In a recent post on My Affiliate Journey, Vlad tells the story of how Wordpress automatically adds the NoFollow attribute to links in the comment field. Vlad explains:

During the last two weeks I discovered that although I allowed both comments as well as trackbacks on my blog, every link in the comment area was “marked” by “nofollow”.
[...]
So why did I have “nofollow”? The answer is simple, I did not know better. I actually did not realize that WordPress out of the box had “nofollow” in comment area and in order to overcome this you need a DoFollow PlugIn.

Now this is particularly troubling for two reason. First, in 6 Simple Steps to Blogging, I openly endorse Wordpress. Secondly, I have spoken out extensively in favor of the NoFollow tag because I think that bloggers should have such a choice. But its the choice that's important.

Basically, I agree with Carsten Cumbrowski that a link is a pointer, not just a vote, and I think that bloggers should have a clearer choice on whether people can vote for themselves when commenting on their blog. When Google implemented personalized search results, I though it was to be expected that they'd be so sneaky about it. But I expect better from the providers of an open source blogging platform. After all, blogging is all about communication and transparency!

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