Back in February, I excitedly announced that I was getting rid of the rel=nofollow stuff on comment links.
April rolled around and I excitedly “joined” the I Follow movement with a spiffy badge.
Towards the end of May, I voiced some concerns about abuse.
A few weeks later in June, I hit the abuse topic some more.
July 1 I expressed more angst.
July 5 I changed my nofollow to be based on comment count.
Since then, I’ve watched some SEO Wizards enter just enough comments to get their nofollow removed. If I was at 2, they stopped at 2. I raised to 4 and they went to 4.
Clearly, I’m just a little too uptight to remain in the “Do Follow” movement. Plugins have been removed. While I feel rel=nofollow is the wrong solution to the overarching spam issues, I also feel the approaches to getting around it are just as wrong and to me also far more annoying. Thus, like a big wuss, I’m pulling in my horns and giving up.
So there. Neener and neener.
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July 10th, 2007 
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Lol.
I find it hard to believe that anyone would give a link from a comment from this blog enough value to bother figuring out when the “nofollow” thing kicked out…
Certainly no one who had some kind of value on their time anyway!
I enjoy this tech blog, but it all sounds a bit paranoid to me.
I’m not sure taking it off is the best solution but I can understand your frustration. ;(
As yet I’m not sure what the deal is going to be with the no follow blog community because many of the bloggers are removing the no follow – does that mean they are removed from the community? Just in case, I’m going to add you to my google reader separate from the bumpzee thing..
It is a real shame this happens because there are so many bloggers I enjoy from that community..
Snoskred
http://snoskred.blogspot.com/
Believe it or not. I watched two do it in one day. (deleted their comments). Clearly, some folks have a very low value for their time! (cause seriously, I agree that my PR is NOT enough for that to be worth it).
You know, I never got into the whole no-follow thing, just never paid much attention to it. I had Akismet working, and I just counted it as one of my admin jobs to go in everyday, and delete the spam.
Or maybe I just missed the whole point of no-follow/do-follow.
-rob
Hi Rob – spam karma and bad behavior have been handling the obvious/obnoxious spam just fine. I’ve been wrestling with a slightly different kind — the kind where the comment itself is reasonably on topic or valid, but the commenter’s name and link are clearly for “spammy” or seo purposes. In other words, they left the comment solely for the link back.
Again, I know it makes me sound like a paranoid wacko! I just got tired of researching all the links.
This link might help explain a related concern: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/07/09/buy-blog-comments-a-sick-new-comment-spam-service-launches/
Chris, I think you could turn yourself inside out wondering if a link is spammy or for SEO purposes. You might assume incorrectly – and my general rule in life is that old saying, never assume as it makes an ass out of you and me
You might ask why do my comments have a link at the bottom back to my blog – it is because I found people new to blogs didn’t always know you could click on the name to get back to your site. I used to get emails from new bloggers, even! “Where’s your blog”. Now, I put a link under my name – whether the site is do follow or not. It makes it easy for people to know where to find me. Though, searching for Snoskred usually pulls my blog close to number one or so.
I used to get a lot more hits for the word before I put a link at the bottom of my comments, that’s for sure.
How can you tell if a “spammy” or SEO person is making a comment because what you wrote actually was of interest to them and they wanted to comment on it? I think you end up making judgments on people and jumping to conclusions in a situation like that and it’s probably not fair.
There’s been a few other thoughts on this today on other blogs, I spotted them in the bumpzee No Nofollow | I Follow | DoFollow Community RSS feed, many of them saying they will keep doing what they’ve been doing all along, which I think is valid too..
You’ve made a decision based on how you felt about it and that’s a good thing for you.
If you feel better thanks to it, that is even better for you.
Snoskred
http://snoskred.blogspot.com/
So did I make the quota?
Whoops did I say that out loud? Confound it all!!
FWIW, I’m keeping my blog dofollow since I still have enough time to moderate the comments for spam. I’m not sure I’d be able to keep it up though if I suddenly start getting 30 comments a day.
@Snoskred
Bingo. It became an obsession or a “psychic weight” that was driving me nuts. I lost the ability to trust a commenter as I was too busy wondering about motives.
Ultimately, it’s a selfish thing I’ve done… and I’m ok with that.
Thanks for thoughts.
@Lincoln – ROFLMAO!
It sucks being spammed over and over agian. This is why I never was to big on he dofollow
I think you did the right thing by removing the do folow plugin. I think if you are using Do follow then you’ll be able to attract comments but as you experienced…more of spammy nature.
What I’ve noticed is that if we make some good comments over other blogs..then we get good response too.
[...] Zeitgeist « *sigh* Welcome Back rel=nofollow [...]
I share your frustration. As a result, I have replaced the DoFollow plugin with the LinkLove plugin and I have set the minimum count to 10. This mean only those with 10 or above moderated comments get linked on my blog.
@Single Grain – I have to admit, it becomes tedious.
@ReviewSaurus – Thanks for the thoughts. Sharing some good/useful comments does seem to help a bit with “comment karma”
@Clapping Trees – LinkLove is what I was using for the past week, but I was experimenting with much lower numbers than 10. In hindsite, perhaps I should’ve used numbers closer to 10!