NEWSFLASH! A Squidoo Policy Update and living addendum to the TOS

We're promoting, enforcing, and living by the following point of view:

Squidoo is open to anyone who wants to use it. Just like blogs are. Just like Wordpress and Tumblr and Twitter are. We believe everyone deserves the chance to share their ideas, recommendations and opinions, and that the web is better for it. But in ever-open environment, there winds up being good stuff, and not so good stuff.

We're doubling down our efforts to help you make good stuff, via education tools, newbie programs, an ever-growing Giant Squids program, and constantly developing valuable new publishing features.

At the same time, we're making the not so good stuff a little harder to create. And the bad stuff, the really useless, really wasteful pages, and especially harmful pages, those don't stand a chance here.

We don't allow X-rated lenses on Squidoo. Most significantly because:

1. X-rated content is unfortunately more attractive to spammers than to participatory readers and good content creators.
2. While X-rated lenses tend to get decent traffic, they make practically no money for the community or the people who run them. Advertisers on our site also avoid these pages. It's not a practical financial move to sustain these lenses any longer.
3. We get a disproportionate number of DMCA take down notices and spam reports
and various legal complaints about X-rated lenses. Our team is just too small to justify this added work, and we'd rather focus our spirit and energy on the good stuff.

Please don't try publishing X-rated lenses here. We'll just take them down. Thanks.

Rise above the junk. Junk is what happens when people try to take a shortcut. When they copy&paste content over and over again. When they pump out empty lenses that they never improve. When they make lenses on topics that are clearly just out to scam (if not necessarily spam) someone. When they publish on topics that have worn out their welcome on the web because of aggressive and selfish affiliate programs.

Sure, quality is all a matter of taste. Sure, one person's junk is another person's treasure. Sure, you might not like the same lenses I like, and vice versa.

But there are still some standards.

We've posted about this before, and a more extensive but not exhaustive list of junk topics is here.

Junk topics are topics that have demonstrated an overwhelming attraction to spammers, like (just for example):

Free movie downloads.
Hoodia Gordoni.
Acai berry sales.
Toenail fungus sales.
LoseBellyFat!
Pharmaceutical sales.
WoW gold farming.
Forex reports.
Adult content.

And on and on.

You know it when you see it. In fact, this stuff can be so bad that most people just skip calling it junk and go straight to calling it spam.

So, we're making it a lot harder to publish lenses on junk topics. We will also be retroactively locking existing lenses that exist on these topics.

Chances are, your lenses on these topics will get locked, no matter how developed and highly-rated. And we'll be far less inclined to unlock those lenses for you.

So our best recommendation: Don't bother with topics like these. There's plenty of stuff to write about and recommend online without having to go near the edges of what we've got going here. Thanks.

**Photo credit Bob Jagendorf on Flickr

Making a lens to promote or sell something is a terrific endeavor. It's a big part of why a lot of our people are here.

But junk lenses are often described by the relentless number of outbound links to the same exact domain. Being overly promotional rarely works. "Buy here buy here buy here!" never does. Whereas a few curated, commented and spotlighted products or links are most often followed.

So to help you focus your lenses, and sell even better--and to help surfers find our pages more useful overall--we're introducing a limit to the number of outbound links to the same domain that you can have on a lens. If you have more than 9 links to the same domain on a single lens, your lens could get locked for review.

That doesn't mean you're limited to just 9 outbound links total on your whole lens... just 9 to the same exact domain. Any links generated by Squidoo modules (like the Amazon module or the Wikipedia module or the eBay module) don't have a limit, nor do feed modules (like the RSS module or the Zazzle module) or modules that your readers post in (like Guestbook and Plexo and Duel modules). It's up to you to moderate the links your readers post on your lenses and decide if *they're* being overly promotional on *your* lens.

Furthermore, if your lens does have more than 9 links to the same domain, excepting the cases above, and it gets locked -- you'll be able to easily request a review of your lens. Chances are it could get greenlighted forevermore, and you will be free of the limit. Chances are also good it could stay locked. So if you'd rather not wait through that review period, pare down your links to the same domain. We're not just trying to be stingy for no reason: less really is more.

Last, and of course, we have TONS of domains that are whitelisted out of this (meaning, you can have as many outbound links to them as you like), as well as sites that are blacklisted (meaning, even a single link to that domain will get your lens locked).

Two special cases of note: Allposters and Clickbank. Lots of lensmasters use Allposters.com to punctuate their lenses with photos, as well as to make money from the Allposters affiliate program. For the most part, you do it fairly and well. You don't take advantage of your readers and you properly cite your sources. So Allposters is on the Whitelist for now and you can have as many outbound links as you like. But a word of caution not to overdo it.

Similarly, many lensmasters find personal success with their Clickbank lenses. However, the number of people using Clickbank and spamming their lenses around the web is ruining it for the good guys. So while we're not blacklisting Clickbank on lenses, we're also not Whitelisting it right now. This means that the "No more than 9 outbound links to the same domain" limit applies to you. So be selective with your outbound linking and don't overdo it.

**Photo from presta on Flickr.

Sometimes it feels like the better you do, the more you put yourself out there, the more people want to snag your stuff.

This can be a great thing. If you're out to spread ideas, you should absolutely encourage people to quote and excerpt and link to your pages and content. And most people will, happily and fairly.

But if you find a lens that you can demonstrate beyond doubt has clearly ripped off someone else's content, word for word, without credit, please let us know.

If we get a report that your lens is the one plagiarising, we'll unpublish your lens.

Lensmasters are responsible for the content they put on their lenses. As the hosts of a user-generated content site, it's not up to us to mediate disputes and determine copyright. So if there's an argument about the origin of the content of your lens, it's up to you to handle it directly. Otherwise your lens will remain unpublished and eventually get deleted for good.

Even if a lens isn't plagiarizing, it could still get unpublished for having a high amount of aggressively duplicated content in relation to very little original content. Read more about this here: www.squidoo.com/original-vs-duplicate-content.

Please read the SquidDon't lens about topics we can't support on Squidoo, regardless of how original or unoriginal they may appear. There you will also read about our stance against affiliate program lenses that are basically engaging in "article spinning" and don't contain original, authentic content.

Even if you have a lens that has been published live for a while and even earning royalties, previous publication does not intend that we accept or approve or endorse the topic. It's entirely possible that a lens will get unpublished even after it's been active for a long time. This is because our systems for finding these types of lenses are always evolving and improving, and because we reserve the right to unpublish or remove any lens that violates our rules over time.

A good rule of thumb is this: Ask yourself if your lens is supporting an affiliate program; if your lens is using content that someone else gave you to add to the page; if your lens is trying to make money by pushing readers to an affiliate program; if your lens is really on a topic that you're interested in, have direct experience with, and isn't JUST trying to turn a sale. Once you answer these questions honestly to yourself, you'll probably have your own answer about whether you should spend your time trying to publish those kinds of lenses here or not.