You probably know about latest blogosphere scandal, how WordPress tried to raise funds with cloaked links to site selling pharmacy and viagrish stuff, these sites paying a fee for Page Ranking gain and search engines exposure.
Scandal ? Or nothing to pay attention about ? My opinion.
What I think
What is bothering bloggers here ?
- Seeing an open source project like WordPress implicated with common spam keywords ?
- having contributed to WP's high Page Ranking, and consequently to the pills sites' PR ?
- not being told about those hidden links ?
- finding out that an open source and free project can try to raise a bit of money ?
Matt did break a rule : Google's rule, stating that hiding links from viewers but not from search engines, what is defined as cloaking, is forbidden and get you banned from their index.
And so what ?
- It's his own site, he can make what he wants with it, as well as you can link WordPress.org from your blog if you want to, no ones forces you to do so
- Yes, I said his site, not the community's site : we, the community, are using it, he is paying for it.
- Hidden links there are harmless, unobstructive, and don't distract you from what you are looking for
- Matt could have used dozens of other ways to make money : he can know thousands of weblogs URLS thanks to pingomatic, thousands of email addresses from his comments or forum, not even speaking of selling WordPress now that it is popular
So, the only thing the community can be angry about is not being told about something that is not our business. What a scandal.
Matt does have one problem now : between Google and him, about being indexed or banned. But again, this is not our business and, frankly, I don't think we really care.
What I do
I'm a bit revolted by the angry mob writing all over the internet that WordPress is spamming and that Matt is a spammer. Maybe it was a mistake, maybe it was not that smart, but even, this is nothing compared to what Matt does to the WordPress community and open source.
I was to mail him my support, but I'm afraid he'll have hundreds of mail and comments to read, showing support or telling disappointment.
My — symbolic — action will thus be the following : I'm posting this support message on my blog, tagged with iLoveMatt. If you are a WordPress user, and think that, mistake or not, Matt is doing much more good than harm to the blogging community :
- <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ilovematt" rel="tag">iLoveMatt</a>
Shorter URL
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Well, I definately love Matt, but I'm sorta required to as I'm his sister…anyway, how do I do this tagging bit? I'm sure it's the sorta thing that would tickle him pink. Keep in mind that I'm sorta behind on all the terminology so I'm going to have to get the layman's version, but I could really use your help in supporting him!!!
Thanks, Charleen
I totally agree with your "What I do"!
Awesome idea. :) Agree with every word.
Charleen › simply post on your blog something with the code mentionned here (the link to technorati)
I bet your WP blog is configured to ping technorati y default (as every WP default install), if not, go there and manually enter the URL of your post here.
Others › post and tag ! It's all about "tickling Matt pink" ! :)
[…] t care. So long as WordPress is rockin', that's all that matters. I agree with this post. Anything else is between Matt and Google. […]
I agree. If I were paying a portion of his hosting fees, etc., I could be miffed. But I have no hand in it. It's his site, his decisions. As long as he continues to be the sweet, open-minded, available guy he is, I don't care about the blogodrama.
[…] l 2005 Comments: 0 ♥ Tracks/Pings: 0
—as Ozh said. As one can see, I think Matt is pretty damn g […]
Oh le méchant! en ce moment il y a aussi le trop de java dans openoffice 2 qui fait raller tout les empecheur de tourner en rond du web. Le fait que ce soit de la dev open source, les utilisateurs croient toujours pouvoir tout maitriser, c'est pas nouveau.
Excellent post Ozh. 'ilovematt' meme replicated at my site, and on my delicious page. Thanks for the idea =)
Well said. And thanks for the tag!