Problématiques exprimées sur la Beta AboutUs
| Titre
|
Problématiques Exprimées
|
Réponse
|
| Information de Contact
|
- I don't want my private contact information shown
- Even if I "edit it away" it still remains in the history files
- Worse yet you're showing a map to my house!
- You shouldn't show whois information
|
- Current Solution - OptOut of the prépopulation process by sending an e-mail to
 to remove both your page and its history, and reinstate it with a shorter page that doesn't include contact information and other descriptive material. Example of an OptOut Page and a Non OptOut Page.
- Future Improvement - The above will become automated so that you will be able to hit a button on a page, it will then send an e-mail to the whois contact so that the page may be Opted Out.
- Note that by opting out we will respect your wishes to not pre-populate a wiki page about your site, but we do look forward to people commenting on a non-prepopulated page where they can describe your site, share opinions and and categorize it.
- If possible, AboutUs.org will make available a map that corresponds to a physical address. The map contains the same information in a graphical format as the physical address contains in text form. We use commercially available software to convert textual addresses to graphical maps. Mapping addresses is common on the Internet, and we are not performing any function that Internet users cannot also accomplish at any major search engine or mapping site.
- Domain name ownership, registration and related contact information, also known as whois data, is made publicly available by domain name registrars and registries. This information is published time and again on the Internet, such as at these popular whois aggregators. Some examples of sites with domain name registration information are shown below:
- At AboutUs, you can OptOut of having your information shown. That is not generally possible with the other sites listed above. If you would like to prevent your information from showing up anywhere, you may wish to contact your domain name registrar and purchase a privacy service which most of the majors domain name registrars offer. That doesn't deal with historical information which may already be out there, but at least it deals with current information on a go forward basis.
|
| Copyright/Trademark
|
- You took my copyrighted information without permission.
- Worse yet, after scraping my copyrighted information, there isn't even an attribution.
- You've also taken my logo or trademark without my permission.
|
- What we've scraped is a snippet of information used to help identify the site; much the same way search engines scrape, store and present information. Legally, this falls under "fair use" and search engines do this regularly for every page of a site. AboutUs only looks at the "About Us", About, Main page or similarly named top level pages. It does not spider randomly through your entire site. We do not publish text or images from a site for the purpose of providing the text or images, but rather we make them available to provide information about the site which provides them. We cannot accurately provide complete information about a site without tracking a small amount of information from the site itself.
- We have added an attribution line ("Excerpted from the website") and indented and italicized the descriptive text so that it will stand out more. This is how all new site creation is being treated. We'll be going backwards to do the same for sites that we've already created pages for.
- In addition, the original bot got up to three paragraphs of text and we now get a maximum of one paragraph of text, and similarly, we are retroactively cutting down previously created pages.
- Trademarks and Logos are used to identify the source of a web site, domain name, or content. We grab a trademark or logo to reduce consumer confusion by showing the consumer who is the source of information reviewed here.
|
| Robots.txt
|
- Does the system respect Robots.txt?
|
- For a short period after our launch, our code did not include a Robots.txt filter. However, now the AboutUsBot respects Robots.txt. Additionally, we are now re-processing pages that have not yet been altered, which is the majority of the site, with the new AboutUsBot.
|
| ICANN Requirements
|
- Doesn't showing my whois contact information violate ICANN rules?
|
- According to Sections II.F.1 and Sections II.F.5 of ICANN's Registrar Accreditation Agreement
- Registrar shall not impose terms and conditions on use of the data provided except as permitted by an ICANN-adopted policy. Unless and until ICANN adopts a different policy, Registrar shall permit use of data it provides in response to queries for any lawful purposes except to:
- (a) allow, enable, or otherwise support the transmission of mass unsolicited, commercial advertising or solicitations via e-mail (spam); or
- (b) enable high volume, automated, electronic processes that apply to Registrar (or its systems).
- We do neither (A) or (B), and are therefore not subject to additional terms and conditions on the use of the whois data. Registrar shall permit use of data it provides for ANY lawful purpose other than that.
- By registering a domain name, registrants (domain owners) consent to all the rules and policies that their registrar agreed to above. We are using the contact information in a lawful manner.
|
| Editability
|
- Anyone can edit my information
- Now I have to watch my listing to make sure no one has vandalized it
|
- Yes, this is a wiki and it is allows people to edit the pages. As a comparison to the blogging world, wikis and blogs both allow anyone to publish an article on any other site they choose and anyone else to comment. The main difference is in moderation. In the blogging world, most comments require moderation before they are posted, but not all. In the wiki world, moderation is done after the fact by patrolling the "recent changes". In the wiki world, articles are collaboratively edited, which generally leads to quality articles over time. We assume good faith on the part of the editors, but pages are sometimes vandalized and when that happens, we do our best to remove the vandalism quickly.
- Future Improvement - Currently logged in users may "watch" their own pages and/or as many other pages as they'd like. In the future, we will add the ability to receive an e-mail alert when pages you are watching have changed. Hopefully this will help people feel more at ease.
|
| OptOut
|
- The system should be OptIn not OptOut
|
- We believe the system is significantly more valuable when users can traverse a large number of sites by topic or relation, and comment on sites without the need to create a page from scratch.
|
| Libel and Slander
|
- Who is there to protect me from someone else slandering or vandalizing the page about my website?
|
- RecentChange Patrol - We review the changes made to the site on a daily basis and revert vandalism.
- You can set up a "WatchList" of articles to see what is happening on any pages you'd like. E-mail alerting is coming soon also.
- Future Feature - We are planning to release an Owner contributed area where website owners are allowed to edit information pertaining to their domains. This area will be prominently displayed on the page so readers know what is there comes directly from the website owner and can differentiate that from edits made by the others.
|
| Spam
|
|
- unprotected e-mail addresses are often scraped off of other sites by spammers. To prevent this behavior at our site, the AboutUs prépopulation process automatically protects all e-mail addresses with a graphic presentation. Also see: ProtectEmail
- In addition, AboutUs patrols changes made to the site to revert vandalism and link spam as quickly as possible.
|
| Money Making Scam
|
- This is a blatant attempt to use my copyrighted infomation and make a worthless site whose goal is to make a quick buck with advertising
|
- Yes, we are a for profit company, but we are not a fly by night scam. We strongly believe that AboutUs will be a healthy part of the new web culture. It is a place for people to research topics of personal and professional interest, to know what others think about a given website and to simply wander the links and discover new areas of the web they are not familiar with. We warmly welcome those who wish to join us in creating such a site.
|
to remove both your page and its history, and reinstate it with a shorter page that doesn't include contact information and other descriptive material. Example of an