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January 22, 2005
Die, Spammers, Die
Removing the incentive for death-deserving scumbags spammers to send comment and trackback spam will help ameliorate the problem, but only if significantly huge numbers of MT users hop on the bandwagon.
By "bandwagon," I of course refer to the new MT plugin, nofollow.
No, I'm not going to explain what it does — the folks at SixApart have already done so.
(Via Spoons.)
Posted by Russ at 03:38 PM, January 22, 2005 in Bloggery
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Comments
I read about it a few days back, but it was all Greek to me :) I also read that if you use it, regular people won't be able to find stuff on your site using a search engine. Like I said, I don't understand enough about it one way or the other.
I've seen a few people using something that makes you have to hit preview on your comment before you hit post. and that it's helped cut down on spam. any thoughts on that, oh MT guru? :)
Posted by: Ith at January 22, 2005 04:02 PM
The plugin only modifies the links which are included in trackbacks and comments - everything else appears to be fine at this point. For instance, the links in this post, as well as the link to the category, are unaffected. So search engines should continue to operate normally with any archives.
As far as the Preview button issue goes, yes, I think that would help - certainly in the short term. But I also think the spammers are devious enough to figure out a method to automate a way around that obstacle.
Posted by: Russ at January 22, 2005 06:48 PM
Heh. I suggested that, and something else they haven't implemented: rel="suppress"
This would not be allowed in comments as posted; only the site owner could insert it.
The effect would be that Google and others would not display a link at all if the link had that attribute anywhere on the Web. That is, if the site owner chose to do so he or she could completely suppress your site.
It's probably too powerful a bomb. Perhaps it could be made weaker, e.g., count a suppress as a negative link count. But the idea of making a spammer disappear completely with a few keystrokes tickles the fancy, don't it?
Regards,
Ric
Posted by: Ric Locke at January 27, 2005 09:19 PM
Imperial Department of Hegemony By Force
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.emersons.net/mt/mt-pingback.cgi/832
Comments
I read about it a few days back, but it was all Greek to me :) I also read that if you use it, regular people won't be able to find stuff on your site using a search engine. Like I said, I don't understand enough about it one way or the other.
I've seen a few people using something that makes you have to hit preview on your comment before you hit post. and that it's helped cut down on spam. any thoughts on that, oh MT guru? :)
Posted by: Ith at January 22, 2005 04:02 PM
The plugin only modifies the links which are included in trackbacks and comments - everything else appears to be fine at this point. For instance, the links in this post, as well as the link to the category, are unaffected. So search engines should continue to operate normally with any archives.
As far as the Preview button issue goes, yes, I think that would help - certainly in the short term. But I also think the spammers are devious enough to figure out a method to automate a way around that obstacle.
Posted by: Russ at January 22, 2005 06:48 PM
Heh. I suggested that, and something else they haven't implemented: rel="suppress"
This would not be allowed in comments as posted; only the site owner could insert it.
The effect would be that Google and others would not display a link at all if the link had that attribute anywhere on the Web. That is, if the site owner chose to do so he or she could completely suppress your site.
It's probably too powerful a bomb. Perhaps it could be made weaker, e.g., count a suppress as a negative link count. But the idea of making a spammer disappear completely with a few keystrokes tickles the fancy, don't it?
Regards,
Ric
Posted by: Ric Locke![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.emersons.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at January 27, 2005 09:19 PM