[wp-forums] PR and Spam

[Podz]

ifelse wrote:
 > This is one of the instances where there's a stronger argument for the
 > use of nofollow.

I'm not entirely sold on nofollow - never was :)

I think there is an argument for using nofollow on all posts until 
someone has posted a number of links. That way, the hit'n'run spammers 
get the nofollow whereas genuine and useful links that are provided in 
the forum get the link juice benefit.
But then they are still leaving their URL's around - and I'd still say 
that they need to be deleted. It's like any spam - visibility to humans 
is just as good.

 > For spammers, this will have no effect at all. They'll ignore it just
 > the same way they ignore ethical conduct.
The guy in question has turned out to be genuine, and I apologised to 
him - it's his porn site, and it's his blog there too. It was a 
combination of his not knowing to tag his sites as NSFW, his not linking 
directly and me jumping too soon. So the NSFW part could still be 
relevant ? I'm not fussed as it does not matter to me, but I know 
several people who do help from work

For my money, although a blanket no-follow does the linkage no good for 
SE's, it just being there means we need to delete / break it, so if we 
need to intervene for that, then the blanket nofollow means little ?

>>Maybe we should start using a 'spam?' tag ? After all, if one person says "This looks like spam" and a mod agrees, then it goes ?
> 
> This has promise especially as it'll mean a single page (for mods) to
> check up and address critical issues. Perhaps we can extend this line
> of reasoning to use a 'mod_look' tag so that we can use it to tag
> other posts as well such as:
> dupes
> security vulnerabilities
> unproductive off-topic discussions
> 
I like the 'mod_look' tag idea

P.