ConcernsFAQ

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Frequently Expressed Concerns regarding AboutUs.org.
 If your concern is not addressed here, please feel free to add your concern to the Concerns Page or contact AboutUs.

Contents

Contact Information

Concerns Expressed

  • My contact information is incorrect
  • I don't want my private contact information shown
  • Even if I "edit it away" it still remains in the history
  • Worse yet you're showing a map to my house!
  • You shouldn't show whois information

Response

  • The contact information on an AboutUs page about a website is obtained from the publicly available whois information that is collected when you register a domain name. What you think of as private may not actually be private (More on whois below.).
  • AboutUs.org is a wiki which means that everyone can make constructive edits once they log in, including removing or updating contact information.
  • 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 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.
  • The contact information is what creates the map. Once you update the address, the map should automatically update as well. We recommend using at least some minimal address information like the city & country so that the AboutUs Community can see where in the world you’re located. This is a key component of the WikiWay and a great way to help build a community of RealPeople.
  • Check out the MapMashup for more information on dealing with maps.
  • 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

Concerns

  • You took my copyrighted information without permission.
  • You've also taken my logo or trademark without my permission.

Response

  • 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. The AboutUs Bot 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 an attribution line ("Excerpted from the website") and descriptive text is indented and italicized so that it will stand out.
  • Our bot now takes a maximum of one paragraph of text.
  • 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 on AboutUs.
  • Website titles, descriptions, and URLs are all also covered under fair use.

If you would like your page not to contain the Bot scrape please see No Bot Policy, and also note that you can edit the page as you see fit.

Robots.txt

Concerns

Response

ICANN Requirements

Concerns

  • Doesn't showing my whois contact information violate ICANN rules?

Response

  • is not a whois violation
  • 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.
  • In addition to being lawful, we respect privacy concerns and provide a simple way to have the whois information removed. Simply email from an email address @ the domain name in question and the whois information & history will be scrubbed.

Editability

Concerns

  • Anyone can edit my information
  • Now I have to watch my listing to make sure no one has vandalized it

Response

  • Yes, this is a wiki and it is allows people who login to edit the pages.
  • This type of collaborative editing leads to high quality pages over time.
  • This type of editability may be unfamiliar but it is very effective.
  • While some internet publishing (like weblogs) require moderation before they are posted (or not at all!) In the wiki world, moderation is done after the fact by patrolling the recent changes.
  • A core value of the WikiWay is to AssumeGoodFaith. This means that we believe everyone who makes an edit or creates a page is doing so to provide informative, educational and accurate information--that they are trying to make constructive edits and are interested in doing good and building things.
  • Sometimes, however, pages are vandalized and when that happens we do our best to remove the vandalism promptly.
  • We patrol every edit because we want to create a high quality, valuable, community resource.
  • See also Email Alerts for information about receiving notification when pages you care about change.

OptOut

Concerns

  • The system should be OptIn not OptOut

Response

  • We believe the system is significantly more valuable when visitors can traverse a large number of sites by topic or relation, and comment on sites without the need to create a page from scratch.
  • AboutUs is a community resource – at its core, a wiki about websites (and much more).

While AboutUs is happy to remove the information that the AboutUs:Bot scraped (see No Bot Policy), the community still has the right to post a discussion about your page. This is called "visitor generated content only".

  • Once the bot scraped information is removed, there will be basic sections remaining to provide a framework for the page.
  • You are welcome to build the page out by hand or another community member may do this.

This is the same basic principle that newspapers or weblogs operate under. If the New York Times or Slashdot wrote an article about your site, there would be no "OptOut" option. The same applies to AboutUs.

Libel and Slander

Concerns

  • Who is there to protect me from someone else slandering or vandalizing the page about my website?

Response

Spam

Concerns

  • This is a spammers haven
  • I don't want my e-mail address shown
  • What about spam/vandalism on my page?

Response

  • Unprotected e-mail addresses are often scraped off of other sites by spammers. To prevent this behavior at our site, AboutUs automatically protects all e-mail addresses with a graphic presentation. See: ProtectEmail
  • This is a wiki and while most edits are constructive, unfortunately, vandals and spammers do show up from time to time. You're free to remove/revert the spam yourself. If you'd still like some help with this, please post on the ConcernsPage or chat with us. You may also be interested in Email Alerts where you will be informed about any change to your page. In addition, we are watching changes carefully so we can spot and remove spam/vandalism.

Money Making Scam

Concerns

  • This is a blatant attempt to use my copyrighted information and make a worthless site whose goal is to make a quick buck with advertising.

Response

  • 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.

Out of date information

This is an open wiki which means anyone can create an account and edit it... even you. Please edit the page and change the information.

Please remove me

Please see the No Bot Policy for instructions on having bot-generated information removed from your DomainPage.

Negative Comments on page

Concerns

Response

  • This is a wiki which means that anyone is free to http://www.aboutus.org/au_web_services/authentication/signup create an account] and edit pages on AboutUs, including posting reviews on about any domain they wish. Occasionally, those reviews may seem libelous, defamatory, or otherwise untrue in nature. Rather than engaging in edit wars by removing or replacing previous reviews, it's best to post a counter-review, state the facts, and explain why the previous statements are false. Keep in mind that it reflects positively to be up front about your business by approaching negative reviews in this way, rather than deleting them.
  • You may also be interested in Email Alerts to keep you informed about changes to pages you care about.

Why is my website listed?

AboutUs is an informational resource about websites. Please read about who we are. If you still have some concerns, feel free to post them or contact us.

If you don't want your page to be crawled, it's simple to edit your "robots.txt" file to exclude robot crawling (read here for how to do that). If you don't want your contact information posted, subscribe to a WHOIS privacy protection service.

Incorrect capitalization

Please see: Fix Capitalization of an Article

Please delete my username

Accounts on AboutUs are simply logins allowing you to edit pages on the wiki and to attribute those edits to you. Thus, there is no need (or way) to cancel or delete your account, username or login. Feel free to remove your email address from your preferences or any information you may have added to your personal page, and you can simply stop using your login.

Also, if you don't want to use your account don't confirm it in the email that we sent you.

Don't allow editing

Our current policy is to have all pages open for editing by people that are logged in. Editing is the main fundamental of a wiki like AboutUs. Anyone can be notified when changes are made to pages that they care about - see Email Alerts for more details.