hope you dont take offence - as I read a lot of your posts in here and the odds of you being Mr Zeal Spammer are zilche by the seems of things.

Its just that bl**dy trust thing!

I'm probably just being paranoid - and there is no such thing as justified paranioa.!

[cornwall]

Fiver_321

You have been given a number of suggestions, with both an email address at zeal and how rfgdxm1 is prepared to help you.

If you do not wish to follow either of these routes, then I doubt that there is much more we can do for you.

[rfgdxm1]

It wouldn't make a difference if it were me. ALL transactions are logged. There is no way that I could change things back *and* erase all records about what I did in the first place. In fact, logs showing that I tried such a cover-up would be compelling evidence against me. If I were the spammer, by not trying to cover things up I could try the explanation this was a "trojan horse" spam effort. A trojan horse spam is where a perfectly legit site is submitted, which is then replaced after it is added with a porn site, etc. Also, if you are in Zeal you can look up my editor profile using my Zealot name of "rfgdxm". From comparing that with my profile here at WW, it is obvious we are the same people. Unless this spam is happening in some of my cats, then in isn't me.

And, good point cornwall. WW isn't the Zeal spam report system. His best technique might be to report such to as many people as possible, on the theory that this increases the chance that it won't get lost somewhere in the shuffle.

[Mike_Mackin]

>good point cornwall. WW isn't the Zeal spam report system.

SO TRUE but it is refreshing to read a thread that doesn't involve dmoz bashing ;)

[rfgdxm1]

ROFL Mike. ;) For some possible good ODP news, according to a source of mine Google responded to someone who e-mailed them asking when Google expected to be able to update the Google directory with the latest RDF dump, and Google replied that they expect to be able to do this before the next Google dance. Thus, if true we should see the Google directory updated in the next 2 weeks or so. Obviously good news for those who have had sites added to the ODP since the last RDF, which IIRC was way back in September. Of course, if your site was dropped from the ODP since then...

[WindSun]

Fiver, I suggest you try the alt.conspiracy newsgroup.

"it is refreshing to read a thread that doesn't involve dmoz bashing ;) .."

I just could not think of anything really quick to say :D

[Fiver_321]

Hi,

Thanks, rfg. On the trojan front, just for interest, the actual page names included are/include the offensive words.

cornwall - i'm just figuring things out, its a hard choice my options are as follows :-

1. Report and have the spam sites dumped, thus restoring my Inktomi listing for the same words to the top ten. This would risk spreading my keywords about.

2. Join in the fun and spam out zeal myself, as the spammer is bound to come back - if I can rank better than those pages - I am on a winner.

Flippin heckers.

[rfgdxm1]

>Thanks, rfg. On the trojan front, just for interest, the actual page names included are/include the offensive words.

I guess subtlety wasn't this spammers game. ;) Although, because of the way Zeal works this tends to be necessary. In the case of the ODP, the name of the game with trojan sites is they are usually going for the Google PageRank of the ODP link. Any traffic from those using the directory itself is just seen as gravy. However, with Zeal/Looksmart sites pop to the top at MSN and such because your search matches keywords in the title/description. Thus, if a porn spammer gets a site listed in Zeal as "Sue's Widget Sales", with an appropriate description for a widget seller, this doesn't do them much good.

[cornwall]

refreshing to read a thread that doesn't involve dmoz bashing

Godwin's Law states
"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."

Perhaps there is a corollary to Godwin's Law that states that the longer a thread is at WebmasterWorld, then the probability of it ending in ODP bashing approaches one!

[steveb]

cornwall's law. clip and save.

[rfgdxm1]

I happen to be a serious Usenet rat, and the Godwin's Law analogy really doesn't work. The reason is that the assumption with Godwin's Law is that pretty much everyone considers the Nazi's the ultimate evil. With the ODP, webmaster's opinion about it is highly variable. For someone whose website manages to get listed quickly in the ODP with an appealing description, they tend to think the ODP is the bee's knees. As for other sites having problems getting listed, such webmasters likely see this as a good thing. Perhaps even thinking the riff-raff are being kept out. Of course, those who can't get sites in the ODP think it sucks. Kinda like those whose sites come up really high on Google SERPs think Google is doing a great job, and those whose sites are buried in the SERPs think Google has a lousy algo.

[kevinpate]

Morph the magic thread change
Lived on my screen
and frolicked in the pixel squares
swapping spam with ODP

Little spam reporter
knew not what he unleashed
a simple mention of porn spam and out comes bash fav ODP

[cornwall]

rfgdxm1

I see that you are an Expert Level Zealot, a fairly senior Editor of 5000 site cats in ODP and now I learn, a serious Usenet rat.

Out of idle curiosity, I just wondered what you did in your spare time ;)

[kevinpate]

Why, in the spare time, rfdgxm1 answers Q's at webmasterworld of course

When he sleeps, now that's a whole nuther question 8^)

[John_Caius]

Just to put things in context:

ODP seniority is best defined by those who have been granted special privileges such as editall or meta for having demonstrated excellent editing and mentoring skills across broad segments of the directory. Given that many of the most senior editors in the ODP have between 50,000 and 100,000 edits to their name and editalls upwards have all the sites in the directory (over 3.8 million) within their editing scope, a total pool of 5000 sites is actually not very big.

If you want the views of senior ODP editors on a particular issue then several editalls and metas populate this forum and are very willing to contribute to discussions.

:)

[rfgdxm1]

>Out of idle curiosity, I just wondered what you did in your spare time ;)

All the drugs that I can do. ;) Not really, but I wish.

[Fiver_321]

So - Ive had the spamming monkeys listings removed from zeal. When I list them now on the transaction history, they show as being removed. When I view them under a search within zeal they show as being in "no categories"

Does anyone know how long it takes before they are removed from MSN, as they are still appearing.

Is there a normal delay in changes which are made to zeal taking effect on msn - like there is on DMOZ to Google - oooopss sorry - I forgot that we shouldnt mention that "feed".

[Dynamoo]

I believe that the Zeal data takes 24 hours to get into the main Looksmart directory, so maybe about the same for MSN.