7 replies to this topic

[ricick]

Hey guys

I've been working on a crowd sourced quiz site for a while now, and somebody requested that i add a source field to the questions, so people can link to reference material or sources of the question, similar to wiki footnotes.

It occurred to me that I could use this to generate more content because it essentially provides free backlinks for people who add content to my site, especially if the question they add is relevant to the content of their site.

I'm trying to add a bit of quality control by making anonymously added questions have rel="nofollow" on the source link, and hopefully the voting mechanism of my site should take care of poor quality questions.

Do people think this is a reasonable strategy?

Cheers

[Michael Martinez]

Not a very good strategy at all. You'll essentially be inviting every link spammer in the universe to come in and abuse your site until its value has been crushed into the negative zone.

[ricick]

currently if questions get 3 downvotes they're removed from the site, so i was hoping that this would get around that but you might be right. Perhaps if i make them nofollow until the question has at least 3 upvotes?

[Jill]

It doesn't matter. No follow doesn't seem to deter spammers.

[rolf]

Maybe you could have a system where any link only becomes visible once the rest of the post has earned 3 up votes?

[Michael Martinez]

The DIGG armies are supposedly still operating in secret to manipulate DIGG's results. Even a 3-positive-vote requirement would, in my opinion, be easy pickings for the people who have been developing their sock puppet armies for years.

[ricick]

Maybe you could have a system where any link only becomes visible once the rest of the post has earned 3 up votes?

The problem is, the source links are primarily for genuine sources like wikipedia. I wouldn't want to penalize people who are using this properly.

[Jill]

As long as you're vigilant about removing spam, you can set it up however you'd like.