Identifying and Reporting Editor Abuse

• Practices Worthy of Investigation
• Self-Cooling
• Manipulation of Titles and Descriptions
• Adding Affiliate Sites
• Mass-Deletion from Unreviewed
• Deeplinks
• Editors with Multiple Accounts
• Reporting Abuse
• Conclusion

Introduction

The goal of the ODP is to create the largest, most comprehensive directory of websites. This goal is shared by the majority of its editors, unfortunately there are some whose goals contradict these, and it is these editors that need to be educated or removed to ensure the Directory's reputation will not be damaged.

This document provides an overview of common abusive tactics, and explains how to report suspected abuse.

Practices Worthy of Investigation

Abuse occurs throughout the Directory, and it is not always obvious as to where it is occurring. If you see any behaviour that you deem suspicious then please look into the logs of category and editor -- there is no harm in looking, and you may be helping to uncover abuse.

Self-Cooling

This is where editors award the 'cool' designation to sites that they are affiliated with. It is specifically prohibited in the guidelines.

'Affiliated' is generally defined as a situation where the editor has something to gain from the site's improved exposure. The most obvious case of affiliation is where the editor owns the site in question. However, other situations include, but are not limited to: the editor being related to the site owner, having worked on the design team, or a contributor of content to the site.

If you have permission in the category where a site has been self-cooled, by all means uncool it. However in addition you should report the situation to a meta editor.

Manipulation of Titles and Descriptions

Another way unscrupulous editors can make a particular site stand out is to change the title and/or description. Some tricks commonly used are:

• Attempting to take advantage of the alphabetic sorting algorithm. I.e. sites are displayed in alphabetical order, if an editor wishes for a specific site to stand out then they can use a title like 'AAAA Trout Fishing', causing the listing to be sorted to the top.
• Making the description of one site markedly different from the others in a category. For instance most sites in a category could be described with a one sentence list of their contents, but one site could have a description of a paragraph in length, using capital letters.

Basically, any method to distinguish one site from the others in the category by use of similar techniques should be considered abusive.

Adding Affiliate Sites

If an editor belongs to affiliate schemes they may try to add links that include affiliate tags so that each time the URL is accessed the editor will benefit. The URLs follow a different format for each site, however if you know what one can look like then you will have a better idea of how to identify them.

They generally contain an identification code unique to the affiliate. An example affiliate tag is http://www.netflip.com/index.jsp?referrer=urmine41 The 'urmine41' section is the affiliate's name. The same link can usually be accessed with the affiliate tag omitted, for instance: http://www.netflip.com/ this will take you to the same page, but will not benefit the affiliate.

There is no hard and fast rule for recognising such links unfortunately, but there are some pointers that may be useful. If a URL is in the form example.com/ it is almost certainly not an affiliate link, it provides no way in which to identify the tags owner. If the URL looks to contain what could be an affiliate tag, i.e. a string that contains either letters, numbers of any combination thereof, then there are some ways in which you can ascertain its true nature:

• Go to the main page of the site, which in the above example would be http://www.netflip.com/and see if you can find any evidence of an affiliate scheme in action. If you can, then check the sign-up page for details of how the affiliate URLs look.
• Go to the main page and try to search for the item, or follow internal links. For instance, if the page is about a specific hotel on a hotel site then try searching for that hotel. If the URL of the page is different after accessing it that way then there is a chance that the original link may have had an affiliate tag on it.

Mass-Deletion from Unreviewed

Some editors feel that a high number of unreviewed sites in a category is inherently bad, and choose to delete them rather than deal with them in an appropriate manner. A variation of this is when editors delete submissions that are inappropriate for their category, as opposed to attempting to find the correct category and moving the site there.

This type of abuse is alarmingly rampant, and is detrimental to the Directory's growth.

It can be detected in two main ways:

• You notice that the number of unreviewed in a category has droppped dramatically, or at a significantly faster pace than normal. (Keep in mind that this could simply be caused by a new editor in a particular sub-category or a higher level editor helping out.)
• You notice, while adding sites from Unreviewed, that they have previously been deleted. (In many cases this was appropriately done because the sites were submitted more than once; there will usually be notes left to that effect.)

Deeplinks

Adding a deeplink is not an abusive action. The abusive element occurs when deeplinks of a specific site, usually belonging to the editor, are added inappropriately.

Examples of this include:

• Adding multiple deeplinks to a specific site in the same category. This can easily be detected by the similarity in URLs. I.e. http://example.com/One , http://example.com/Two .
• Adding deeplinks to a specific site in multiple categories, when the root URL is listed in the parent category. For instance a site about a singer is listed in the appropriate category a deeplink for it discussion forum may be listed in the Chats_and_Forums category, the deeplink to its news page may be listed in the News category, and so on.
• Creating a category to hold mainly deeplinks for a specific site. This extreme case of action is sometimes referred to as creating a vanity category, i.e. one in which the editor can list sites that they are affiliated with. This is nearly always abusive.

To determine whether or not a domain is deeplinked, you can search for the host name on dmoz.org. For instance if you wanted to find out where and how http://www.example.com/ was deeplinked then you could search on 'example.com'

Remember that just because a domain is deeplinked does not necessarily indicate abuse. It is the manner in which it is linked that can be construed as abusive.

Editors with Multiple Accounts

The ODP has a policy of one account per person. One person having multiple accounts constitutes abuse.

There are some editors who are unaware of this fact, and may openly admit to having multiple accounts. However, given that in the majority of situations multiple accounts are used to further abusive agendas, there can be no exceptions.

You may notice a site (or sites), owned by a specific entity, being exclusively edited by two editors. You may also notice that a fired editor has returned under a new guise. In any case, please report your suspicions.

Reporting Abuse

If you feel that you have identified a case of abuse then you should report it. The official Abuse Report feature is linked from the bottom of your dashboard and is the preferred method of reporting your concerns. Alternatively, a list of metas who have indicated a willingness to deal with abuse reports can be found at Test/Team_Projects/AbuseBusters.

Note: Non-editors should use the Public Abuse Report System to communicate their suspicions.

When reporting suspected abuse you should include as many facts as possible that will help the investigating editor in their job.

Conclusion

Abuse is a broad concept, and as such can be difficult to clearly define or explain. Editors may use combinations of the above methods or completely new methods to abuse the Directory. Whatever the case, all editors should be on guard. Investigating cases of abusive editing is important in maintaining and protecting the integrity of the Directory. Any time dedicated to identifying abuse is time well spent.