[Princeton]

The "rel" attribute has been around since HTML 3.2.

It's getting a lot of attention these days because of the "junk" pages that are being indexed by the major search engines. Most notably caused by individuals who comment (spam) a blog, wicki, or forum site. The search engines are looking for a way to conserve resources (use it where it counts) and prevent indexing of sites with no relative content.

So they are asking the community to start using the rel="nofollow" attribute to help them stop-- at the very least slow -- the "spamming".

When an individual spams a site they leave links on the post hoping that the search engines will "follow" the link back to their site. When they (the spammers) do this they are hoping to increase their "popularity" with search engines.

The rel="nofollow" does not prevent the search engines from indexing your pages. Nor, does it prevent the other site from being indexed when search engines do it directly.

It will simply tell the search engine not to follow the link that was posted on your page (thread/post) -- that was NOT created by you.

ABOUT THE HACK
If you are worried about your PAGERANK than use this.

If you want to prevent spammers from posting in your forum than this hack will not help. Spammers will continue doing what they do ... the best route is to remove post and ban user. Most will not even know you are using rel="nofollow" and some will not even understand it.

SOME CONTROLS ARE NEEDED
I think there should be some controls.

For example, converting all posted links with rel="nofollow" also punishes those who are loyal to the site.

Why not help your loyal members with their site "popularity"? Do not convert links posted by loyal users. Allow the search engines to follow these links. Some sites can even list this as a membership benefit. -- just throwing ideas

Anyway, what I'm trying to get to is that the ADMIN should have some control over what links get rel="nofollow".

As it is now, all "in-house" links are tagged with rel="nofollow" which may hurt your "popularity".