The site is “The Sage” and the person calls himself “The Sage”

On my site I would most likely delete the link, not the opinion.

All the links on blogs and forums which people made ised to in some way define the site they linked back to from their forum sigs and optional website URLs.
Forum moderators always seemed to be able to handle moderation of the junk, and search engines were always able to place a different weighting on the links compared to editorial links or links in prominent directories.

It is actually interesting how Google handle trackbacks on their blogs. Some of them use nofollow, and others use javascript.

By chosing to use dofollow, I am stating that all links on my blog have editorial consent. I actively visit the sites of the people who leave a comment or send a trackback, even if that means I have to read what they say in Russian or German – I have even left comments on Russian blogs.

If I have a paid link on my site, it will also be under my editorial control and I will ensure it is relevant. I don’t see a reason why such a link should be nofollow, in the same way links from Yahoo directory are folowable and prop up Google algorithms, and for the same reason an employee links through to their employers blog to highlight a new product – it is all commercial.

I used the link above to link through to my highly relevant ultimate list of dofollow plugins. Peter did something similar and I am going to take a look.

ohoh, bad example. A certain 3rd world government with one of the largest populations of aids infected people attempted to get the situation under control by attempting to licence the pharmaceuticals that suppress the symptoms of aids to produce it in the country and sell to its own people at self-cost.

The reason for that is that the price of the medicine when imported from the patent owner in a large, not to be named 1st world country, is simply beyond what their average citizen can afford.

The company was actually willing to do this deal when the president of the 1st world country stepped in and prevented it because it violates the rules of free trade.

Millions of people are dying now because they can’t get access to the medicine that would make them survive.

The same president forced another 1st world country to release its patents for an antidote of another artificial disease for free (yep, paying $0) because a handful citizen got infected because of some homegrown idiots as it turned out.

Sorry Ahmed, but that was the first thing that came into my mind. And nofollow will not safe pagerank :)

However, I would really like to see them add an option that would allow me to turn off nofollow on selected comments, pings & trackbacks.

As it is, I’ve turned off nofollow by using a plugin. But I also moderate very carefully and remove links where appropriate.

They had to do something and nofollow, while far from ideal, was better than nothing.

1. Paid links help my sites rank higher and make more money.
2. Ergo, paid links = good.
3. Nofollow on paid links kill link juice, make my sites rank lower, and make me lose money.
4, Ergo, nofollow = bad.

5. Nofollow on comments is ok because I can’t stand the thought of leaking PageRank to random people leaving comments.
6. But if I support nofollow that means I’m against paid links, and paid links are good.
7. Ergo, nofollow = bad.