[wp-hackers] Plugin Development Request: gada.be

[Chris Pirillo]

> I know this does not fit in this mailing list directly, but if gada.be
> was ever to be considered as a WordPress plug-in, it's worth taking a
> moment aside for assessment (or worse -- critique). As I continue to
> explore your service, I find that some aspects of the results (other
> than major search engines) can be filled with spam. Depending on the
> nature of use, this can become a real deterrent because there is too
> much noise for results to be worthwhile.

I just posted something about that on my blog. At least, it's directed at
Blogspot. I'm suggesting they deploy a captcha mechanism in their publishing
system (not just for comments, but for entry submissions themselves). It's
the only thing that could "easily" stop the bots - though I know they'd be
throwing out the metaweblog baby with the bathwater.

Since gada.be is acting as an intermediary, once we have user registration
for our system, it's likely we could flag links as spam - but that, too,
could be abused (think: competition). If we figure it out, though, we'll be
sure to share our tactic with the rest of the industry. ;) del.icio.us has
been spammed, too - although not like you think it has. We're certainly open
to suggestions.

One of the reasons why gada.be places a rel="nofollow" attribute into each
and every outgoing link is because I don't want it to be directly used to
game anything.


> The services you feed on might have to do likewise (or disposed of
> altogether until they sanitise their sources) because you only
> serve as an 'RSS bridge' here.

I've already suspended / killed four of 'em for doing so, and contacted the
ones who made it easy to contact. Seekitall was one of the worst offenders,
and I'm about one day away from killing Broadsnatch.


> By the way, there appears to be a bug as sometimes the navigation
> footer does not show up.

That's odd. We've got an update to our fetch code (100% scratch) coming
within the next couple of days, making it easier to parse non-compliant
feeds - of which there are millions. ;) Could be part of the problem. I'll
keep my eye out for it, and register it in our bug-tracking system.

I'm honored and humbled that you would take the time to help, Roy.

Chris