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Wordpress Troubles
March 31, 2005
Gail just sent me this link: http://www.waxy.org/archive/2005/03/30/wordpres.shtml. The hidden links were definitely a huge mistake. But of course, none of this detracts from Wordpress itself as a wonderful open source CMS and all around great blogging software. And none of us can say we've never made a mistake before (I know I've made my fair share) - unfortunately for Matt Mullenweg, this just happens to be a big and very public mistake.
One of the comments made in the thread gave me pause for thought, though. Right now it looks like Google's dropping all those articles on the Wordpress site from its index. No word yet on what will happen to Wordpress.org itself. So, one rather selfish thought crept into my mind: if the site does get banned, will all of us who use Wordpress (I do, on other sites and blogs) find ourselves linking to a bad neighborhood, by virtue of that little "powered by Wordpress" link in our sidebars?
Update: Teli has just posted about the Wordpress issue at Mild Insanity. It's a good post, highlighting some of the issues faced by open source developers. She also makes a good point about donations and open source software development, especially for those of us who aren't techie enough to give back to the community in the ways she describes.
As for me personally, well, I'll be rethinking my Wordpress links if Wordpress does get banned because of the possible search engine repercussions of linking to a banned site, but in the meantime, all my links will stay put.
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Posted by BJ at 12:43 AM in On Blogging | Permalink
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» All This WordPress Hubbub from Ramblings of the Mildly Insane
I started to write a comment on BJ's posting today on the trouble going on with WordPress, but it became so long I decided I should blog it.
If you haven't heard yet, it's been found out that Matt Mullenweg was covertly linking to some 120,000+ shad... [Read More]
Tracked on Mar 31, 2005 12:26:41 PM
