Monday, August 29, 2005

Splog Reporter

I discovered another Anti-Splog site, Splog Reporter. Not real clear on what they do with reported splogs, but I assume they report them to the appropriate places to get them shut down. I just wish they were a bit more informative.

They even have a Firefox extention to make the process much easier. It works, but there are some minor bugs to work out of the system. The extention button that you can add to your toolbar does not match the size of existing buttons if you are using small icons. It looks fine otherwise. And it does not adjust the placement of the text depending on the toolbar. When adding it to my Web Developer toolbar (where text labels are to the right of the icon) it doesn't fit in either.

I also don't like how they added Report Splog to the top of the context (right click) menu. I am used to having Back or Open in New Window at the top. They also added themselves to the top of the Tools menu. If every extention author put themselves at the top of every menu Firefox would be useless. They should be put where it goes with existing menu content.

The form that you fill in does keep your information for next time. I would hate to have to fill it in every time. But where they ask for "Splog Found Using" they default back to IceRocket, which I have never heard of (remember I am not really a blogger, just a wiki user with a blog). They should default to a blank. I just submitted 4 or 5 splogs and most I realized later were probably marked as IceRocket. They don't even give the option of Blogspot's Next Blog ring, you have to choose other.

But worst of all, when you first fill in the form it is set to signing you up to a newsletter. I assume it is a perfectly good antispam newsletter. But I just don't like sites that make it easy to sign up to any newsletter by accident.

I do like how they work the reporting system though. They rank reporters, by accuracy and number I suppose. If chongqed's spam submissions ever got really high that would be a good idea for us too. But it requires some way to identify users. I know some spam fighters perfer not to use email addresses even on spam fighting sites.

Overall I like the idea. It is still pretty new so a few kinks are expected. I am sure they will get things worked out.

Comments:
We are a blog search engine.

Blake Rhodes
IceRocket.com
Edit  
Thanks Blake. Not too long after I posted I saw a link there. Like I said, I am not much of a blogger. It does look like a good search engine.
Edit  
Post a Comment

<< Home