[theforum] nofollow in articles (was Re: New article)

[Dean Mah]

Drs Marcel Feenstra, MALD, MBA wrote:
> Dean Mah wrote:
> 
>> For the record.  I add the nofollow attribute manually.  We are running
>> an older version of Drupal (pending upgrade) and we did not turn on Drupal
>> filtering for this purpose.
> 
> Too bad I did not know that... :-(
> 
> I spent quite a bit of time looking at the source code (for Drupal 4.7 and
> 5.2, since I did not know which version is currently being used), and I
> contacted one of the Drupal "gurus" earlier today, to ask him if it was
> possible to enable "nofollow" for comments, but not for articles. So perhaps
> I just wasted his time (as well as mine, but that's OK).

The plan is/was to upgrade Drupal so it may not be a waste of time.  I
do not know the status of the upgrade.  I don't think that any work has
been done on it, however.  It was supposed to be rolled out at the same
time as the new design was implemented, IIRC.


> Since I am not an "insider", I feel that it would be a little pretentious
> for me to comment on what Evolt's policy "should" be;

evolt.org attempts to be an community where there are no "insiders".
Your opinion counts for as much as anyone's in the community.


> but as I have stated
> before, I *do* think that it is standard practice to give authors proper
> credit when their articles are published.

I believe that authors are given proper credit.  Off-topic links are
still in articles.  Ultimately, I would choose to remove links and text
that did not further the point of the article.


> The "nofollow" attribute was originally suggested as a way for site owners
> to stop spam in comments they could not "police" --to be applied,
> automatically, to links that had *not* been "reviewed".

Original intent does not matter to me here.  Things evolve.  The Web
evolves.  evolt.org's policy evolves.  Tables weren't intended to impose
structure, stuff happens.


> More recently, Google has started to demand that it be used on "paid links",
> so that parties with deep pockets could not "buy" PageRank and/or better
> rankings.

That's their policy, not evolt.org's policy.  We have no control over
what Google demands or decides and so this comment does not seem
relevant to me.


> However, AFAIK, "nofollow" has *never* been intended for use in texts that
> *had* "passed editorial review", and I think it is inappropriate --and a
> little unfair towards authors-- to start using it for that purpose.

See above.

However, please elaborate on about how it is unfair towards authors.  I
can be convinced.  It would me less work for me in the long run.  :)

Dean