Is Web of Trust (WOT) Still a Helpful Site?

AnneMarble

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I like the free Web of Trust add-on, and I do like the way users can rate a site based on their experiences -- sites can get low ratings based on spam, viruses and trojans, misleading information, child safety, etc.

Unfortunately, this also means that users can and do give sites low ratings because they disagree with the politics. Or because of a mistake. I've seen legitimate businesses and science journals getting the orange (or even red) donut because they were flagged for some odd reason. For example, Frontiers in Bioscience has a couple of bad ratings.

The latest odd rating I've seen is the rating for Chaosium, Inc., the RPG publisher, which is getting flagged as a Facebook virus spammer. When I rated the site myself and pointed out it was a legitimate site and posted a question on the WOT board, my rating was rated "I disagree" less than half an hour later. :rolleyes: Legitmate reviews often get voted down without explanation -- look at the votes on the reputation for the Science magazine website.

I am beginning to wonder if I should give up on WOT and try something less frustrating with site ratings I can feel more trustworthy about... Any suggestions? :D
 

robjvargas

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A free opinion is worth every penny you pay for it.

I suspect that crowd-____ed sites aren't the utopia some anticipated. Once the honeymoon ends, the site gets sort of overwhelmed by a core group, and that drives out the broader (usually more casual) users who aren't so invested in the site.

Seems to be "purt-near" universal. Eventually, the core fanatics become the loudest voices.
 

AnneMarble

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I think you have a point there. Several in fact. :) They think they are utopias, but they have Katniss hunting Divergents in the Village. ;)

In response to one of my posts, somebody said these results and this one could be causing the problems with the Chaosium site. But I don't know how useful that sort of "virus watch" site really is.

Sigh.
 

Katrar

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I used WoT for a few months in 2012. I ended up removing it precisely because so many sites had what I considered to be illogical ratings... it seemed a LOT of people used it to rate according to personal grudges or personal politics.
 

AnneMarble

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I used WoT for a few months in 2012. I ended up removing it precisely because so many sites had what I considered to be illogical ratings... it seemed a LOT of people used it to rate according to personal grudges or personal politics.
Yeah, that stuff makes the WoT less and less useful. For example, somebody on WOT labeled the Making Light blog as a hate site because they disagreed with a post about a church. I think SF blog was also flagged in the same way.

I like seeing the little WoT "donuts" because they can tell me whether or not a site is safe. It's very useful on some freeware sites because it can help be avoid accidentally clicking the ads that look like download links. (Which is why I try to stick to Gizmos Freeware to start with!) But when people give ratings for dumb reasons, that makes the ratings less trustworthy.
 

robjvargas

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For site safety (not quality ratings), I frequently use URLVoid. They query a set of Internet blacklists, and show you the results from each blacklist.

I've found that very handy.