I've been following a
thread on
Scoble's blog regarding the introduction of the
rel="nofollow" tag for blog comments - some of the points Robert makes are interesting, including the one that irked me most:
Developed in privacy. Um, not true. Webloggers have been asking for YEARS for a link that could tell the search engine spiders not to go there. Joi Ito and I have been asking for this repeatedly over the past four years. Certainly not in private.
Sorry, but that's total bollocks - this 'innovation; was announced, not submitted for comment / improvement, those involved have included Blog & Search Monopolists Google (who have most to gain and least to lose by the introiduction of this attribute). The most vocal support has come from people like Scoble - whos' blogs ranked highly on Google precisely because blog comments and posts generate trackbacks and navigabvle links. The fact that Robert now calls for a method of limiting the popularity of other blogs using such a method seems like the blog version of
protectionism - it's fair enough to benefit from the interconnectedness of blogs but it seems that being asked to give a little back is just too much.
I have up until now used this attirbute on this site without giving it much thought - I plan to remove it, comments are the life-blood of blogs that Spam could effectively ruin the blog system of interconnections just seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face. I'm sorry if Google is upset that blogs break it's page-rank algorithm (not all that great an algorithm if it can't deal with such emergent system...) but frankly when searching for something and being presented with a blog (actually I usually end up with that god-awful techie discussion board thing) is usually a good thing - it's ranked higly because it's good!
Blog spam has to be controlled, but I really don't think this is the best method - the little CAPTCHA thing I have on the comments here (though not yet perfect) has cut my Comment Spam down to a slow drip from a raging torrent - that just seems like a more effective method. I do plan on working on additional methods as well, with 'arbitrary membership' being high on the list...