A really long time ago Google launched nofollow. The concept of nofollow was as easy as it was irrealistic.
Almost two years later visible comment spam is on the way back for users of most popular blog platforms such as Wordpress, Expression Engine and TextPattern. Akismet has become a widely used tool. It is a wonderful tool and its cross-platform usage proves the great work Matt and the whole Automattic team have delivered.
Most bloggers also try to keep their comments clean of spam, at least the serious bloggers that is. The ones who like their blog.
Wordpress has adopted nofollow for the comment area as a standard, but at the same time the wide adaptation of Akismet has proven that nofollow didn’t do what it was supposed to do.
My question Matt : many blogs have regular commenters, why do I have to punish my regulars, or any new commenter, with a nofollow?
Comments generally are flattering for any blogger, why punish the people who took time to read and leave a comment?
I don’t ask for a platform wide adaptation, but to be able chose wether to use nofollow or not would be a nice integration for the WP platform. Why should there even be a need for an external plugin?
I can’t imagine this feature/option is hard to integrate in the WP options, but am sure it makes more sense than the platform wide nofollow we have now.
And I am not the only one who shares this opinion on nofollow for comments.
3 have made me smarter ↓
1 Danalyn // Dec 30, 2006 at 6:13 am// View all comments by Danalyn//
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Back when I was using WP, since I had to write a plugin to *not* change my brother’s name into a mailto: link, and since I wanted target=”_blank”, while I was at it, I just made it so links within the comment text use nofollow, and the actual comment author url uses follow. A lot nicer to the regulars, with the added nofollow for bullshit links within the post (because I have noticed, at least on the Mr’s blog, that they hardly leave urls in the author field, all in the text).
And that was a runon sentence from hell!!! :P
2 Franky // Dec 30, 2006 at 3:16 pm// View all comments by Franky//
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Danalyn, I see no reason to force nofollow. There should be the possibility to chose ether to use nofollow or not (only title or title and comment) in the WP options.
A plugin or apply changes to the core code should not be needed for this. Especially not if you (Automattic) release WP with Akismet.
The inconsistency here is that nofollow is compulsory but Akismet an option. Ether you fight spam or you don’t.
3 Hobo SEO // Jun 27, 2007 at 12:07 am// View all comments by Hobo SEO//
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Dofollow does nothing but increase your commentators and encourage discussion. Welcome aboard. Check out the dollow community on Bumpzee.
Shaun
PS - Love the comments box.