The more I think about the enforced imposed action by MSN Spaces against the 1.5 million blogs they have the more disappointed I become. I realize they did this to fight the comment spam which all bloggers who have been affected by this are grateful for but at the same time, not giving each individual content provider (blogger) a choice to enforce this at his/her blog IMO is a mistake. A big mistake.

So, I decided to do a little more poking around on this. Let’s take the list of bloggers listed as contact people by the Googleblog. I wonder how these same folks would feel about putting this decision — whether to block the SE juice by commenters – in the hands of the people who produce the blog content: the blog authors.

Has Dave Winer ever allowed comments at scripting.com? I don’t see where he’s been impacted by comment spam one way or the other on his principle blog. Dave is pretty pro-user, so I’d be a bit surprised if he felt that this move should be rammed down all blog author’s throats without any sort of option. I’m sure he’s in favor of software developers and blog hosting sites making this a default option (as I would be too) but not giving the blog authors a way to turn this off seems misguided.

Matt Mullenweg who created Wordpress strikes me as being very pro blog author as well. I can’t see him saying: “let’s make this a built-in feature and force the authors to hack the script to deal with this.” I see someone creating a karma hack that will allow each blog admin in WP to be able to select which users get the SE juice and which do not (by the inclusion or exclusion of the “nofollow” tag).

Six Apart has been a comment spam haven for far too long, so they are probably most likely to do something about this. In their case swiftly implementing this solution as the default in the next version — or an immediate patch version — would be a good idea. Again, however, they should make it an option so that the blog author can easily disable this in the config section and if they can go the extra mile and offer a karma system so that each blog author can choose who they want to exclude the “nofollow” tag, even better for their customers.

If Blogger does what MSN Spaces did, I think that would be a mistake. This needs to be an option. But then again, Blogger embraced Atom as its preferred RSS format which wasn’t the standard really, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they too implemented a change that impacted all the blog authors on their system.

I don’t read or comment on many LiveJournal blogs (not a big fan of the format of them and they seem to host mostly younger people). Still, even younger people should have the right to choose which commenters get SE juice, not LiveJournal.

FlickR is a great picture service, but I don’t look to them for providing this type of “protection” for me either. If they enable this as a default option, then please make it an option for each photo contributor to choose. Again, karma system would be best so each individual blog owner can choose whether and who (a new grouping function) to allow comments that have SE juice.

I really think it’s a slippery slope to force methods of reducing comment spam — without giving the content provider (which is the blog author in this case) — the ability to choose who they want to give the SE juice to. You can tell Google about this by writing commentspam at google.com. I have. I don’t like it when program owners make decisions for me that I cannot change that impact the readers at a site I provide content to. Give us the OPTION or risk losing the content. Here is the content of the email I sent Google:

Hello there,

Reading the Googleblog, I’m inspired by the new “nofollow” tag but I do not like that places like MSN Spaces TypePad made this change without giving any of their 1.5 million blog owners a chance to turn this off. What if we, as blog owners, want to allow legitimate commenters to get SE juice? It seems like those who use blog hosting will have this rammed down their throat unless it’s made an option.

By Google suggesting to go directly to the blog software and blog hosting places, they could be taking away the decision from the blog owner. This is a slippery slope that catches legitimate commenters in the combines of the comment spammers. We own and operate multiple dedicated servers and can modify any blog script running on our servers not to include the link so it’s a non-issue really for us except in the cases of where we have blogs hosted by places like MSN Spaces.We have no control over what options are placed — or are not — placed at our disposal.

I hope that as you are doing in promoting to blog software developers and blog hosting companies that you also try to encourage them to make this an OPTION that each individual blog author can enable or disable. I think making this option a DEFAULT behavior is a good thing, so long as there is an option for the content provider (the blog author) to be able to disable this setting.

Sincerely,

TDavid

UPDATE - others who wonder about the true usefulness of this move (I’ll add more as I come across them):

Restless mind:

This is going to hurt small bloggers, for sure. You do quite a bit of posting and linking legitimately to build your PageRank and build your membership. This is going to whisk a lot of that away.

Clete Blackwell via The Linux Blog:

Really, I don’t think anyone will use it. Good idea, however, and easy to tack on rel=”nofollow” to all blog comments. It also probably will not cut down on spam at all, as other engines still follow the links and if one person clicks the link, it’s worth it to them to keep their bots spamming.

Cigarettes and Beer:

The only thing I’m worried about is legitimate posted links. I certainly don’t feel like having to sift through every comment and remove the “nofollow” attribute from the links that are good.

The Register: “No-Google tab blesses the Balkanized web“
Slowplay:

The intended benefit is to stop comment spam from being as effective at getting PageRank through links in comment sections. The real benefit (consequence?) will be a slick way for webmasters to abuse the tag and control the PageRank of their pages. We really need one more thing directed at PageRank and not page content.

Anne Vankesteren:

Personally I am more in the opinion that spam should not appear on weblogs at all and should be prevented in one way or another. I have seen various proposals that could make a chance in stopping spam. That does not mean that I am against the new value, by the way. It is useful, but I doubt if it will stop spam. Furthermore, the way it is currently implemented in some weblog systems, it harms useful comments.

Chuqui:

I don’t wish to be overly negative about things, but I just can’t convince myself that this is really going to solve the problem. (I will happily settle for ‘make it better’, though)

Adam Lasnik (Bladam):

But that’s not the only reason why I’m not very fond of this no-follow thing. From a selfish perspective, I believe that I’ve contributed quite a few thoughtful comments to many blogs, and frankly, I welcome and appreciate the Google whuffie that I earn for my blog. Forgive my sense of entitlement here, but when I’m contributing to the content of the Web, why shouldn’t my own little corner of the Web gain a bit from my efforts?

Wolf-howl:

So if all of you bloggers out there, still want to celebrate, find some other ostriches and bury your heads in the sand, This is nothing more than a cheesy publicity stunt, and will actually make things much worse. In 6 months linking structures will be so artificallily manipuated and unnatural, it will grow more and more useless by the day.

Update 1/24/2005: Mike Torres from MSN Spaces has rightly pointed out to me that MSN Spaces has not in fact implemented the nofollow tag yet, only that they support its use. I’ve since published a retraction of my comments about them (too numerous here to completely strike out). You can pretty much substitute TypePad for MSN Spaces with most of my comments in this entry (I’ve tried to add that where relative).

Did this post make you go hmm?

Maybe Related Posts (plugin generated)

• No Google juice for nofollow attribute, will this negatively impact legitimate comment activity?
• Retraction: MSN Spaces not enforcing nofollow on all blog authors
• Google responds to my nofollow concerns
• Blog comment spam and SE impact: is it that significant?
• Pivot blog system makes rel=nofollow an OPTION
• TypePad offers tip jar feature, still forcing rel=nofollow on all comments?