On 24 May 2008, at 06:26, Nuno Lopes wrote:
The manual notes are usually used for SPAMing. The problem with
[snip]/whatever SPAM is mostly fixed, but there's another
increasing problem. Many are using the php manual notes as a SEO
technique. The PHP website (and the mirrors) have a high PageRank,
so a website listed in the notes will rank very high as well. So
you basically would have guys submitting their note every 90 days
to keep their high ranks. Also, a "keeper" or a "deleter" is the
same. You need someone to actually into the notes, check if they
are "correct" and accept/reject them.
Remove links, or sanitize them to display the url without an anchor.
End of problem.
Then you have a usability problem. But it seems the web is used to
tradeoff usability for some spam elimination..
Us requiring people to copy-n-paste URLs is okay but we could find
ways to make it easier for them. I don't like seeing most of these
URLs either... they feel dirty. However, what's a user note? Is a link
to a tutorial okay? A link to a code snippet? Why do we have these
links?
Also, if we decide to go the moderation route the notes would likely
have to be offline until approved. Still this requires work but not
more yet it improves quality. The drawbacks are obvious but reality is
real, and I see no obvious solution here. Then again, we've not really
promoted the idea of asking everyone to moderate notes so such
promotion is an option too.
The notes may be valuable, but they will soon loose their importance
if their quality continues falling.
Well, they'll lose their importance a whole lot faster if they're
removed completely all in one go, which is what you're advocating.
I'm not advocating anything. I just want to bring this problem to
light over again.
A real problem. Without Nuno I'm not sure where they'd be... check out
the note editing statistics:
http://doc.php.net/php/notes_stats.php
And now Felipe too. It's still too overwhelming so it's a good time to
do something about it else we'll reach 40,000 soon. And here's a graph
of our note totals:
http://doc.php.net/images/note-statistic-graph.jpg
With so many factors coming to play that graph doesn't really tell us
a lot but it's interesting nonetheless.
I have 2 questions if you don't mind. How much karma does it take to
be allowed to mod notes? Is there a document _anywhere_ that
describes
how to mod notes?
Only a php.net account is required.
And of course there is a document describing the note editing
guidelines. We are the documentation team after all. Please take a
look at http://doc.php.net/php/dochowto/c1203.php
It describes how to moderate notes but we're still unclear on what
makes a note worth keeping. For example, if we want our user notes to
include a "code repository" then we'll need to rethink it and likely
add tagging during the overhaul.
Regards,
Philip
