Clean up Entrecard Contest! (24,500 Entrecard Credits)
Written on March 12th, 2009 by Andy T
The purpose of this contest is to get those bad blogs lingering around with Terms of Service or Blog Quality Standards violations out of entrecard.
Before we get started as to how you will enter and how the winner will be chosen and how the winner(s) will be rewarded…
You must dust off the old Terms of Service and Blog Quality Standards of Entrecard.
Please read them before continuing if you are not previously familiar.
To enter this contest you must:
- Be an entrecard member.
- Be familiar with the Blog Quality Standards and the Terms of Service.
- Know how to report a user for a terms of service offense.
Now, lets go through this shall we.
1. http://www.entrecard.com – Register (If you not already a user)
a. Get approved (If you are not already approved)
2. Click the ‘Blog Quality Standards’ link above.
3. First you must find a blog that has something wrong.
a. In the case of auto-audio, not english, no recent content, etc. you would find their widget, and click the entrecard logo (will take you to their profile page) located on their profile page you will find this
And enter in the reason. This can be in the form of rule number, or your worded version of the violation.
4. Here is where it gets tricky. If you do not find a widget. Now, the best way to report a blog without a widget is to back track to their profile page. (If that is how you got there) however, if they have dropped on you and the only way to go is to follow the link to their site from your inbox, you must hover and wait for a name. (This will only work in the inbox rss feed on top of your dashboard. ) Then write down the title, and go to the campaign page, search for the blog’s title, go to their profile page and report them for ‘No Widget’.
Please before you send any reports. The ‘feedback’ function will not be counted. The valid entries must be Terms of Service reports. (Theres a huge difference)
So, what determines a ‘Valid Entry’? A valid entry is an offense that is persecutable by either “Warning” or a “Deletion”.
How will you be scored? Every ‘Warning’ counts as 1 point and Every ‘Deletion’ counts as 2 points.
The winners will be rewarded by the following in the order of highest points:
- 10,000 Entrecard Credits
- 5,000 Entrecard Credits
- 2,500 Entrecard Credits
- 1,000 Entrecard Credits
- 1,000 Entrecard Credits
- 1,000 Entrecard Credits
- 1,000 Entrecard Credits
- 1,000 Entrecard Credits
- 1,000 Entrecard Credits
- 1,000 Entrecard Credits
The contest will begin : Thursday, March 12th, 2009
The winners will be announced and rewarded: Thursday, March 19th, 2009.
Entries for the contest are only valid 3/12/09-3/19/09. Any and all reports of which are incorrect or spam entries will not be counted. The winner will be decided by totalling each user’s points as mentioned above.
Sponsored by:
The moderation team
Andy T – Get the most out of EC
Beth T – Ramblings of an undisturbed mind
Matt – RaginRev
Shaunalynn – The art and science of parenting
The goal of this contest is to raise awareness of the reporting abilities, raise awareness of the blog quality standards, and help us help you help the community as a whole.
Thank you and good luck.
March 12th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Really a great contest Andy…..i would like to see these contests going regularly as this will help maintain a great high level entrecard environment and regularly keep the entrecard clean but now due to manual appproval of applications it has cleaned too much !!
March 12th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
This is great!
March 12th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
No such thing as being “cleaned too much.” The main reason for the manual process of approval is to keep the users safe. How many of you have dropped cards and received a virus notification, or spyware? Pop-up ads etc.? This is the reason. Since the beginning, users have complained about certain blogs (related to TOS, and now the Blog Quality Standards), so we’re giving you the chance to be an even bigger part of the whole Entrecard team. Plus- look at the credits being given away!
Keep in mind too, if you don’t care for a particular blog/blogger, yet the blog does not violate any rules, do not submit. I had a support ticket several weeks ago asking for us to remove a blogger because this person didn’t get along with him/her. We all have different voices-think about this before you submit. We will be reviewing each TOS Violation.
Good luck to whomever wins the credits!- this is a huge project and will give you a glimpse of what the support team handles on a daily basis.
March 12th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Hi Andy,
Do I get any credits for most likely being the one to help you think of this?
Wow great idea. Of course, it would start when one of my satellites is down and the other is crawling at dial up speed.
I think this is a wonderful idea. I’ll do my best to keep you informed!!\
And not via the feedback form okay?:-)))))
March 12th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Hey Shinade,
Unfortunately no
you’ll have to get in the top 10 to get any credits.
Thank you!
lol
March 12th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
How to find 2 websites who drop on my, are only in my drop box, but have no EC widget on their sites. They are companies selling products that slip into the EC system. They aren’t in my Dashboard RSS because I get too many drops to catch them.
March 12th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
@DragonBlogger:
Good question, I remembered this as I read your question.
If you can find them in your “Drops Inbox” page. Find their image, right click, properties, there will be something that looks like:
http://entrecard.com/t/oc/33417
Take that number on the end and plug it into:
http://entrecard.com/user_details/
This will take you to their profile page.
March 12th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
The contest sounds like a great idea. I have almost stopped dropping cards at all because the system is so full of trashy blogs that I wouldn’t even want to visit, much less drop my card on.
I hope that this improves Entrecard’s general image.
March 12th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
This is a great idea. When I am dropping via the Entrecard tool bar I have found blogs that have not posted content in almost a year and it is aggravating to visit these blogs that get neglected. I won’t drop on a blog that has been idle for 6 mo to a yr it is just not worth my time to click on the drop box.
March 12th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
@Joe FYI:
Check this thread out: “in the EC toolbar when you are on the blogs site if you click on the name of the blog right next to the “favorite” heart you will get a drop down list that you can click on to report as well…if that helps”
http://forums.entrecard.com/showthread.php?t=11529
March 12th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
What about those linked to cpcads? You can’t get to their profile ‘coz when you click their badges, it goes directly to the ad. When I reported such what I did to get the user id was to right click on the badge then click the properties. The entrecard id is then shown. Is this what we need to report then? Thanks.
March 12th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
and what about those that leadsyou to a page that says “this blog is by invitation only” (on a blogger platform)? I can get his site address but how do we report them to you since we can’t get to their profile page?
March 12th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
I believe we will be in for some problems here….your instructions on how to get to the profile by going through search doesn’t work at all! It always gives me a not found message….I can provide you with alist of the badges, their titles which I tried reaching through the search tab on the campaign page…they don’t work at all….maybe these are the spammers I have been having trouble with. Is there any other way we can report these for the contest?
March 13th, 2009 at 4:21 am
i have seen quite a number of blogs which are half english and half some other language. does that count or what??
March 13th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
I thought there is a new MOD team just for the same purpose. Whats the need of this contest??
March 13th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
So you get rewarded for turning people in?
Now if it’s a sociological study on blogger’s response to this type of contest, it’s clever and the results are pretty scary. At least to me.
@nurin: “half english and half some other language”? The respectful expression would be “another language”. It’s called a bilingual blog.
I agree that a lot of blogs are not updated anymore, others are full of advertising and no content, but I believe only a MOD team member
should browse the blogs for violations.
March 14th, 2009 at 12:47 am
I got this “You have 72 hours to remove the pop up located on your blog before it is deleted from entrecard.” today
First of all, I doesn’t know why there is a pop up suddenly at my blog, I’m trying to find out and clear it.
Can you please tell me how, if any of you know.
I really really doesn’t know, how come there is a pop up on my blog for no reason whatsoever…
March 14th, 2009 at 2:21 am
It only lasts for a week? Hm.. a challenge for me..
March 14th, 2009 at 4:54 am
Interesting contest and there’s a moderator team for it! Hmmm….
March 14th, 2009 at 5:00 am
Pardon me but I believe we can’t say that those non-English blog are trashy.
I, for example runs an English blog so I won’t be a target for this but there are non-English sites that are worth reading…
In my own opinion, there should be a leniency on this rule – I hope.
March 14th, 2009 at 5:18 am
In response to Guttu:
The contest is being held in order to get the entire community involved and the chance to win credits in doing so. As I stated previously, the EC community has been complaining about certain blogs, types of blogs, blogs that haven’t been updated etc., and as a whole, most complain, but never report. This is YOUR chance. We aren’t forcing you to participate. If any of you knew the number of tickets received daily, unrelated to the TOS/Blog Quality Standards, you would understand why it’s impossible to go through thousands of blogs, one by one, (at the same time). Communities work together. This is your community.
March 14th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Very smart way to get ris of the people who try to abuse the entrecard system
March 14th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
La Mirabelle:
EC users have always had the ability to report blogs for TOS violations. It isn’t like we’re turning everyone loose and not checking the reports. Only valid, Mod verified TOS violations are being counted. And the only way to report is via the “Report TOS Violation” link the profile page. And yes- we are going through them one by one. It’s the only way we could get users to understand- if you complain about a blog, but don’t report it, how can the mods fix the issue? We can’t, because no one will report a blog they know is violating the TOS. They just complain.
March 14th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Best. Contest. Ever.
March 14th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
What about script errors? A lot of blogs I drop on come up with a message saying “script error” I have to click it a dozen times before I can even exit the blog.
March 14th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Why only a week? I just logged in today after not doing so for a week or so. And I’m leaving on Monday for a couple of weeks. why not have this “contest” running all the time, with rewards given on a monthly basis? The crappy blog problem is an ongoing one, so why not keep after it regularly?
FWIW, I’ve turned in a lot of blogs for auto-audio and auto-video violations, using the drop-down menu at the heart icon, and they never seem to get removed. I find them over and over again. I’m not very encouraged that bad sites will be removed, based on my experience, and it is just too frustrating some times to keep at it. I’ve found myself just quitting the dropping process if I run into too many bad sites in a session.
If you want people to help you with this, you need to act on it.
March 14th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
This is quite compelling. I’m a bit short on time right now, but I’ll try and look for some entrecarders that are breaking the rules.
Though, I guess the mod team should do this work.
March 14th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Censoring or removing blogs should only be done by Entrecard – and even then only after careful consideration and a right to appeal.
This idea of asking, indeed rewarding people to criticise and potentially ban their fellow bloggers is unpleasant and the thin end of a very nasty wedge.
March 14th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
We’re just trying to get rid of the spam. We’re not asking people to criticize or ban fellow bloggers. We’re asking people to report spammers so we can round em up and kick em out.
March 15th, 2009 at 2:32 am
I like this! There have been quite a few blogs I’ve noticed as being out of date. I didn’t remember the 5 posts/3 months rule, and I honestly hadn’t even noticed the report button.
But today I found quite a few blogs with:
* No new content
* Auto music
* No widget
* Blog deleted
Question about the contest….does only the first person to report get a point? I have spent quite a bit of time reporting blogs I’ve found. I have not way of knowing if they were previously reported.
March 15th, 2009 at 5:18 am
Graham -
It depends on your definition of “spam”.
“Rounding em up and kicking em out” is all very well and there will be obvious candidates for such treatment. But sooner or later someone is going to report a blog because of its content being perceived as “offensive” or “unacceptable” and then you’ll have a problem.
Inevitably, some people with all sorts of agendas will try and use “Terms of Service” and “Quality Standards” to report blogs they don’t like or disagree with – it’s only a matter of time and I hope when it happens you’re sensible enough to reject their criticisms.
March 15th, 2009 at 9:51 am
A noble motivation, and I’ve reported many offending blogs myself in the past, but it still smacks of 1984.
March 15th, 2009 at 11:22 am
I’m an Entrecard member for a year now and I have to say most of the active blogs are exceptional. I really haven’t seen too many poor quality blogs in they system.
In addition to my blogs, I also run a human edited blog directory that gets over 100 submissions per day. We approve each individual blog and our editing software auto-detects Entrecard widget; 99% of Entrecard blogs are approved. That says something.
March 15th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Now what should happen if there is a tie for the sake of selecting winners–would the two share the prize, or would a duplicate prize be awarded?
(And BTW, I happen to be one of those who makes it a regular habit of noting, and reporting, such blogs as aren’t exactly kosher, as it were.)
March 15th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
I been dropping under random and using the EC toolbar. I tried typing in the name of the blog that don’t have any widget however it is only 25% successful. The names can’t be found, I was writing the whole name, part of the name and sometimes the url (without the .com and the likes) but still no luck.) How can you get rid of them if we can’t report it?
March 16th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
I didn’t like this at first. Then I realized that this would only make my blogs stronger…so I abandoned entrecard on some blogs and started seriously writing better blogs. We’ll see how it all works out. Thanks to the tos violations on my sites I had an epiphany of a new site and it’s rocking hard right now.
March 20th, 2009 at 12:17 am
So….do we have winners yet?
March 20th, 2009 at 9:45 am
Congrat to you Andy..:)