[wp-meta] [Making WordPress.org] #7672: Alter sensitive data replacement mechanism
Making WordPress.org
noreply at wordpress.org
Thu Jun 13 14:22:05 UTC 2024
#7672: Alter sensitive data replacement mechanism
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Reporter: jonoaldersonwp | Owner: (none)
Type: defect (bug) | Status: new
Priority: normal | Milestone:
Component: International Forums | Keywords: seo
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When users submit forum threads with sensitive data (system filepaths,
etc), I ''believe'' that we automatically detect and replace those strings
with 'xxx' and similar.
E.g.,
- https://wordpress.org/support/topic/google-parameter-vedxxxxx/
- https://wordpress.org/support/topic/fatal-error-2-3-0/
- https://wordpress.org/support/topic/firefox-cookie-xxx-has-been-
rejected-for-invalid-domain/
- https://wordpress.org/support/topic/fatal-error-uncaught-valueerror-
unknown-format-specifier-w/
This has the unfortunate side-effect of making the wordpress.org rank
highly in Google for variations of 'xxx'; in the last month we got ~80,000
clicks for such terms.
This is problematic, as there's an obvious mismatch in intent, which might
lead Google to believe that our site provides a poor user experience,
which could negatively impact performance domain-wide.
To address this, I suggest that we:
1. Entirely remove (rather than replace) sensitive string in URLs
2. Replace sensitive strings in titles and body with [REDACTED] (rather
than `xxx` and similar)
3. Retrospectively apply #2 (but not #1, to avoid breaking URLs) to
existing forum threads.
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Ticket URL: <https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/7672>
Making WordPress.org <https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/>
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