On 4/18/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On 18/04/07, Info Control
<infodmz(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Related question: was the nofollow change for all
links with search
engines
permanent?
Brion says he will happily put in something finer-grained when someone
writes code to that effect.
(whenever this is pointed out to those objecting, there usually
follows silence and the occasional tumbleweed - it seems complaining
is easier than programming.)
It's crazily difficult to program this thing. Those who advocate, say, not
nofollow-ing links older than X amount of time, probably don't realise how
immensely difficult this would be. You would have to first isolate all
external links (no easy task, but fortunately I think we have one standard
format for external links), and then go back through all the revisions in
the history up to a certain point, and make sure each revision contained
this link (not as easy as it sounds). As a programmer, I would not want to
take this task on.
Johnleemk
On the off chance that someone interested and capable is reading this
thread, I think a more efficient method would involve setting up a
database table to track each external link for each page, tracking the
date/time that the link was added. Each entry would be verified on page
save; if a link disappears, it's removed from the table; if a new link
appears, it's added to the table.
When a page is rendered, one lookup for each external link would reveal
its age. Much more efficient.
Me? I'm probably not capable, and definitely not interested. I'm fine
with nofollow on external links.
-Rich