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Quid Pro Quo: English speakers often use the term to mean “a favor for a favor” and the phrases “what for what”, “give and take”, “tit for tat” have similar meaning.

I’ve never been a fan of ‘reciprocal lens ratings’. It can be quite time consuming and takes what precious time you have and invests it in something that only has a very limited short term effect. When that time could have been used to 1) make another quality lens, or 2) do something to promote it somewhere else, far more effectively, whether online or offline.

Now Squidoo HQ have laid out their official stance on the practise of “I’ll give you 5 stars if you give me 5″ tactic and have appropriately called it “Fools Gold”.

Here’s a few things they’ve said about the matter…

“Squidoo does not endorse or recommend ratings swaps”

…and…

“We reserve the right to change our LensRank algorithm at any time. We’re currently working on (unannounced) changes that could end up impacting mega-swappers without warning.”

As most of you know, I (Glen, aka N376… currently bearing the Thumbs Up George Clooney avatar) am the moderator at the official Squidoo forum SquidU (while this means I’m privvy to some upcoming information - though nothing like the Lensrank algorithm, so don’t ask - it doesn’t mean however that I get any special favours. I have to stand in line like anyone else if it’s a problem I’m having. But if it’s a serious problem I’m trying to fix for someone else… Express Lane!) and being the moderator that may mean I am tasked with closing all ‘5 star rating swap’ threads. All threads: past, present and future.

I think I’ll have to change back into my Thumbs Down Simon Cowell avatar.

If I close your thread, don’t take it personally. I’m only hating the game, not the player.

But for those who have done the lens rating swap thing, whether as an addict or have just dallied in it or had the odd flutter, fear not! Because there are better ways to spread the word and get traffic. Sign up now for Lensroll.com!

But please, no “I rolled yours, can you roll mine!”.

For more information see the official Squidoo FAQ where they’ve already added their thoughts on rating swaps.

There’s been a lot of confusion lately over some recent developments with the way Squidoo have implemented new changes.

Changes which for the most part are for the better.

Granted there have been some that have been a kick in the shins for legitimate Lensmasters, such as disabling of the iframe, but the impact that this move has had on spammers has been far more profound.

The flurry of activity has left many a Lensmaster confused. Including Citizen Squids, Moderators and other Senior Squids.

It’s taken me a while to extract a few chunks of relevant information to piece together the puzzle. Consider this the Dramatis Personae… an introduction to the characters in our squid story…

Unimproved… An unimproved lens is one that has less than four (ie: three or less) modules, not including the Introduction. The details of this MAY have changed (such as the Guestbook Module) but we’ll discuss this in Part II of “Unimproved vs Unpublished vs Work In Progress” when we jump straight into the epilogue.

Work In Progress… In your lensmaster dashboard you will notice next to rank either a white tick in a green circle or a white minus in a gray circle. WIP means it is under a certain threshold and is not searchable via Squidoo. It is still indexable by Google and other search engines though. A WIP lens will also give you difficulty with lensrolling lens. Should we assume that WIP lenses won’t earn revenue from Squidoo’s Adsense pool? That’s cause for speculation that we can discuss at a later date.

Undeveloped… Lenses with less than 3 (as opposed with 3 or less on the unimproved) are being categorised as “undeveloped”. The result was thousands previously published (but very short) lenses were put back into unpublished mode. People will need to republish those lenses in order for them to be viewable by the public. It is advisable to add more content to push these lenses into improved and developed status.

Guestbooks… The Guestbook Module is now being treated like the Introduction Module, that it won’t be included in the module count that classifies a lens as being improved. We may interview the Guestbook Module later on how it feels that it’s now being treated like a redheaded stepchild.

iframes… Squidoo HQ had to step in and disable this powerful feature, because like any superpower, it could be used for evil as well as good. Spammers were able to redirect people straight to their own sites. In fact it’s surprising that these snakes didn’t use iframes in Guestbook entries and target guestbooks in the Top 100. Imagine how much traffic they would have hijacked!

When I had stumbled on this devious idea (and after wrestling with the thought of writing it as an ebook and selling it for $9.95… just kidding) I contacted Squidoo HQ and laid out the possible ramifications if someone else with less moral constraint than I had the same thought. By the next morning iframes had been disabled. Yay for Team Squid!

But what the disabling of iframes resulted in was whole modules becoming empty (if the iframe code was the only content in the module) and effectively making the module disappear from the published view… for some reason… which never used to happen. Contentless modules used to show as an empty module with just a title in days gone past.

Now that we’re aware of the main players in this compelling drama come back in a couple of days to discuss, maybe even speculate, how the relationships of each have affected the lives of the Lensmasters who have found this squid flavored soap opera compulsive viewing.

Read Part II here.