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| Author |
Message |
janc
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Googable Grex?
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May 26 15:19 UTC 2005 |
Have you noticed that when you google stuff, you never get the Grex
conferences as a result? That's because we have grex configured to request
search engines like google from indexing it.
It would be trivial to change this. Grex could be opened up to google in
seconds. Any selective opening, like opening only certain conferences or
certain items would be much harder, but perhaps not impossible.
Grex already has a feature where you can make all your responses invisible
to anonymous readers (like Google). ("shy y" adds you to this list, "shy n"
removes you).
Do we want to open Grex conferences to google?
I think it would be a dramatic change. Make Grex less of a dim little
backwater on the Internet, vastly more visible. That has it's pluses and
minuses, obviously. But it's been a long time since we've thought about this.
Grex has changed. The net has changed. We've changed. Where do we stand
on this today?
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| 71 responses total. |
cross
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response 1 of 71:
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May 26 15:28 UTC 2005 |
Go for it.
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mary
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response 2 of 71:
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May 26 15:51 UTC 2005 |
I agree.
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albaugh
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response 3 of 71:
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May 26 16:30 UTC 2005 |
As long as we could change our minds later, it might be worth an experiment.
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tod
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response 4 of 71:
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May 26 16:58 UTC 2005 |
You want to remove ROBOT from blocking search engines? I'm against that.
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slynne
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response 5 of 71:
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May 26 17:31 UTC 2005 |
I think this would be great although we might want to restart and
archive conferences first. There are lots of posts that were made by
people with the understanding that grex wasnt indexed by search
engines. Many of those people are no longer regular users of grex so
they might not see any warnings we post here.
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tod
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response 6 of 71:
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May 26 17:58 UTC 2005 |
There are lots of posts that were made by
people with the understanding that grex wasnt indexed
I agree 100%
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marcvh
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response 7 of 71:
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May 26 18:15 UTC 2005 |
Restarting lots of existing conferences, many of which haven't ever been
restarted before, seems like a bad idea.
Why not just issue an announcement of the change in policy, and allow
agora to be indexed starting with the summer edition. We can see if
that does any good and, if other confs want to also be indexed, they can
do restarts as well.
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davel
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response 8 of 71:
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May 26 18:52 UTC 2005 |
Wasn't the present policy (no indexing) the result of a member vote?
Certainly the issue was discussed at length in connection with a
very contentious vote. I don't have time to dig back & try to identify
it right now.
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tod
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response 9 of 71:
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May 26 19:02 UTC 2005 |
Maybe popcorn's scribble script should be offered to the userbase for 1 week
prior to removing the member voted and instated robot file.
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mcnally
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response 10 of 71:
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May 26 19:30 UTC 2005 |
I'm not in favor of the idea.
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glenda
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response 11 of 71:
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May 26 19:42 UTC 2005 |
I am also not in favor of the idea.
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cross
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response 12 of 71:
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May 26 20:02 UTC 2005 |
Which idea; #0 or #9?
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mcnally
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response 13 of 71:
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May 26 21:13 UTC 2005 |
#0.
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naftee
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response 14 of 71:
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May 26 22:06 UTC 2005 |
Go 4 it.
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other
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response 15 of 71:
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May 26 22:58 UTC 2005 |
I think the idea of allowing search engines to index a Grex conference
is a good experiment to undertake, subject to some restrictions as
suggested above.
Only Agora should be indexed, and only after the conference has been
restarted, and not including any old versions of Agora. There should be
a reminder header on every item indicating that this is happening and
that it is a NEW feature, highlighting the change for those who may be
or have been concerned about it.
Linked items from other conferences, if at all possible, should not be
indexed, or if that is not possible, then linking items from other
conferences into Agora should be prohibited, at least for a trial period
of say, three months (the duration of a single iteration of Agora).
Then, linked items should only be indexed if they include the same
header announcement I referred to above. Users should be given fair
notice of the extent of the obscurity of their posts.
No post on Grex is any less public than any other post anywhere else, in
theory, but the reality is that Grex itself is fairly obscure among all
the noise and fury of the internet, and indexing will raise awareness of
Grex and of the content of its conferences far beyond anything we have
ever considered. This can be a very good thing, and this can be a very
bad thing, depending on your perspective. It is eminently reasonable
that those people who wish their postings to be read only by the small
community of Grex conference participants should be given as clear an
indication as possible that their expectations will no longer have even
the flimsy basis they once had.
So, to make a short story long, we should do this; slowly, gradually,
gently and loudly.
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naftee
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response 16 of 71:
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May 26 23:59 UTC 2005 |
How can you be "gentle" yet "loud" ? Pleas demonstr8
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marcvh
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response 17 of 71:
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May 27 03:05 UTC 2005 |
A reminder in every item? Bleah! It's silly enough that we have a reminder
that the conference has been restarted every time we join and we can join
winter for the old version when it's been months since the restart.
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other
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response 18 of 71:
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May 27 03:45 UTC 2005 |
This is a major change, and it is far more valuable for Grex to make
sure that people who might be used to things being a certain way are
fully and properly informed of the change than it is to make sure that
you never see the same text twice if you don't want to.
I suppose an alternative would be to include a link or an instruction in
the header that would allow users to turn off the warning by indicating
understanding and acceptance of the new practice.
Anyway, I'd suggest the warning only be in place for three months, which
is plenty of time for existing users who may not conference regularly to
be considered to have been reasonably notified.
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naftee
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response 19 of 71:
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May 27 13:04 UTC 2005 |
It's not that major.
I typed this into google:
http://www.google.ca/search?q=naftee
and the third result is this :
http://www.grex.org/grexdoc/archives/minutes/2004-09-10
which is a GreX item, found on google, without any permission asked.
The most interesting was the output of ric(-k)'s finger programme showing up
on google.
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dpc
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response 20 of 71:
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May 27 15:47 UTC 2005 |
I think that starting this new accessibility is an excellent idea, for
Agora only, starting with the summer Agora.
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janc
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response 21 of 71:
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May 27 16:20 UTC 2005 |
(1) The robots are currently blocked only from the conferences, not
other Grex pages.
(2) Yes, the current policy was the result of a contentious vote.
(3) I'd suggest that people who don't want their responses indexed should
use the "shy" command, not the scribble command.
I like the idea of indexing only selected conferences, with the policy
that the conference must be restarted before indexing is enabled.
I like the idea, but I don't know of an easy way to implement it. The
files used to control indexing aren't that good at fine distinctions,
and the distinction between two different backtalk conferences can be
pretty fine. I'd have to think about it.
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janc
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response 22 of 71:
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May 27 17:46 UTC 2005 |
Hmmm...I think the cleanest way to implement this is to get rid of the
robots.txt file and use
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW">
tags on all pages that should not be indexed. Of course, this requires
changes to an awful lot of backtalk pages.
I could alternately create a copy of backtalk that generates normal
pages except that links to indexable pages are given as links to the
copy and links to non-indexable pages are given as links to the main
backtalk. The robots.txt file would be set up to allow indexing of the
copy, but not the main backtalk program. Might be easier, because I
need to change fewer pages, but a fundamentally kludgier approach.
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jep
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response 23 of 71:
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May 27 19:13 UTC 2005 |
How do you apply "shy y" if you use Backtalk? Does it mark your posts
as being unGoogleable retroactively?
Can we create a test conference which is Googleable, perhaps
called "Google Agora" or something, and try opening that one first?
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mcnally
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response 24 of 71:
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May 27 19:32 UTC 2005 |
Can I suggest someone whip up a quick man page for the undocumented
"shy" command?
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