Eventful day at Squidoo. Is Mature - Adult segment gone?

It was a very interesting weekend, with lots of important events within for me with regards to this blog and my Squidoo presence.

I had a number of interesting discussions in the Lounge and got another praise for this blog - this time from Rick (RickPhillips), which I appreciate very much because I consider him to be one of the best thinkers among the lensmasters. And he knows how to rock'n'roll...

I also made some comments on importance of proper classifying our lenses. I did that by using a very powerful quote from Seth's book. I didn't think at that time that this issue would become hot in the evening...

Here is what happened. I think I helped Squidoo to get rid of the whole Adult (Mature) segment that was making so much trouble every day.

On Saturday I sent a feedback email notifying the HQ and asking them why Ladylove is still with Squidoo despite being found violating the TOS. On that day her lens "Sex Guide - Adding Spice to Your Relationship" was at #44 of "All Lenses by Popularity", today it was at #62. She wasn't in Top 100 by LensRank and was classified as Mature/Adult, but that info wasn't visible - somehow the sidebar showing that info was shifted so much to the left that nobody couldn't see that!

Plus because of her inclusion in the "All Lenses by Popularity", all the lenses below it had mismatched their LensRank - they were too low and some fine lenses were out of Top 100 because of that - at least they were not being shown on Top 100 by LensRank, which yesterday became Top 99 and today it was only Top 98!!!!

The impacted lenses were - "Google Earth" and "Mission Lamps".

But that lensmaster did even worse trick today - Sunday. Apparently encouraged by her success with tricking the HQ with the "Sex Guide", she delivered today even more explicit-sex lens - "How to Give Your Man the Best Blow Job" and instead of marking it as "Mature", she placed it in the "People" category. I know that she didn't do it a first time!

From the morning, this lens was on #98 of "All Lenses by Popularity".

Interestingly, it was not on Top 100 by LensRank, which was really puzzling because only lenses from the Mature category didn't show up on the LensRank ranking and it was under People... Anyway, this created another mismatch...

Ladylove misled the Squidoo community few days ago with the "Sex Guide" lens and it was on Top 100 by LensRank at #81 and #62 between Jan. 21-22, 2007 because she wasn't showing it as a "Mature" lens.

That owner was warned and she changed the classification of this particular lens to "Mature", but she was playing tricks with the lens so that nobody could see that it belonged to "Mature" category. How? As I mentioned above, for the second day (I checked it yesterday too), the sidebar on that lens was showing the category was screwed up! It was moved to the left so far that the category couldn't be seen!

I checked that both in IE and in Firefox, so I know it wasn't my computer fault...

I was so shocked because I saw that in the People category that the "How to Give Your Man the Best Blow Job" lens was being placed right above my lens - "Eugeniusz Tytyk - An Auschwitz Survivor, My Father, My Hero" - and it made me very unhappy. It was a real blow (nomen omen) to the Squidoo image - to have such different lenses next to each other. That just shouldn't have happened...

I was starting to write a protesting message to the HQ when I noticed - around 7 PM PST - that the HQ reacted appropriately and not only those lenses were gone; it looked that all the Mature segment - that was creating so much trouble - was gone too; I hope for good...

I cleared my cookies and the cache on my computer and right now I don't see the Mature category among the "Squido Topics". It was always at the bottom of the page, but it's gone from the page. I think it's fantastic news for the Squidoo community.

Ilona Zuzalek
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