Why did webring quality wane as more sites were added? Because they became a promotion vehicle and those running the rings didn't vet the participants. Quality of experience goes down and webrings are history or at least out of favor as a promotion vehicle because users started associating the experience with the technique ie: webrings are bunch of crap strung together.
Dave, I don't think we disagree on much. I agree the algo is/was wacked or at the very least short sighted. I have watched Google chasing their tail on this one for years. Starting with reciprocal links which they went to extremes when all they really needed to do was have reciprocal links cancel one another out.
I pretty much agree that we shouldn't
have to use nofollow, however, given the choice... then I can place ads I don't neccessarily endorse on a site and a user can find that out by checking my code.
That makes sense! Now you have people manipulating
PR with it nofollow on internal pages obviously OK with Google but contrary to nofollow's proper use!
That I have a big problem with.
When Google tries to change things to their benefit only then... it's BS and we should be crying foul! Problem is most of the herd just follow the guys who do the SE's bidding and proclaim that a wiki should nofollow links because thery
can be used to spam! That's complete horse manure and just doing the SE's job for it. Wikis and webmasters should not be scolded for making choices that are theirs to make... not SEs when they start changing our methods then someone is going to a place they have no business being in. If the SE chooses to penalize the site well... fine but we don't need to be pointing fingers and saying all wikis should use nofollow!