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Domain blocking: How many votes does it take?

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    • CommentAuthorsradmin
    • CommentTimeOct 16th 2008
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    How many votes does it take to get a domain tag approved?
    • CommentAuthorsradmin
    • CommentTimeOct 16th 2008 edited
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    As a user I am unimpressed with the whole process of voting domains into catagories. The system is idealistic and altruistic but not practical. I don't have the time to review and vote on 2.1 million domains. There has got to be a better way to get the domains through the catagory clasification process.
  3.  permalink
    Additionally a lot of those tags are plain WRONG. For example people tend to vote domains into advertising / adware if those are displaying a great amount of ads. I'm thinking of turning away from opendns again - at least for content filtering it's close to useless, sadly.
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  5.  permalink
    Administrator
    @sradmin - The number of votes varies depending on the category. Furthermore, users who vote more accurately and more often have a heavier weight count. If you have a domain that you need blocked, and cannot wait for it to be tagged, you can simply add it to the individual block list in your account.

    @myuseraccountname - If you can provide me with some examples of domains incorrectly categorized I would be happy to look them over. I do not think our content filtering is useless at all. I actually hear quite the contrary on a daily basis. Of course, I am more than willing to address any issues that might arise, as with any system, it is not perfect. We do have checks-and-balances in place to avoid any mis-categorized domains. Feel free to email any you might come across to daniel at opendns dot and I will look at them promptly.
  6.  permalink
    Ah, maybe I didn't take enough time to detail my statement - it sounded a bit strange I guess. Just to clear that up: I do not plan to leave opendns or to not use it. I can see the mechanism of the system and I'm working to make it better by submitting my lists as we speak. I try to help as much I can but I ended up with having a lot of whitelists because of mistagged domains already or turning filters off.

    Let me say this straight: the system is nice and fast (that's why I'm using it) but the mechanism is not perfect and probably never will be. I'll explain why this happens and give you an example:

    We see almost only dynamic sites today and it becomes more difficult for users to actually differentiate between content and ads or external services.

    What I observe is that there are a lot of votes where people take a look at a site, see some ads or even dangerous looking ads and automatically classify the site as an ad/malware site.

    The web is what is is because of it's diversity and complexity within sites. A site can easily contain 3 main elements which do not harmonize at all; e.g. selling used cars, having a chat and profiles and most likely (definitely) a portal.
    There is much more to it but those two elements make it almost impossible to merge business, home and enterprise users. E.g. the home user selecting "chat" as a filter to protect his child will end up with many obstacles that essentially will cause him turning it off again. Almost every modern site has a social / chat / profile or even dating aspect these days. The web lives from "interconnecting" - it's a web after all, not a thin string. This trend even grows due to dynamically inserted


    Actually top candidates can be found among those sites where users are often left unsure. Of course, many of those proposed categories have been denied by moderators but they can only base their decisions on the available categories and they can't take synergies into account.


    Take a look at what is going on with http://yahoo.com or http://reuters.com (news media) or http://gamecopyworld.com (games / software technology) and you'll see what I mean.

    Out of privacy reasons I'd rather not state the domains I'm having trouble with here - I flagged those in question for review and I think that is the correct way it should be done.
    However, projects like the wikipedia taught us one thing - which is that they can be very biased at times.

    Eventually the system will stabilize at some point. If it keeps building a decent staff then it will. I'm actually looking forward to it (my home router right now is a Draytek Vigor 2910vgi which features content filtering from SurfControl) because it appears to be growing into a free alternative for (semi)professional filtering. (since it can be easily circumvented)
    I just hope users and mods will be able to keep up with the flood of categories that still need to be defined and refined. ( see here http://ideabank.opendns.com/story.php?title=Hackerwarez_category-1 for example )




    @Marcusburge
    thanks for the links :)
    • CommentAuthorsradmin
    • CommentTimeOct 20th 2008
     permalink
    dgifford,
    Here is the problem with that whole idea of whiltelists and blacklists. Currently there are over 13000 proxy web sites currently up for vote. How am I going to blacklist all those sites while they are still under review? I serriously doubt anyone has that kind of time.
  8.  permalink
    Administrator
    @myuseraccountname, sradmin -


    I apologize for not getting back with you sooner, as I have been out of the office a few days.

    We are always open to suggestions on how to improve the system. As I said, we know that it is not perfect. However, we are willing to make improvements and fix issues when and where they arise.

    If either of you would like to discuss this in more detail, you can always email me at daniel at opendns dot com.

    Also, we would like to add some new moderators to Domain Tagging. If either of you would be interested please let me know.
    • CommentAuthorsa7733
    • CommentTimeOct 22nd 2008
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    I agree with 'myuseraccountname', there are sites blocked that really are 'harmless' and are being blocked by people who just may not enjoy said sites. You can scroll thru the ones up for voting and see that they are plenty of anti sports, hunting, cars, movie reviews, and daily news sites. I think when a page is blocked - the people who had it blocked should be made available to explain to the rest of us. And yes, you have a few who have nothing else to do but sit around and vote to block block block block all the day long.
    • CommentAuthorraidzx
    • CommentTimeOct 29th 2008
     permalink
    agreed sa7733, there has to be a better system.

    http://www.raidz.net

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This discussion has been inactive for longer than 30 days, and is thus closed.