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‘No follow’ ethos permeates greater web

Scrolling through my Slashdot feed, I see a piece with a note of the new. Soko - in sending in a story on Lawsuit Says GPL is a Price-Fixing Scheme, featuring two evildoers suing the GPL - specifically mentions withholding link love from them:

I found the story on Groklaw - no links to Ms. O’Gara or Mr. Wallace from me.

Timothy then appends a link to a Google search (in a tongue-in-cheek feminist dig, I’ll point out that’s googling only the boy of the duo) and posts it.

I wonder what implications this has for hearing “the other side of the story”. It’s true that people can just take that second step and google it for themselves, but following a provided link is part of the value Slashdot (and blogs) provides. Since they go so far out of their way to not post I link, I wonder if it would be “bad” to see for myself. Encourage them by increasing traffic? Give them a chance to express their rationale? It’s hard to tell.

Now Slashdot is arguably where the whole phenomenon of linking first proved itself. A slashdotting is a huge vote of confidence, relevance and interest, and it’s a short step from noticing that to implementing that in tools like Technorati. I was a regular /. reader for years, falling off during my hard core research work (in the course of a day, I’d encounter almost all their stories). Since I’ve been away from formal research, /. is making more sense. This is the first instance I’ve noticed where someone’s specificially declared their intent to withhold links. I imagine that including a link withe the no-follow would do the trick for search engine calculations, but it would still give the baddies a traffic spike.

Food for thought.