FAQ: Web of Trust
It has been brought to our attention by many of our wonderful, loyal readers that they encountered a poor rating for TheNation.com on Web of Trust — http://www.mywot.com/. You can read about them and their mission at http://www.mywot.com/en/aboutus.
First to clarify, this is a bit of a misunderstanding. Our domain is thenation.com. (See domain displayed right after the “www” in your address bar at the top of your browser window you have open now.) Our domain has an excellent rating with Web of Trust. Our scorecard is here: http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/thenation.com. So do not worry! You are browsing safely.
So what’s the problem? We, like many, many publications, use an email client to communicate with our readers who have opted into email newsletters that feature updates on Nation editorial news and news about our vibrant community of Nation readers, activists and students. Our email client, Lyris, is hosted at http://www.elabs10.com/.
Links in emails we send use the domain “http://www.elabs10.com/” but redirect to “www.thenation.com”. That’s just the way it works. The scorecard for www.elabs10.com on Web of Trust comes with a “Warning! This site has a poor reputation.” See here: http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/elabs10.com.
We looked into this, and this is an error. We followed Web of Trust’s advice and contacted the person who filed the original complaint against the domain elabs10.com. He said it was an error. Our email server’s site is perfectly safe.
We went to Web of Trust to find out how we could address this issue for our email client in the interest of our concerned users. On this page on Web of Trust’s FAQs under “My site has been misrated” it says:
A site’s reputation rating is based on a combination of ratings from WOT users and trusted sources. If you are unhappy with the rating or comments, here is a list of things you can do:
- If you are the website owner, you can reply to comments on the scorecard and request a review on our forum by claiming the site. You can claim your site by following the “Click here if you own this site” link on your site’s scorecard and completing the verification process.
- Contact the users who left comments through their boards and ask them to review or explain their comment and rating. Try to find out if there are some issues to be solved.
- Ask you friends and customers to rate your site. If you choose to write on the WOT forum please read first forum guidelines and instructions for requesting reviews found at: Forum start page.
For bullet point one, we cannot do that because we do not own the domain elabs10.com and we do not own the site hosted there. If you would like to address this issue with the owners go to their site and click “Contact Us” to contact them.
For bullet point two, we did contact the original user who left the bad comment on elabs10.com and he said it was a mistake.
For bullet point three, we are doing that now: We are asking you now! Please help us with the reputation of our email client and to help concerned web browsers like yourself to help us correct this wrong. You can either ignore Web of Trust or if you feel compelled you have the option to give elabs10.com a good rating and improve the reputation of our valued email client.
We do not run Web of Trust, we are not responsible for its postings, and we’ve addressed the issue as much as we can with them.
What we do control and are responsible for is our site, www.thenation.com, and its safety, and that is assured to our valued users and readers by us.