[theforum] nofollow in articles (was Re: New article)
Dean Mah
dean.mah at gmail.com
Tue Oct 16 10:16:25 CDT 2007
David Kaufman wrote:
> Hi Marcel,
>
> Marcel Feenstra <marcel at wintasy.com> wrote:
>>>> Tonight, I noticed that my article (about search engine friendly URLs
>>>> with ASP) had been published, but apparently the system had added
>>>> "nofollow" to the external links (including my user profile, BTW).
>>>>
>>>> I *assume* this is not intended. After all, nofollow was meant to
>>>> *fight
>>>> spam* --it is a way of saying: I'm linking to this site, but I *don't
>>>> vouch* for it... I can understand if it is used *in the comments*, but
>>>> surely not *in the articles*?! Anyway, when I tried to *remove* the
>>>> nofollow, the entire article disappeared... :-(
>
> Dean Mah [dean.mah at gmail.com] wrote:
>>> No, the 'nofollow' attribute is intended. As a policy, evolt.org has
>>> decided to add that to all links. Articles go back into moderation
>>> whenever an edited to the article is performed.
>
> Marcel:
>>> I am quite surprised that you should have made that a "policy" [...]
>>> I can certainly understand that evolt is unable to offer *financial
>>> compensation* for articles written, but I do *not* understand why it
>>> does
>>> not want to give *proper credit* --wouldn't that be, more than "simply
>>> polite", a matter of basic Netiquette?! (When I submitted the article, I
>>> did *not* expect any money for it. I *did* expect the article to be
>>> either rejected --if it did not meet evolt's standards-- or printed "as
>>> is" --but *not* substantially modified, which includes the addition of
>>> "nofollow".)
>
> Dean:
>>> [...] If you would like to withdraw your article, I can certainly
>>> understand that.
>>>
>>> For my part, I do not have the time to decide which links do or do not
>>> require the 'nofollow' tag based on a value judgment.
>
>
> Marcel:
>> I think it would be a little premature to withdraw the article at this
>> time, I'd much rather *discuss* this matter first... :-)
>>
>> Actually, when I followed that thread, I found a post by David Kaufman:
>> http://lists.evolt.org/theforumarchive/Week-of-Mon-20070507/006235.html
>>
>> that sounded *very* similar to what I wrote in my earlier e-mail:
>>
>> "I need to dig a little deeper now to see if/how I can force links in
>> *comments* to use this filter, but not links in approved, published
>> articles." :-)
>
> It is true that I did not intend, initially to add nofollow tags to links
> in Articles which the content team has reviewed and approved. The fact
> that this done was collateral damage in our war against comment spam links.
> There was no simple, easy way to set up a second Drupal input filter, like
> the one we have already heavily customized, that differed only in this one
> detail. I did intend to try to fix this later, but found neither the time
> nor the inclination.
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.
> it's become so tiresome for
> our volunteer content team to even *try* to separate what we think *might*
> be of some interest to our members from all the meaningless marketing hype
> and blather, that we have all but given up trying.
No, I have given up. :) Hence all links get the same treatment.
> So, since we do review and approve articles, and (as you noticed) we are
> protected from someone attempting to alter their article after we've
> reviewed, approved and published it, I would support your suggestion of
> removing automatic nofollow tags on links in articles.
I disagree slightly. Since the links do not add anything to the
article, I would consider them self-promotion. But then I'm making a
value judgment which is debatable. Thus, all links get the same
treatment from me. I throw the baby out with the bath water.
Dean
More information about the theforum
mailing list