Participate in the forum

How to participate in the forum

This text is directed at members of Web of Trust who would like to participate in the WoT-forum.

It tries to give a simple overview of the things that are important and that you can do to help. If in doubt or if you don't understand some parts of this text, try to consult the rest of the wiki or simply ask in the forum. You will be helped and your question may help to improve this guide.

Browsing the forum can be intimidating, with all the information the senior members seem to be able to dig out of thin air. Following the instructions here, you will find a starting point. Some of the tools described here need some experience to use, but it is not as difficult as it may sound at first. Don't let yourself freak out, simply dive in and try it.

The purpose of the forum

The purpose to interchange thoughts and information about WoT and WoT related things. That might be new internet regulations, safety concerns, malware lists and other kinds of stuff. Please note: Sometimes dangerous, e.g. malware infected hosts are posted. Be careful and don't click all links!

The current subforums are:

• Comments on websites: Discussions about website ratings.
• General discussion: Discussions about security, malware, online saftey and other WoT related things
• Technical advice: Discussions about technical problems with the plugin, the browser, WoT in general.

How do I start, how can I help?

First, please read the following material, to understand how WoT works ToDo: Add useful links

Now simply try to participate. The easiest way to do this is to help site owners who ask for a (re)rating of their sites out. Some of them are already rated red for some reason. Some are furious, some friendly. All kinds of persons ask.

Be polite and try to help them.

Check the scorecard

Reading the scorecard will give you an impression why the site is rated as it is. You can get there by adding the domain name to the link to the scorecard. e.g. in case of "example.com" go to http://www.mywot.com/de/scorecard/example.com

If there are comments, they might give you a few hints about the site. Please use common sense about them. If the site is commented to host malware, be extra careful. Please try to keep an open mind, not all comments are true. Some might be outdated, some created by the owner to promote his site, some by people who do not like him. With some experience you will get a feeling for the comments.

While you are on the scorecard, you might also want to click the Whois link at the top. This will show you who owns the site. If it is disclosed, remember it for later.

Check for blacklisting

Blacklisted means, that the site is on one of various lists that track misconduct like hosting malware or spamming. If a site hosts viruses or is a known attack site, you wouldn't like to go there, won't you? If comments contain references to blacklists, please follow the comments to find out more.

You can find some examples for common blacklists here: How to check on UrlVoid.

How to check on Malwareurl.

Only after you could confirm (e.g. by a delisting) that the site is safe you should consider to vote the site green. Please note: A delisting does not automatically make a site "good". It still has to meet the rest of the conditions like having a good privacy policy.

Assessing a site

Basically, the same rules that apply to site owners apply to your assessment. Contact information, privacy policy, SSL encryption. You should check the How to ask for Rating page for requirements.

Further things to look for: A missing privacy policy is quite common and the simple case. A more subtle thing is an insufficient or bad privacy policy. Insufficient means that some things are missing and should be mentioned. Bad privacy policys contain passages which are harmful to the people "accepting" them. An example would be: "We are allowed to share the gathered information with third parties without your consent." That line would basically allow the company to give or sell all collected data to anybody.

Whois: If the whois is disclosed, you might want to include it in your assessment. It might not matter for some sites, but would you trust a store that keeps his name/address hidden?

Answer the forum request

Respond to the request and write some words to the site owner explaining what he should do. If it is a request for a rather new site, which misses things like privacy policy, you might just want to direct the owner here.

If a site is detected on a blacklist, give the person who asked for voting the advice to clean up the site, get delisted and bump the thread. Also, in case other things are missing too, you might give him a hint about that, so that it can be corrected in the meantime too.

When responding please try to mention your detailed findings for your fellow forum members. Cookies, Tracking cookies, open/disclosed whois, ...