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When you signed up to publish content on the Squidoo platform, you agreed to the Squidoo TOS, and official and well-publicized supplements to the TOS like this.

As a platform for user-generated content (and a free and open and very successful one, at that), we share the challenge that many other UGC and social sites have: How to explain, interpret and enforce the various Do’s and Dont’s of topics and behavior permissible in the community.

As the site grows and we get millions and millions of lenses, there is a natural ebb and flow of bad trends that show up.  For a few months it was an influx of lenses from one ‘lose belly fat’ affiliate program or another coming to Squidoo to post copied and pasted content that was not only not unique, it was also a scam. Another month it was a problem with reverse phone lookup topics that were clearly just trying to game a system.  Then that trend dies down, and another jumps into its spot. And so on.  It’s a natural, known, anticipated byproduct of running any user-generated content site.

As such, we are constantly refining a moving target, always in an effort to keep the site free of spam, plagiarism, illegal content and worse.

Last night and today we ran one of our regular, periodic scans (automated and human both) for TOS violations.  When dealing with this much content, it’s inevitable that some upstanding lenses get caught in the crossfire and get locked by mistake. We’re very keen on making sure that you have a channel through which to notify us, and that we read through every report to make sure no false positives get stuck.

So while it may feel like an erratic process, and I can certainly empathize with those few dozen of you who get hassled by an incorrectly and temporarily locked lens, I can also assure you that there is a very fine and reasonable science that goes into what we’re doing. There’s strategy, testing, refinement, and we listen to feedback.

I’d encourage everyone to spend time looking at their own rosters of lenses, regardless of whether any of yours got locked today or not.  Take 10 minutes every few months to give them a good hard look, keeping this Go HUMAN post in mind, this Reminder post about unique content, and this review of some of our biggest SquidDon’t policies.  Those 3 resources will stand you in amazing stead for a fruitful Squidoo life.

And here’s a bonus roundup of tips for real overachievers.

Thanks for your work creating some of the best content anywhere online, and for helping us make Squidoo an ever-growing, ever-improving, ever-proud community.

Megan