nofollow support added?

So.. to summarise:

nofollow will not stop spam..
nofollow will not stop the effect of spam.
nofollow will reduce the effect of spam.
nofollow will not effect links in yours posts (unless you add it in by hand).
nofollow will effect commenters.

That last point appears to be the point of contention. Either you are, like me, of the opinion that if you post just for the PR benifits then you are almost as bad as spammers.. or you are of the opinion that this is somehow breaking the internet.

Note btw that nofollow only effects pagerank – so the link is still spidered (at least thats what google has said). So if there is good content on there – then google will find it.

Honestly? I can’t see the problem with adding this in. I think its a good thing that won’t have much impact on anyone legitimate. As spammers have said – there is always TrackBack spam – and thats a whole other kettle of fish.

In the end – its in 1.5, and there is no reason to take it out. If you want to take it off then fine, but there will be a dozen plugins to do that when 1.5 is released (or before!).

So the rest of this is jsut noise.

Oh and as for the point about “well there should be a plugin to ENABLE it” that is missing the point about adding default support – so all the regular users that don’t know, or care, what a plugin is don’t contribute to the problem.

Unprotected users provide 99% of virus, email spam, and comment spam (open proxies).. why enable blogs to be used as a tool for boosting pagerank? With it on and built in as a default – you remove this problem.

Note btw that nofollow only effects pagerank - so the link is still spidered (at least thats what google has said). So if there is good content on there - then google will find it.

Ok, this has placated me somewhat I must admit, as Im not too bothered about the page rank issue.
I still feel though that if anything is a 3rd party issue then this is. And if feature bloat is a perceived problem then surely this is just adding to that muddle.
For me its more the point of who has control over what and how I publish something, me or the WP dev team and in this case I think it should default to the ‘plain vanilla’ option of off.
But again, I shall just use a plugin to disable it (did I read that the plugin will come with WP btw?)

You did, but that’s just speculation at the moment ?? Based on the noise you people have been making, it’s more likely than not.

Either way, there’s a demand for a plugin to switch off the behavior, so inevitably somebody will supply it. In the meantime, if you don’t want no-follow implemented in the core, continue to use the current official release 1.2.2, which is unpolluted by any evil Google-sponsored measures.

Well, Im on 1.5 so no way I can go back to 1.2. Ill just either hold out till a plugin is available (which really SHOULD be bundled with WP) or if I HAVE to update I guess I shall have to search through the files to find out how to disable it.

–OK, it took me a while in writing this posting, so there may have been other posts in the meantime.–

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. — somefool
You haven’t actualy been following this have you? rboren said already – option bloat.

THANK YOU. That is precisely the point that I have been trying to make. It’s good to see that someone’s got it. — Anon
Add two to that list, I got it too. What isn’t clear is if it affects the links in the comment ONLY, or if it also affects the poster’s URL (which typically links back to their site.) If some one IN THE KNOW could shed some light on that aspect, that would be great.

I dont think the developers should make assumptions like this on behalf of the users. — somefool
Given the history of the software, and the history of the forums, and the posts of times past, I think you *can* assume that most people do want it on. Whether they admit it or not, they’d rather be protected. You statement assumes that people don’t want it on. I think the converse is true as well: you can’t assume people will want it off. Corrorlary: Just because some vocal people on these forums seem to indicate that they would rather it be off doesn’t make that decision right. Of the hundreds of installs of WP out there, only a dozen or so of us are here debating the issue.

My personal two cents: While a noble effort, no-follow is not going to impact spam efforts. Here’s my theory. Let’s take my blog. It’s about writting & me. I get decent return on searches for writting sites. Now, along comes Joe Spammer, and he hits my site and leaves a comment about writting a book on gambling (because he’s good enough to customize his spam — it happens I get it from time to time), which of course has a link to his Texas Hold’Em site. OK, now, I have the no-follow turned on. When Google comes to rifle through my content, what do you think happens? For starters, the link doesn’t get followed, as per the tag. OK, cool…. but the CONTENT has still been catalogued. To include the comment spam. His link will still come through, only now it will be through my site. The spammer still gets what he wants.

All that said, I have read through all of the posts in this thread (well the ones that were here when I started this post) and have come to the following conclusion: I’ve changed my mind. I came into this with the attitude that it should not have been implemented, and that there should be an option to turn it on off in the admin. Now, I think it SHOULD be implemented and turned ON by default, and yes, require a PLUGIN to turn it off. After all, why not? It’s the same as any spam fighting tool out there. WP comes with some basic anti-spam built-in, but there are some talented people who have created all kinds of plugins that go far beyond the basics. Why should this be any different? We’ve got all kinds of plugins that manipulate the basics of WP. The devs needed to make a decision, and it was made, now it’s up to us to figure how to change it SHOULD WE DECIDE TO. This is no different from the people who ask that all links open in a new window. It takes a plugin to do that. There’s no option in WP to control that, nor should there be.

I agree with Ryan (did I just say that outloud?) that one of the tenemants fo WP is the limitedness of options. I’ve seen other pub systems and they have so many options and settings comming out the wahzoo that it makes my head explode. It’s nice to come back to WP where life is simpler.

Know what would be cool about this? Someone comes up with a plugin that will add no-follow to links to sites “unknown” based on a whitelist (or a blacklist) so that legit sites can get their prescious linking bene from the Google monster, while “penalizing” spam.

Tg

Im happy to admit that I may come round to the idea that nofollow is a good idea but currently Ill just leave it off.

And I think youre right that it is the same as any spam fighting plugin out there – it is up to the user to decide whether or not to implement it. Imagine if WP forced captchas in the comment form by default!

Can some one point me to this easy-to-install plugin? Or is the “disable-nofollow-On” plugin VaporWare?

Vaporware plugins for an unreleased, beta product? Jeez…

Yes: good luck finding someone willing to spend time coding a plugin to turn off a feature that isn’t even in the current release. When 1.5 is out of beta I’m sure your demands will be met, but switching to beta software and then demanding plugins exclusively for it just takes the biscuit.

I’ve just moderated a comment to my blog which contained a link to a page about Richard Dimbleby, which someone thought I might find interesting because I expressed an admiration for his son David in my post.

I think that link, and the homepage of the helpful commenter, deserves a drop of google-juice.

I understand why the nofollow tag is added to links in comments by default, but I resent not being able to turn it off without a plugin. Is one available yet?

> page rank

It’s a common misconception that PageRank equates to how “how a page ranks”; it’s named after its creator, Google founder Larry Page (in effect, LarryRank). There are other factors to do with links that also have something to do with how a page ranks. Neither Yahoo nor MSN use PageRank. All use scores of other factors in ranking pages.

> Darkcryst said:
> so the link is still spidered (at least thats what google has said)

It’s best not to base decisions on what is repeated in forums but rather to go to the source. So where did Google say this?

In and of itself, nofollow was conceived as a metatag attribute that instructed spiders not to follow the links on a page; so now you are saying that Google says that applying nofollow to a link will encourage their spider to follow the link? That would be contrary to the spec, but let’s see what Google (and Yahoo, MSN, Teoma, et al.) say on the subject.

Frankly, I don’t care whether people do or do not use nofollow. I was concerned that people really ought to understand all the issues, starting with the premise that nofollow would stop comment spam, which it cannot do. Why not simply remove comment spam, or block comments from being posted without your permission? That would be the responsible thing to do.

But as for using nofollow? Several people here seem to want to use it. So go for it.

I’m using WP 1.2.2. How do I add ‘no follow’ to comments? It doesn’t appear to be included in this release. I tried to grep through the code for ‘Comment by’…I’m pretty confused that I can’t find it…

Please, read the entire thread before posting. If you would have, you would have found that nofollow will be officially added into the upcoming v1.5 release (not v1.2.2, which was released almost two months before the announcement of nofollow). And, please search before posting. A search for “nofollow 1.2.2” would have returned several useful results. Chief amongst those would be a thread entitled “Nofollow Plugin for WordPress 1.2”: https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic.php?id=21187

Now, here are the plugins for v1.2.x, please search next time.

https://phaedo.cx/archives/2005/01/18/wp-nofollow/
https://secandri.com/blog/2005/01/19/nofollow-plugin-for-wordpress-12/
https://elliottback.com/wp/archives/2005/01/19/wp-no-pagerank/

Thanks, but I didn’t want a plugin; not if I can just edit one line of code. I was just having trouble finding that line of code. I’ve since found it though, line 127 of template-functions-comment.php file.