491393 - Can we make use of rel="nofollow" to deter spammers

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Websites Graveyard :: spreadfirefox.com, enhancement)

Description

[Alex Buchanan [:abuchanan]]

There is some controversy over whether or not the rel="nofollow" attribute is a good/bad thing.  

This may depend on the specific site:  

For example, some SFx users feel that they should have the opportunity to promote their site's search index by having a link on a high traffic site like Spreadfirefox.com.  

Others feel that the attribute could be useful in deterring spam (e.g. google recommends using it for all user created content like comments, posts, etc).

This bug should be a home for figuring out our policy on on rel="nofollow" once and for all.  In the end, I'd like to document some policy and place it on the wiki.

Thanks in advance for your input.

Comment 1

[Otto de Voogd [:ottodv]]

Thanks for the invite Alex:

I think I summed up my point of view in comment 11 of bug 491236 as well as a forum post I made:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=491236#c11
http://www.spreadopensource.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=174

Comment 2

[Alex Buchanan [:abuchanan]]

One point I wanted to make is that, there are other places where users could promote their websites and get search indexed, which would be much more difficult for spam bots to access.

The problem with letting users post indexed links in comments, is that that is the easiest point of attack for spammers.  Also, if users are allowed to link sites in comments and be rewarded, how do you know spam from legit content?

My idea is to make better use of user profiles.  Users who would like their site to be promoted can use their user profile to share their websites.  These websites could be displayed throughout the site.

I know there are some strong reasons not to use nofollow, but I think we can compromise by choosing the appropriate places to (not) use it.

What do you think?

Comment 3

[Fred Wenzel [:wenzel]]

I am with Alex here: Comments are a pretty reasonable spot to use rel=nofollow on, as they are frequently abused by spammers, particularly when well-known backend software like Drupal is employed.

I think that allowing a user's website in their user profile, then linking to it throughout the site somehow (without the nofollow attribute) is a better alternative. Of course, spam users still have to be kept from registering users and putting their spam URLs in there.

Comment 4

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

I think it would be worth taking this to SFx and informing the membership of the issue and get their feedback. They might have some good suggestions on ways to replace the boost that we'd be taking away, or maybe they'd disagree that there is a huge boost and not mind for the sake of the site.

Comment 5

[Paul Booker]

I was thinking about this last week and an idea that came to mind was to only allow a user to have google link their website URI to spreadfirefox if they have
done something significant to help spreadfirefox. We could perhaps turn this into some kind of weekly / monthly event .

It would be great if initially we could reward community memebers like Jamey , Ken  & Otto  who have been helping to spreadfirefox from the start and who have made a significant contribution over the years.

Technically this is easy to implement we would just need to define a new affiliate role "affiliate rewarded" say and to only allow users with this role to have all of their active links have no rel = "nofollow" html attributes.

Best, Paul

Comment 6

[Otto de Voogd [:ottodv]]

I think the main question is: what do you want to achieve with this?

As a tool against spam it's ineffective. To quote my own blog post:

"If you believe that nofollow would be "deterrent", then you'd believe in the following scenario: the spammer builds in an extra check in spam bot prior to posting spam, in that step he checks whether the nofollow tag is present on posted links (how does a program know what are posted links and what are not) and if it is a nofollow link the bot doesn't place the spam post.... now seriously how likely is that? For the overhead of that check you could probably place a second spam post somewhere else, in fact the overhead of making that check is probably more work than just to make the post regardless."

It's not a deterrent in any way, because it doesn't make the spammer pay a price, it merely reduces the benefit somewhat. Please read the rest of my post on this matter:
http://www.spreadopensource.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=174

Nofollow is only a way to punish genuine contributors, nothing more nothing less. It's also insulting to them, because you are in effect saying that you consider their posted links to be spam.

If you think a posted link is spam, what should happen is that a moderator should remove it, nothing less, certainly not this halfway "solution". If the site is well maintained all spam should be removed, hence the only links affected by nofollow will be non-spam links.

So please everybody, stop pretending that it's anti-spam. Just say that you don't think SFx contributors deserve any benefit from their contributions to SFx, because that's what it is.

I am not in favor of singling out certain members as more deserving than others, even if I would be one of those members. Every contributor deserves something in my opinion, however small their contribution, for us as a community it's the sum of contributions that's important.

Sometimes people post links to external blog posts written by others, often blogs of people involved in Firefox in some way, like Asa Dotzler's blog or the metrics blog or a statistics report on Firefox market share, etc... It's not their own site they are placing a link to and so they might not care about the nofollow, but I think we should care, because specific Firefox content is being singled out with such links that we should actually help a bit, in effect we will be saying to Google, we consider this page about Firefox to be more important than this other page which is not about Firefox, please give the Firefox page a bit more ranking, thank you. This actually helps the cause of spreading Firefox.

That said, I support Jamey's idea to set up some clear guidelines about what you can and cannot place links to on SFx. As I see it, there should be two basic groups of links:

- Any link posted in the body of post should have a direct relation to the topic of the thread, which in turn should be about Firefox, Spreading Firefox or Mozilla.
- Any link posted in a signature or profile page, though not having to be directly related to the post, should carry a working banner/button for Firefox (or any other Mozilla product), or the page should be about Firefox or Mozilla in some way.

Any link that doesn't meet these criteria should be deleted. Any post that was obviously placed only to drop a spam link should be deleted completely.

Nothing short of this will make SFx a pleasant site to read again.

Comment 7

[Paul Booker]

I have spent most of the morning reading this and bug 491236 and reflecting on everything that has been written and would just like to say that i completely agree with otto's position of allowing google to index all links on spreadfirefox and that the "no follow" issue is in fact a none issue and that the real issue is spam prevention / moderation.

Comment 8

[Alex Buchanan [:abuchanan]]

consensus is that this would never fly.