The discussion revolves around the complex behavior of the nofollow tag in Discourse. Stranik is unsure how the tag is used, noticing inconsistent behavior in different sections and depending on the level of trust and privacy. They point out that even with the “tl3 links no follow” option enabled, links posted by staff members do not have the nofollow attribute.
Mittineague explains that the nofollow value is based on the Discourse code and suggests that staff members should be trusted enough not to abuse non-nofollow links. However, Stranik discovers that the setting is ignored for the staff group, citing a specific configuration file. They propose adding a clarification to the translation, indicating that the behavior of the staff group is not affected by this setting.
I’m not quite sure how the nofollow tag is used. For example, I have created different messages in different sections and some have a tag, while others do not.
And yet I will return to this issue. Why, even if you selected this option, does not add NoFollow to links hosted by the administrator? Administration does not fall under these global rules?
On the forum (meta) perhaps the option is not included. And participants with a trust level of tl3 nofollow is not added. But in my forum I turned it on. And this should apply to everyone, including the staff group.
A link having the nofollow value is based on this:
Whether or not Trust Level 3 members have enough “trust” to post only “valuable” links would depend on the forum and its members, the setting is configurable to allow for this. But surely Staff members should be trusted enough to not abuse non-nofollow links, no? It could be argued that if you don’t trust a Staff member then they probably shouldn’t be a Staff member.
