People posting in the noticeboard forum - ...and an idea to reduce it

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InfAddict
Posts: 61
Joined: Mon Apr 05, 2004 8:58 pm
Location: South Shields

Post: # 8118Post InfAddict

Tony, just saw the recent spate of eejits who insist on posting in the Noticeboard forum. I believe most of these people find their way to this forum via a search engine and are not deliberately clicking on Noticeboard before posting (maybe some site stats could prove this).

Therefore, would it not be prudent to stop search engine bots from indexing any page on the Noticeboard forum? Depends on how customisable the board is, but if you could simply insert some meta tags onto the pages, it should do the trick. For example :

To prevent a Search Engine from indexing a page, place the code below between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags.

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW">
This tag tells the robots not to index this page and not to follow any links within the page.

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX,FOLLOW">
This tag tells the robots not to index this page, but follow any links within the page.


A more radical approach could be to not index ANY of the forums/posts. This would prevent people arriving at the forums direct from a search engine without even bother to visit the main website (they could of course then visit the forum after that).
"I have a plan so cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it a weasel." - Edmund Blackadder III.
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Tony McC
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Post: # 8120Post Tony McC

I'm reluctant to use a noindex metatag as it would prevent the valuable content we have in the Brew Cabin being catalogues by the 'bots, but I have a plan so cunning ... I'm restricting the ability to start new topics in the Noticeboard section to those members who have at least 20 posts to their name, in the hope that they, at least, will have some understanding of how this feature works.

I'm also hoping to create an "Eejit Warning" icon that can be added to those posts that make me want to scream.
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danensis
Posts: 335
Joined: Mon Aug 11, 2003 4:24 pm
Location: Derbyshire
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Post: # 8127Post danensis

Who would want to post to the noticeboard other than you, Tony?

If other people need to post, could you set up a mailbox so that they could mail messages to the noticeboard?
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Tony McC
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Post: # 8134Post Tony McC

The original idea was to use that section for messages regarding problems with the system. I'll see how it goes for a couple of months and, if we keep having 'problems', I'll block all other posters.
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