WOT

I have to agree that at this point WOT is a collection of opinions, and as such I'm finding it less and less relevant to how I conduct myself on the internet.

I was initially really excited about the tool, but I'm finding that if I actually took the advice of the ratings, I would never get to any of the more interesting political opinions people are sharing online. For example, while I would give a site of the "Hitler fan club" a rating of dangerous without the slightest bit of hesitation, that fan club's members appear to be using WOT too, and are rating the sites of disabled activists or feminists just as dangerous...

If there was transparency that sometimes what is being rated is based on political opinions, I wouldn't object so much. But rarely have I found that the ratings are backed up with helpful information. I would much prefer that every rating required some deeper explanation. Lacking such reasoning I've found this tool to not even remotely meet its potential.

WOT is a good idea of community protection.

HOWEVER its good point is also its own enemy. Why? It depends on majority opinions; and in a community how many techs, how many savvy users and how many newbies are there?

--In the end, WOT becomes a collection of newbies' opinions.--

So it can only detect obvious viruses. If the site has a well-hidden code that is out of reach of normal users, WOT is out of luck.

I use WOT also, and though it is great, it only advises (it can't block).

I remember one time I was using both WOT and SiteAdvisor during a session. I happened to stumble onto a bad site. Though SiteAdvisor Free doesn't have active blocking, it was able to redirect me to another page, saying something in the course of: THIS IS A REALLY BAD SITE and we BLOCKED IT.

Thanks :) !! But, now, SiteAdvisor development seemst to be going slow. Doesn anyone know what's going on with them? FF3 support doesn't really work, and I'm not sure on IE8 ...

What I am very interested in, is to find out, how deeply we can trust a service like that and how much our privacy is concerned?

--
always look on the bright sight of life...

What's more, WOT doesn't seem to make Google temporarily freeze, as SiteAdvisor does. Its judgements appear more credible too.
One limitation though: unlike SiteAdvisor, WOT doesn't appear to provide any feedback on ones "current" browsing page.