nofollow links on forums

Hi,

just started my own forum these days and have the first posts from members, some of the having also link in their profile (how amazing)

Because my site is a bigger authority for "php web development" on Google I added the rel="nofollow" attribute to the link element.

do you think that some unrelated link would hurt my rankings? maybe I should show the links only to members?

I don't think external links will harm your site, especially if you are using the rel="nofollow" attribute.

why not copy this forum's method on links?

Yes thats what I thought, but why should some one get a link for free because he asked me for help :D

I think I will write a bbpress plugin to do that ;)

How about we all use the nofollow attribute everywhere? Everybody on all websites and blogs. What do you think will happen?
I just installed a plugin on my blog that's cuts out the nofollow tags because if we all do this the web will crash! there'll be no links anymore to follow so there won't be any search results. Bots will run around blind and semantic search will be off the program in a minute.

Does anyone seriously think that this could be Google's goal? Backlinks in forums and comments won't hurt a site as long as they are related to the content. Google has spent millions of dollars for the patent to search comments, they didn't do that to find a bunch of nofollow links, believe me.

The problem with forum and comment links are the spammers, but there is very good software around like askimet that get rid of those posts automatically if you get too many to clean up manually.

The timeline of the nofollow tag:

1. Google invents and patents the comment search bot
2. As soon as the word gets out spammers show up in comment boxes
3. The nofollow attribute, something no one really cared about until now, starts to boom
4. The nofollow tag takes over on our linking politics
5. All social networking sites use nofollow links only
5. The web crashes and the only links we can follow are the ones to our own and to our trusted friend's sites
6. George dies on boredom

maybe in google there will be no effect because of the nofollow... but how about in other search engine where nofollow has no effect?

And how about Real People? I actually try mostly to write for real people!
As a writer:
If your article is interesting enough you can be sure to get enough comments.
As a commenter.
On the other hand; if your comment is good enough and the link you provide in your comment can catch peoples interest,you will get visitors!
It's all about real people! and not about nofollow - only bots can see these, people usually can't...

Want an example? Something catchy?

How about that? Building an Island on Plastic Bottles, using a Biorock[TM] Structure - Read more and see the video here!

Hey guys this isn't even a joke, looks like we really gonna do it ;)

Cheers

I think you shouldn't use nofollow links. It's a bad thing for search and SEO.

since your using a nofollow attribute, i see no problems that it will affect your rankings.

Using no follow on a normal page is lame, if you are the only one who is creating the content and the links, then give the pages the credits they earned or don't link to them at all if you think they are not worth these credits.
In commentpages and forums I think nofollow can be helpful to keep spamers away. In fact I like the solution to allow users to post links only after they have already posted a certain number of posts or have been members for so and so long. But if you allow links then the should not be nofollow!

I don't think the web will crash from nofollow, but I think search engines will start to ignore nofollow one day, if there are almost only nofollow links left!

Btw, does anyone know at which time nofollow started to become so popular?

This is a two-way mutually beneficial should be, gain from

Well links from other sites never going to harm your ranking in search engines.

I think it does not hurt your site that it's good for the future.