nofollow support added?

Two words: option bloat.

Two words: same difference.
Leave things as they are, and let plugins implement “nofollow”.
LQ

As Matt was one of the signatories to the announcement of no-follow, I somehow doubt that will happen.

Anon, the point of this thread is that, whether or not a nofollow toggle plugin is included with the package, one will be written by someone. It’s inevitable, and it’s stupid complain about it. It’s just a bloody toggle switch. [Moderated]

As for members having to do MORE than Ryan or Carthik to be considered developers, that’s a load of crap. First of all, if that were true, then there would be only one developer. Let’s consider Member A and Member B. Member A contributes 60% of the code, therefore he is a developer. Member B only contributes 30% of the code. Under your flawed logic, Member B could never be a developer, because he does not contribute more than Member A. You logic is as flawed as your anonymity. In truth, anyone who’s impact is heard on the final project is a developer. And Podz has done more than enough to be heard. His tutorials here: https://tamba2.org.uk/wordpress/ are more than enough to be heard. [Moderated]

Anonymous, given your anonymity, your attacks on members and developers here, and your insistence that the nofollow attribute be included in WP by default, I’d be curious to know what exactly your interest in this is.

The points I’ve been making about nofollow are actually the same one as Matt’s been making on the hackers’ list. [Moderated]

I’m rather confused here. From what I can tell, Anonymous is completely right. He/she has pointed out that no-follow will only affect links in comments, which would be the links that really shouldn’t have much to say about PageRank (that is, IMHO). But the no-follow will not be used in links posted on the sidebar or in posts. That means that links the author chooses to link to will still be followed by GoogleBot, while links that other people post will not.

Is this correct, or am I misunderstanding something here?

THANK YOU. That is precisely the point that I have been trying to make. It’s good to see that someone’s got it.

What would be even better would be if one of the people making personal attacks on me could explain what’s inaccurate about that summary, since contrary to popular belief I don’t work for Google.

I understood the point back on the first page.

There is an inaccuracy: as I explained earlier, there is more to the value of a link than the PageRank it passes to the targeted page. Google could remove the PageRank portion of its algorithm and links would still affect rankings in Google. But that’s beside the point; taken in the spirit of the post, it’s pretty much true.

Assuming for the sake of discussion that the statement was completely accurate: the fact that it was accurately described does not mean that that is how I wish my blog to function.

Why does it HAVE to be a plugin, why not a just a global on/off box in the admin section. Which I think btw should default to ‘off’, I dont think the developers should make assumptions like this on behalf of the users.

The reason for using a plugin to change a setting like this stems from the fact that at some point, you have to decide what is most important to include as an on/off switch or other such toggle in your application. This does not mean that the ‘nofollow’ thing is not important. What I am saying is that there are many, many things that can be changed to customize WordPress, and using plugins is the most effecient way of adding that functionality. If the coders put in a mechanism to change everything as part of the WordPress core code, the program would bloat considerably and be more difficult to manage. Also, there would always be discussions like “I never use feature A, so can I somehow delete that choice in my options panel so it doesn’t show up?”

By using plugins, a person may pick and choose the things s/he wishes to customize, change, or delete. The best thing the programmers can do is to give us lots of hooks into the core so that the plugins are easy to write and maintain, and that is the focus.

This is my personal perspective, and may or may not be the same as anyone else’s.

This is my personal perspective, and may or may not be the same as anyone else"s.
That is why imo it should default to off just as with regular links.

Especially as at least one linkspammer has said its pretty much a waste of time – https://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/31/link_spamer_interview/

not to rain on your parade but in the article there is a very succinct paragraph, that in one step shows why nofollow should be on by default and disabled only by people who know what they are doing.

When Sam begins a spam run, he has one target, though he"ll accept any of six. Principal one: come top of the search engines for his chosen site"s phrase. "But you"ll accept coming in at 1,2 or 3, or if you come at 8,9 or 10. Actually, 8, 9 and 10 have better conversion rates.

one target, get to the top of the google results list.

nofollow, as has been discussed at length in this thread, addresses only one aspect of comment spam, it prevents a comments links from increasing a sites results status.

nofollow will not stop spammers leaving comments, but it does mean that links in those comments have no utility towards a spammers “one target”.

nofollow will not stop spammers leaving comment
You see, thats the important point for me. Why should legitimate commenters be penalised because of the odd spam comment which might get through the anti spam net. IMO if someone leaves a comment google should follow the link through as it may well be relevant to the discussion.
Using no follow just feels to me like were moving that line further towards ourselves and laying down for the spammers.
Thats aside from it IMO just being one of Googles ideas and so it should not be in any cms/blog software ‘out of the box’.
But thats just my opinion and if it means that i have to download a plugin and install it to de-cripple my blog then I guess thats what Ill have to do.

Can I just say that like others I’m finding the use of ‘cripple’ in this context both misleading and offensive. The links still work, readers can still click on them, if you’re so devastated about your spammers not getting their tiny little drop of Googlejuice it will be easily remedied with a plugin, so get over it already.

i meant ‘cripple’ in a light hearted kind of way, but still IMO the nofollow is a 3rd party thing so it should need a plugin to ENABLE, not DISABLE it. But hey, what do I matter?