[wp-hackers] more nofollow

[Christoph Rummel]

Scott Merrill <skippy at skippy.net> (2005-01-24 09:16:39 -0500):
> I understand that many folks are opposed to the addition of a new
> option to enable or disable nofollow site-wide.  If nofollow is a
> core feature of future versions of WordPress, I'd really like to see
> WordPress accomodate those folks who aren't interested in it, either
> by an administrative option, or by using a plugin to _enable_
> nofollow, rather than disable it.

Although I'm very much on the no-nofollow side I can
see good things about nofollow.

Look at blogspot, livejournal, blogger etc., sites
hosting hundreds of thousands of blogs, most of them
abandoned. This is where a rel="nofollow" is really
useful. Not so much for a well maintained blog with a
siteadmin caring for his spam plugins and weeding out
all comment spam on a daily basis. 

Comment spammers are stupid, they don't check how long
spam stays on a site, or if it even gets through. OK,
they come back if the are able to find their links in
Google, thus it is proven their comment spam is stuck,
but they target a wide spread of their comments. So
huge sites are where they want to place comments, not
single user blogs. Of course their scripts hit every
blog, and well maintained blogs with comment spam never
coming through are just collateral damage of their
quest to place comment spam and Googles rel="nofollow".

I see no problem with removing rel="nofollow", but I
think it is a good thing it is switched on by default
and not to be switched off by Joe User - you really
should know what you are doing.

And you could even disable the nofollow-remover when
going on vacation, just to make sure in case spam
should get through...

Chris