Post
by alphacentauri » Sun May 19, 2013 6:09 am
<quote user="vednier">
Mistakes with Mass rating tools is unavoidable. For example, when you use some semiautomated tools to gather domains from known aggregators (for example, i do that on HYIP monitoring sites) you always getting one or two good domains in list of hundreds bad domains. Its sad, yes, but its price you need to pay for fighting scam.
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If it is your site getting the low rating, you don't care that hundreds of other sites were rated accurately. I have serious disagreements about the attitude that fighting scam sites is so important that good sites can be sacrificed as collateral damage. Even a low rate of inaccuracy is magnified by the fact that the scam sites usually don't stay around long, but the legitimate sites continue to bear the effects of negative ratings for a couple years.
Whatever method you are using to gather lists of sites, you need a double check on the resulting lists. If you use an automated means to gather the domain names, then use a second method to confirm they are copies of the same web template, for instance. Whatever source you base your list on, there should be a way of confirming all those sites that is independent of the first source. Otherwise, yes, you do have to visit the sites manually to confirm them.
If you want all the effort you're expending to have the effect you're looking for -- to warn people who might otherwise be fooled by a scam site -- WOT needs to be reliable enough that unsophisticated internet users are going to install it. False positives make people less likely to install. Your few inaccurate ratings can make your hundreds of accurate ratings unheard, like speaking to an empty auditorium.