How are you planning on dealing with SideWiki?

Since most people here have membership sites and many of them are paid, I'm wondering how you're planning on dealing with Googles new spam tool they like to call SideWiki.

With their new spam tool people can post the password to your membership site right on the site itself.  Your competitors can post their links on your site.  If you run a dating site, people can make contact with your members directly on their membership page without joining your site.

The trend has already been seen that competitors are spamming and slamming each other.  At least one person has suffered a vicious personal attack in his Side Wiki and is now suing Google for damages.  At least on person who sells a digital product has had the link to their thank you page posted on their site so people can download without paying.  Bloggers are noticing that people are now commenting in Side Wiki rather than on their blogs.

Most people are convinced that Google will soon be adding adsense which means your advertising revenue will go down if you have adsense on your site.

This tool is pretty disgusting  but I did a search and it doesn't seem to have been mentioned here at alll so do people not know about this or are you just not worried?

Well, I didn't know about it until just now, but reading a bit about it I don't like it either.  For one thing, it is a "mob rule" system for moderation - which I don't think works.  That is what ruined many of the Craigslist forums.   Why do you think people would be posting their passwords though?  Why would they do that?

regarding passwords, it depends on the content of your site but passing passwords for membership sites is really common on Black Hat forums.  If you're running a dating site or a membership site that is primarily dealing with personal interaction then it's probably not gonna happen because getting the password won't do much for you.  But if you're providing specific content only to paying members that password could be valuable.

For example, on my site my paying members will have access to tons of free, downloadable resources that free members won't get.  That means that all some BHers need to do is get one membership and the post the user ID and password on the sidewiki and anyone would be able to get in via that paid account.

Sure they could do that now and just post it in a BH forum and there's not much I can do to stop it but having that information right on my site is an issue.

And think about your businesses on your site.  People can go to the business profile page and start writing nasty stuff about those businesses that the customers will see.  Who do you think those businesses will blame?

For people who run dating sites, what happens when Mary turns down Bob and then he comes to her profile page and posts "definitely hit up Mary.  She's a whore and did me on the first date."  Or if a guy dumps a girl, what's to stop her from going to his profile page and making a post saying he's a rapist?

Yes, all of these things are hosted on google's site and not on yours but since they show up on yours you're the one people will blame.

If anyone has a site that caters to kids, you will not be able to stop the porn ads from appearing on your family friendly site.  You have to rely on google to monitor the comments and remove ones that are inappropriate.  All it takes is one look at youtube to see how well they can do that for just one site.  Imagine how clean they'll keep the entire internet.

I've already filed a complaint with google about this tool as have many others.  I'd urge you to consider doing the same.