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Forum Moderators: brett tabke
Use cloaking to hide outbound links entirely from search engines
Allowing higher ranking members to flag posts or threads may take some of the pressure of the mods, which would allow for some relaxed rules in certain areas.This is aalready allowed to sedn the mod a sticky next to the post.
Ok Hotshot
all outbound links are already "cloaked" (passed through a redirect script) in the forums, and have been for years.If robots are able to follow the script then that is hardly cloaking. Also, even if they cannot, the url=http... format used is so obvious and common that robots may simply interpret the link to destination directly.
See the Professional Forum Spammers thread Brett linked to above - it's happening day after day here at WebmasterWorld.Well, in that case, simply relax the rules in all the forums where it isn't a problem and see what happens.
joined:Aug 12, 2004
posts:1781
votes: 0
people asking about "can I do X on this page" when they sell products to webmasters?
competitors asking "what's wrong with this page" when they are really pointing out spam so that Matt Cutts will see it?
What is wrong with Matt Cutts finding out about spam?
- competitors asking "what's wrong with this page" when they are really pointing out spam so that Matt Cutts will see it?
- people asking about "can I do X on this page" when they sell products to webmasters?
- what do you think of product x? And product X is usually a SEO tool or WebHosting or... we've had people name drop 200-300 times in the forums in whisper campaigns.
- what do we do with competitors that encourage staff to come promote at webmaster world?
- what do we do with professional forum spammers?
- what about people who come in and drop links to great stories, but do it once a day? Lets say Rand were to stop in and let people know about the latest blog post on SEOMoz? (no, he never would do that, but others have and continue to do so)
- What about moderators from competing forums that come in and share "info" links in line?
- What about this one? [webmasterworld.com...] is Major_Payne the author of that, or just referencing it? What about sites that monitor keywords and want jump all over threads and reference.
And one benefit of the current links policy is this - it tends to make our discussions self contained, with all the essential information on record right there in the thread. That's a real benefit that I'd hate to lose.
(...) how can we update the TOS in such away that a) the members can understand it, b) the mods can get behind it, and c) it holds up to the smell test.
[edited by: Quadrille at 3:07 pm (utc) on May 29, 2010]
joined:Aug 12, 2004
posts:1781
votes: 0
How can we tweak the moderation policy to allow more links - less editing - and more random user satisfaction?
If done professionally, you won't even realize that a spammer has been in the forums.
How would you populate a black list? Where would you even start?
And one benefit of the current links policy is this - it tends to make our discussions self contained, with all the essential information on record right there in the thread. That's a real benefit that I'd hate to lose.