[wp-hackers] OT: "Nofollow" Rant

[Terrence Wood]

Robert Deaton wrote:
> Terrence, first off, rel="nofollow" from my understanding of what the
> google post and what Matt has tried to clarify here, does indeed
> follow the links, but does not count the link text towards a pagerank

in essence the link is invisible because it the link will not be 
returned in search results. While this is good for spam links, it is not 
good for the other 90% of genuine links left in blog comments.

> Adding a preview button should be in addition to the submit button, as
> not everybody wants to preview their comment before submitting, and
> adding another button is more work for commenters, something that we
> don't particularly want.

I suggest that creating a form that cannot be submitted by bots is 
probably something most admin people want, and trust me, most users 
won't notice an extra click if the button is labeled with 'preview'. 
Presently, the easiest way to do prevent bots submitting form is to 
require that the 'submit' action only appear after the comment form is 
previewed via a post. i.e. it cannot be submitted to the db directly 
from the comment form page... much in the same way email addresses are 
hidden (see: 
http://simon.incutio.com/archive/2002/09/11/newFormOfSpamProtection )

> Implementing Google's initiative is not threatening the very fabric of
> the web in any way, don't you think Google would have taken something
> that serious into consideration, its where they're making billions of
> dollars. While I do not think that rel="nofollow" is the way to fight
> spam, its not going to tear the web to shreds, just hurt some people's
> pageranks.

see above comment. Google probably has put thought into it. What doesn't 
have much thought is applying it blindly to every link left in 
comments... especially for bloggers who are not designers/developers and 
don't know how to change it, or even really grasp what the point of 
rel="nofollow" is. The web is made up of links, not web pages or 
websites, preventing links appearing in search results does indeed 
threaten the fabric of the web... it takes the 'inter' out of the internet.
> 
> Including plugins in the core is something else that we need to highly
> consider before just throwing them in. There are tons of plugins
> besides the ones you mentioned that have worked for people, so the
> chance of any particular one making it in is rather slim. It is, after
> all, the point of plugins, to be installed additionally if someone
> needs the features they provide.
> 

my point is this: spam protection should be handled in the core, not as 
plugins... I don't know which plugins are currently the best at 
preventing spam, but the best ones should be rolled into the core so 
when a blog is setup it has a reasonable degree of protection by 
default. Let's not deliver something we know is inherently broken and in 
need of additional fixes to effectively manage spam for novice and 
non-tech users.


Terrence Wood.