Texture design

Posted by randfish

It may seem odd coming from someone who practices link building and whose clients require the service, but I'm gald to see that Wikipedia has shifted back to nofollow on all outbound links. What surprises me is that a relatively small-time Design contest was the catalyst (according to Wikipedia's talk page on the subject).

At Jimbo Wales' directive, all external links within the English language Wikipedia are now coded "nofollow" -- this should help cut spamming immensely once word gets out in the Design community.

This was mentioned in the discussion Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Globalwarming awareness2007/Design world championship -- expect a spam onslaught.

As usual, the "Design" brush is applied as a moniker to mean "those who spam for links." I don't expect this language or reputation to change, but it's always sad to see. What will be interesting to watch is how it really affects Wikipedia's spam problem. From my perspective, there may be slightly less of an incentive for spammers to hit Wikipedia pages in the short term, but no less value to serious marketers seeking to boost traffic and authority by creating relevant Wikipedia links.

I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that Wikipedia doesn't revert back and switch back to live links in the future. Since anyone can add them, Wikipedia is practically the definition of┬? where nofollow should be instituted. Matt Cutts mentioned back in our multiple choice interview that:

In my ideal world, Wikipedia would add nofollow to their untrusted links, but work out ways to allow trusted links to remove the nofollow attribute.

They're┬?halfway to your dream Matt. Here's to hoping they don't go any further

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Posted by randfish

It may come as a surprise to some that I'm in direct opposition to Rebecca's viewpoint in her post from last week - Hey, I'm Blogging! Pay Attention to Me! She wrote:

...another (obvious) reason for the increasing onslaught of blogs (currently nearly 60 million tracked by Technorati) is because bloggers, quite simply, want attention. Obviously, I'm not providing you with some profound secret you didn't already know, but the comic strip made me think of a good number of blogs written by vapid people who think that everyone wants to read about the minutia of their day-to-day lives, when in reality they're too wrapped up in writing about themselves that they don't have time to read or care about what their family and friends are doing. It's a "Well, I'll just blog about the events in my life instead of picking up the phone, and the people who truly care about me will take the time to read it."

In my opinion, there┬?exists┬?inherent validity and value┬?in a blog, no matter the subject matter. Publishing has never been so easy, so accessible or so inexpensive and these are opportunities we should celebrate, not disparage. Granted, there are those who write details that you or I might prefer be kept secret, but as one of the most transparent and open companies on the web, denouncing the practice surely makes Designmozzers hypocrites. Even the most minute, boring life deserves the right to tell their story - we are the ones who choose whether to read or ignore; why pass judgement when we would want visitors to approach us with an open mind?

Designmoz's blogging┬?seems (to me)┬?no more noble nor, necessarily valuable and interesting than Tim the Iowa corn farmer. Vapid or genius, interesting to 2 readers or 20 thousand, publishing on the web builds up a base of dedicated Internet users, potential Design clients, a savvier public and a greater store of information. Is the world a richer place because we found out that Tim's walk to the barn today took 5 extra minutes because he caught his foot in the fence? I'd argue yes, even if it's only by a very, very tiny amount.

What's your opinion? Is Rebecca right to ward us all off of personal blogs? Should the under-five-reader crowds at Livejournal and MySpace give it up? Or does a blog, no matter the relative significance, carry some fractional value that's worthy of, if not our respect, at least our acceptance?

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Posted by Oatmeal

DesignBlackHat recently wrote a post about global warming that calls it out as being "The greatest scientific fraud in the history of mankind."┬? Even though the author says otherwise, the post is obviously linkbait for an Design competition to rank for "GlobalWarming awareness2007."┬? The post contains an exhaustive list of facts, resources, and charts, all attempting to convince the reader that global warming is a sham.┬? In between the factual arguments are little spurts of crazy psycho-babble:

This sham has taken many otherwise intelligent and good intentioned people and turned them into quasi-religious zealots on a crusade for a bigger, more intrusive, more powerful world government.

The real beauty of this post is that it contains the perfect amount of personal opinion mixed with actual fact to effectively piss off anyone who reads it. If the post were 100% psycho-babble, readers would dismiss it as the rant of a crazy person.┬? If the post were 100% fact, readers might actually give it a bit of credit and have a positive reaction to it.┬? It's the mixture of the two that really gets to people.

Blogging about controversial issues for attention is nothing new, but I thought this little gem at the bottom of the post was particularly clever:

Comments are closed. To add your thoughts, send a trackback.

The author has hit the linkbaiting nail on the head:┬? generate an emotional response and channel it into links.┬?

Unfortunately for DesignBlackHat, I nofollowed the links in this post, and because of the subject matter I'm feeling inclined to link to a globalwarming awareness2007 competitor instead.

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Posted by Oatmeal

Just a quick heads up: Designmoz is moving to a new host today. I'm going to try my best to minimize breaking stuff, but shoot me an email if anything appears busted. Hopefully the ride won't be too bumpy. I'm going to make the DNS change very soon and try my best to make it a seamless transition.

Regarding the new version of the Designmoz site, things are very close to being finished. (I know I've been saying that every few weeks, but this time I mean it...really.) With all the bells and whistles it'll be well worth the wait.

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