[wp-docs] Search Engines Grab Users

[lorelle at cameraontheroad.com]

As exciting as that headline is, the ROUGH DRAFT articles I posted in my 
user section have already been grabbed by Google and others.  Looking for 
something else, a couple of my Lessons articles popped up, posted 3 days 
ago.

While it is exciting that WordPress's Codex is tops on the priority list for 
search engines to troll, by allowing user sections and articles in rough 
draft form there a lot of trouble could be had in WordPress city.  While I 
work overtime to make sure the information is as accurate as possible, I 
rely upon other editors to catch my boo boos and fix things before they are 
released to the public, especially the technical things.  Which is why I'm 
so specific about asking for the help I need to ensure the document's 
accuracy.

Now this information, and who knows what else, is out there for the world to 
see and put into action - AND IT COULD BE VERY WRONG ADVICE.

There are a couple of possibilities on handling this that I see, but the 
admin folks should get everyone's input on this.

1. Make USER pages unfriendly to search engines with a nofollow or whatever 
in the redirects.

2. Make sure every user who submits material to the Codex, via their user 
page or a public page, that is in ROUGH DRAFT form, understand that this 
information will be in the public view immediately and it must be triple 
checked for accuracy before posting, making it a "draft" not a "rough 
draft".

3.  Either created by the Codex with some kind of stub thing or manually by 
the user (with clear instructions), the first words on the user's rough 
draft page should read:  ROUGH DRAFT - AWAITNG CHECK FOR ACCURACY - 
INFORMATION SUBJECT TO CHANGE - USE AT OWN RISK - or something like that to 
warn the user that we may not be perfect but we try.  When the article is 
awaiting release, this could be changed to: FINAL DRAFT - AWAITING RELEASE. 
This would also give the sysops a clue that this article is "done" as far as 
someone who thinks they know better thinks.

I might be making an Everest out of a pimple, but I'm worried that, 
especially on my template tag examples, someone is going to totally bork 
their WordPress because of a left out comma or wrong advice.

So what do you all think?

Lorelle