{"id":281,"date":"2006-09-08T19:58:41","date_gmt":"2006-09-08T08:58:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2006\/09\/08\/not-following-the-no-nofollow-following\/"},"modified":"2006-09-08T19:59:41","modified_gmt":"2006-09-08T08:59:41","slug":"not-following-the-no-nofollow-following","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2006\/09\/08\/not-following-the-no-nofollow-following\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Following the “No NoFollow” Following"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was checking the semantics of HTML’s rel=”nofollow” attribute<\/a> the other day. While doing so, I stumbled across the No NoFollow wiki<\/a> site, and learnt a few lessons.<\/p>\n

To start with, there is a whole movement of web-masters I didn’t know existed: People who hate the “nofollow” attribute! They particularly object to it in its most common incarnation – in blog comments.<\/p>\n

Spurious Reasons<\/h4>\n

Unfortunately, the 11 listed reasons<\/a> given to not use the attribute are largely spurious and repetitive rationalisations. <\/p>\n

For example, just because your site isn’t given a boost to its PageRank doesn’t “eliminate the dissemination of free speech”. Remember: even in the countries that recognise a right to free speech, they protect the right to speak, not some mythical right to have people pay attention to you when you speak.<\/p>\n

I would rather use the non-trademarked generic equivalent of PageRank (which is trademarked to Google). If Google followed trademark rules (e.g. called it the PageRankTM<\/sup> site rating system) I could do so easily, but Google haven’t seen fit to do this<\/a> so I figure they don’t deserve any special effort from me.<\/div>\n

Here’s another example of spuriousness. They lobby that, because “nofollow” is confusingly named, others should not use it. I support the concept of naming attributes clearly (see my opinions<\/a> on the “alternate” versus “alternative” attribute debate), but I wouldn’t tell others to abandon an attribute out of spiteful pedantism.<\/p>\n

A third example: just because “nofollow” is not directly useful to the human reader, doesn’t make it perfectly valid markup. It is no reason to abandon it.<\/p>\n

Wiki Weakness<\/h4>\n

The Wiki format isn’t working for anyone here. The basic propositions are lost in a sea of rebuttals and counter-points. It is difficult to understand where it all started, and who is disagreeing with who. (Here’s an egregious example<\/a> – at least at the time of writing.)<\/p>\n

A wiki is a great place to have a consensus, but an awful place to have a disagreement.<\/p>\n

Plugin Support<\/h4>\n

There are a few WordPress plugins<\/a> out there to change the NoFollow behaviour. Some eliminate it. Others recognise that spam-proof fences don’t exist yet, and leave a nofollow tag in for a few days until the moderator has had a chance to clean up any remaining spam.<\/p>\n

Forming My Own Opinion<\/h4>\n

I went away from the site dismissing it as net-foolishness, but my thoughts did come back to it over the next few days, and I have gradually changed my mind over to a compromise position.<\/p>\n

My first premise is that I want to treat my fellow-blogging comment writers well for two reasons – I want to encourage comments on my blog and I want to be treated well by others when I comment on their blogs. <\/p>\n

Posting a (non-spam) comment here increases the value of my blog. While I don’t feel ethically obliged to include references to my commenter’s web-sites, I am happy to do so (within the bounds of good taste) as a small reward for posting a comment here. If their comment is interesting, perhaps readers will follow the link to learn more about the commenter.<\/p>\n

However, I have slowly come to realise something: Just because you have a web-page and<\/em> you comment on my blog does not mean your web-page is more worthwhile to web-surfers as a whole. You don’t deserve better PageRank merely for posting an unrelated comment on a different blog. You do<\/em> deserve PageRank when other people reference your site.<\/p>\n

Therefore, the behaviour I desire from a NoFollow plugin is:<\/p>\n