Locked?!

1. It has Adult, X-rated content. If it does your lens will get locked and deleted.

2. Spam, the noun. Spam the noun is content on your lens that looks like spam. Examples: reappropriated and uncredited content from other sites or lenses; cut and pasted, uncurated content; tag stuffing--jamming a bunch of tags into a module or title, hoping to trick search engines; and more.

3. Lenses on one of our SquidDon't topics. Be sure to read up on topics that Squidoo just doesn't allow lenses on, like gambling lenses, pharmaceutical sales, credit card debt, ringtones, some affiliate networking sites and products and more. Read more here.

4. Spamming, the verb. This is an aggressive act of forcing your lens on someone without permission. Perhaps you've been reported for spamming a Squidoo Group, Guestbook, lensmaster, or someone off the site, like a blogger. If your lens is only locked, you're lucky. We usually delete those accounts entirely. Read up on Squidoo's Zero Tolerance policy.

5. Yikes! Someone has reported your lens for having illegal content, for plagiarizing, or for violating a copyright. Squidoo is a fair harbor platform that doesn't check or endorse the content that is put on lenses. As the lensmaster, you're responsible for the content. Likewise, with nearly 1,000,000 pages on Squidoo, we can't mediate every battle. So we'll probably just lock your lens if we get serious copyright or legal complaints about it. The good news is you can avoid that hassle easily: Don't copy. Don't steal. Don't quote content without crediting it to the original source.

6. You're running a hate lens. There's no room here for hate, sorry. Sure, you can write reviews of products and services you don't like. Sure, you can have whatever opinions you want. This is not a censored happy wonderland. But hate lenses? You know those when you see them. These are lenses specifically ripping on another person by name. Lenses that are just there to make someone else feel bad. Sorry, we'll lock 'em or delete 'em if we find them.

7. Any TOS violation, really. Getting featured on Squidoo, in search results, and to our community is a privilege. If you abuse anything in our Terms of Service, you'll probably have your account deleted instead.

8. Copying someone else's lens. Guess what: In this one rare case, we know who got there first. We can see when content was written. So if you think you're just gonna copy someone else's successful lens: think again.

If you've read all the material on this page, including our SquidDon't spam topics that aren't allowed on Squidoo, and you've convinced that your lens should be unlocked...

... then here's how you request a second review! Follow these steps or we might not be able to process your request very quickly. Thanks.

Step 1. Send us a note (locked at squidoo.com) with a link to the lens (or lenses) that got locked, and explain why you think they should be unlocked.

Step 2. Sending this information via a blog post or to a Squidstaffer via Twitter or Facebook or direct email won't be read and won't get your lens reviewed.

Step 3. It will take anywhere from 1 to 15 days to review your request. If we agree your lens should get unlocked, we'll do it and send you a note to let you know. If you don't hear back from us, assume that it is going to remain locked. Sorry.

Step 4. Please know that when your lens is locked, this just means it's locked from public view. It's not deleted. BUT if the lens stays locked for over 30 days, then it will get deleted entirely.

Usually, you know a good page when you see it. Kind of like a first crush. Your heartbeat speeds up and you smile a little and think: wow, this is good. Maybe you even get a little jealous that you didn't make it!

On the flip side, you also know a junky or spammy page when you see it. Even if you can't put it into words, you feel like the page is acting badly, or selling selfishly, or is half-empty or packed with tags and keywords or other search engine trickery (that doesn't work).

There's something to be said for editorial gut instinct.

So these guidelines are here to help do just that-- guide you--in your search for making great lenses...and NOT making lenses that will get locked.

'Cause that's a hassle for us, but far more of a hassle for you when your lens gets locked or deleted.

And just so you know, since we're all real people and not computers and algorithms, we reserve the right to fall back on "you know spam when you see it" when all other guidelines fail.

Thanks for reading about our locking policy. Squidoo relies on our community of members and volunteers to help us keep it a clean well-lighted place.

We hope your lens didn't get locked in error, but if it did, and you sent us a note, chances are we'll unlock it swiftly. We hope you'll understand that we'd rather have a handful of false positives than a siteful of bad stuff.