I Love Squidoo But...

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I love Squidoo but there are just a few things that bother me about the community over there.

One thing, is the need for incredibly long lenses. Almost every lens in the top 100s within the categories are 10 miles long. That might sound great, right? I mean, that has to mean tons of info... well, not exactly. Most of them simply include an intro and then a starter paragraph followed by 10 modules of ads. Besides, even if the lens did create a ton of info, the longer it is the harder it is to find what you are looking for. For pages which are selling items, that is great, but for information lenses it's not.

Second, is the conformity the community possesses. I'm not talking about the type of lenses (although there is a large amount of lenses selling something), I'm talking about how the lenses are organized and the type of information each lens has. If you have a lens of a recipe, it doesn't just include the recipe. The lens also includes the history (which is OK), pictures of the food (alright), history of the ingredients (what?), a twitter page following the food (why?), and a blog RSS which includes nothing about the page (why?).

Thirdly, the community wants information about the authors. I can see why, in some instances, this is wanted. For example, if read a lens on a specific subject it is nice to know it is coming from a reliable source. However, if the lens is about baking cookies, why do you need to know what gender I am or where I grew up?

Fourth, even though this is related to #3, why must I enable the contact form? I know, if I make a spelling mistake you want to contact me about it, right? That's all fine and dandy, but I already have enough spam in my mailbox (I'm not saying the previous example is spam, just that some people might use the contact form for other means).