SquidU » Lensmastery

1-Star and 5-Star Ratings
Squidoo is built on recommendation. Real people making real, authentic recommendations about the best stuff online. Unfortunately, good things often get used for bad reasons.

Star ratings are one form of feedback that each lensmaster has available on their lens. When a visitor loves a lens, they should rate it highly. If they don't love it so much, they're free to rate it poorly. But when the ratings don't reflect the love, problems happen.

1-Star Ratings

If you come across a lens that is just plain awful, a 1-star rating may be appropriate. However, if you think blasting a lensmaster you're jealous of will help put you ahead of the game, think again. Only logged in lensmasters can rate other lenses, and all ratings are logged. Long story short, if you are found participating in 1-star drivebys, you risk losing everything you've built on Squidoo. These mass ratings can be considered harassment and gaming the system, which is explicitly against Squidoo's Terms of Service and all things nice.

5-Star Ratings

If you come across a lens that you absolutely love, a 5-star rating is definitely in order. However, there are two types of 5-star ratings that don't belong on Squidoo:

1. Rating Swaps - "I'll give you 5-stars if you give me 5-stars."
Squidoo does not endorse or recommend ratings swaps. Not only because it's not in the spirit of the site, but also because it just doesn't work. It doesn't earn you loyal readers or customers, it doesn't help people find you in search engines, and it doesn't increase the quality of your content. That, and it's risky. A star rating is only a tiny factor in our LensRank algorithm right now. You're not going to win with even 500 fake ratings. And, in fact, if you spam people asking for them, you'll assuredly lose. (This can also get you banned from our forum! Egads!)

2. Self-Ratings from Duplicate Accounts
Lensmasters choose to have multiple accounts for many reasons, and when used within our Terms of Service, we don't have a problem with it. But if you're using multiple accounts to boost your own LensRank through mass 5-star ratings, don't. This form of gaming the system for personal gain is another way that you can get banned from Squidoo.

Lensmasters who abuse the system hurt all of us. If a lensmaster is found abusing the rating system with malicious intent, the Squid Staff reserves the right to remove all of their content, lock their lenses, and/or delete their account without warning. These are dealt with quickly, quietly, and irreversibly, so we can go back to focusing on our positive growth and success.

We don't want to see you go! So play fair, and everyone wins.

For more information one multiple 1 or multiple 5 star ratings, read our FAQ #18