Come together with the global Drupal community in Rotterdam, 28 Sept – 1 Oct 2026. Sessions, contribution, connection, and Early Bird savings until 8 June.
By giorgosk on
I know it was implemented to discourage spammers to post unrelated stuff on drupal.org
but the way its implemented is inconsistent.
On the same page I see some outbound links without "nofollow" and some with "nofollow"
but also
on different pages I see some inbound links with "nofollow" ??
what is the logic ? I am curious ?
Comments
What's the policy of rel="nofollow" ?
I'm also curious of the logic, what's the Drupal policy of using
rel="nofollow"? (some of the links are tagged, some not... did not find any clear logic)Just curious...
filter clash
Depending on how you are linking the order of filters for the content can 'escape' the pattern used.
From my battered memory. Someone pokes it from time to time.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
Ah, that makes sense
So you're saying that only members with the ability to change their input filters on drupal.org can post links that don't have "nofollow". This explains why most -- but not all -- posts by certain prominent members have nofollow.
no, false, not true, tin foil hat
No. I do NOT say that. I did NOT imply that. It is inaccurate and false to say that.
There is a filter that applies the no follow tag. Depending on how the link is entered on the article/post in question determines whether or not the filter matches the the no follow bit is applied. It is a global filter that is not perfect but a basic attempt. That's it. Drupal.org is not a link farm, it is a development community with a very high page rank. We have had a large drop off on link farming attempts since this has been in place.
If you feel that people are 'gaming' the system, then file an infrastructure issue rather then hinting at deliberate corruption please.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
How about improvement
It is obviously useful filter and I support the initiative.
However, having links without nofollow is also quite important. "nofollow" policy, beside making site non-interesting to spammers, also effectively disconnects drupal.org both internally and externally in search engine eyes.
Maybe we could improve the policy to try to identify legitimate users and disable this filter for them.
For instance, policy could set 6-month and 50-posts probation time for users. When the user reaches this threshold without being reported as spammer, it is highly unlikely he's going to turn into one.
--
Lupein
Drupal themes - themeartists.com
scale
Over 200,000 user accounts. Identifying 'worthy' members would be fraught with division and acrimony not to mention a huge resource drain. Feel free to pursue it if you want.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
What I had in mind is automation
What I had in mind is automatic promotion to trusted user after some conditions were fulfilled. Conditions could be designed in a way that make it costly for spamdexters to pursue them. Six months membership and 50 posts are mentioned just as illustration.
Demotion could be done manually when spam is reported. This would make it absolutely non-profitable for spamers to target drupal.org, while majority of community would eventually get trusted status.
Therefore, human intervention would be needed only for small portion of 200.000 that actually spam.
--
Lupein
Drupal themes - themeartists.com
...
It would require tools and code to be written, security and performance tested. If you want to propose and work on it and such then that's all good.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
How do I propose it?
Fair enough.
We could at least drop "nofollow" for internal links and I'm willing to participate.
Do you know what is procedure to propose change like this?
--
Lupein
Drupal themes - themeartists.com
get involved
Search the infrastructure and webmaster queue's. I believe this issue was discussed there and the implemented solution is there as well. Sign for for the infrastructure group. Hang out in #drupal so people get to know you and you build your reputation.
If you can't find it, ask on the infrastructure mail list.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
wasn't trying to imply anything...
I definitely wasn't trying to imply any corruption! Sorry if I offended!
Of course I think it's wise to avoid becoming a link farm. I was just trying to reason through how stuff worked.
All the best,
P
This is important, I'm trying
This is important, I'm trying to submit a new module and the one main reasons for doing so is to get a link. There is really very little incentive for developers to share their work other than hoping that a half finished module is developed and a link. I think using nofollow is non productive. If I had developed a module fully and knew that it was complete why the heck would I share it? What would I get in return?
selfish?
Drupal is a community that has a goal of helping others. If your entire purpose being here is just to get a link back to your site, then really, don't bother.
~silverwing
Yea Drupal has a charity
Yea Drupal has a charity mindset. Well it's a whole different topic. My purpose is irrelevent, the only thing that matters is Drupal's purpose and I would think that maximum development rate is paramount. Developers need an incentive to share their work, I don't feel developers have enough of an incentive here. Perhaps I might start another topic as it's not really related to this one.
Anyway I just realised that "My Drupal website" in my profile doesn't have nofollow and is accessible anonymously so I'm happy with that and am not bothered now about any other links as I only want one.
re-phrase...
It's not a "charity", it's a concept called Open Source, which you may hear about if you look around a bit.
There is plenty of benefit for participating developers other than SEO linkbait.
However, there may be something positive in your question here.
It could be suggested that links to an authors site or external references on their d.o/project/* page should be exempt the nofollow rule.
When I look at those pages, uniformly I see accurate, deserved attributions back to a developers site or sometimes 'inspiration' attribution. These are high-quality, real links.
Those pages really really deserve their linkbait. If you see that as an "incentive" for releasing a module, I wouldn't disagree.
So, OnlineWD ... If you were to phrase your question with
- less of the "What's in it for me"
- none of the "You lot are a bunch of commies"
- not so much of the "what you've done is wrong"
- more of the "here's a positive, constructive suggestion for improvement"
...I think it would be a good idea to propose this as a new topic.
I'm aware of a few technical hassles that would be involved in making this happen, plus it's a policy issue, plus everyone will be paranoid about exploits, so it will not happen fast, if at all, but it's worth throwing out there.
Try raising it in the d.o webmaster issue queue - that'll get the right eyes on it.
.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards
_
uh... with over 4000 modules on drupal.org alone, including amazing pieces of work like views, panels, cck, etc-- it doesn't seem as if getting developers to contribute is a problem. Drupal is a do-ocracy, not a charity and, frankly, since you've contributed nothing no one is going to much care that you "don't feel developers have enough incentive here". That's not meant to be critical-- it's just the way it is.
silverwing is quite right-- if your main concern is not getting google juice even before you've contributed anything then truly don't bother. It's just going to be a frustrating experience for you. Thiat's just not how the drupal community functions.
and also note, the link you get in your profile doesn't require you to contribute anything.
Hey the link in profile
Hey the link in profile requires that I have Drupal site and my Drupal site is about making Drupal sites for people lol.
I love open source, it's what makes the world go round. I have been feeling for some time though that development rate could be increased if there were more incentives, what those might be I don't know and it is another topic for sure. And thanks for allowing a link in my profile, a PR8 link means a lot wowsers. Not sure how you check if these links a genuine though?
_
<sigh>, I truly hate picking nits, but I detest fud worse.
The exact help text of the profile link field is:
This is not the developer yellow pages-- this is drupal.org so, yes, the site linked should be a drupal site, duh. However, it says nothing about "and my Drupal site is about making Drupal sites for people". It can be any drupal site. Also note that it says your account can be blocked-- not that it will be blocked. This is most for spam control.
And what I said was, that it does not require you to contribute anything-- which it doesn't. We could just as easily make that field available to only those people that have contributed a project to drupal.org. We don't.
Yea I'm really greatful for
Yea I'm really greatful for that, am about to contribute a module too though. 24 hours after adding that link my site went from not in the top 1000 SERP to page one for "online website design"! Really is a massive boost. I was thinking, spammers might catch on to this and even if they only have a link for a day or two they might start spamming, also you might get people making spamish Drupal type sites which am sure you don't want either. I think 50 posts ought to be a requirement, seems too easy to get a PR8 link.
I have made quite a few Drupal sites, would it be OK to create new accounts and add those sites to the profiles for those accounts? Would it trigger an alarm and get all my accounts blocked? You see I would only be creating these accounts for the link though I guess I could ask my clients to create the accounts and they might in turn start to become a member of the community or at least be able to tell others about it.
no
You create multiple accounts and we will block you in a heartbeat.
We do this all the time
We have scripts and everything to check for this. Stop trying to get us to be.
WE ARE NOT A LINK FARM.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
=-=
:whistlin':
Well if you made it so that
Well if you made it so that 50 links is required before being able to add a link you might get a load of crappy posts so probably not a good idea. I do have two accounts here, one is for business and another for personal hope that's OK at least. I won't add a link to my personal account as it might trigger alarms.
I think you're doing the right thing, people ought to be able to share and talk freely about their Drupal websites and of course you want to support those who user Drupal by giving them some juice.