Hiding off-topic from unregistered users -

[Null]

TL;DR: A&H destroyed our SEO.

We experienced a huge growth this year and it died in September. We are now below impressions for this time last year. Threads I would expect to see on the first page of my favorite engine, 'Bing', are now on the 3rd.

I was dying to figure out what happened here to hurt the site. I thought it was the hack, but it was about 2 weeks after. I discovered it was this.

State of the Board

Articles & Happenings is the third attempt at a news board on the Kiwi Farms. It is a cursed place. Every moderator who has been assigned here has resigned within a year. During 2016, the political crossfire was so bad it spread to different boards and culminated in me banning American news...

kiwifarms.net

I introduced a copypasta rule for A&H and immediately after our general pagerank tanked and never stopped tanking. Someone showed me this:

Effects of Plagiarism | How Plagiarism Affects Your SEO?

Sometimes the content you are cloning has already been copied from somewhere else and may have been rephrased as well. Plagiarismdetector.net

plagiarismdetector.net

Essentially, 'Bing' thinks we're artificially inflating our page value by posting articles. To improve the health of the site's on-topic prominence, I am removing all off-topic boards from it.

Some search engines have decided to ignore robots.txt in regards to what pages to index. If it can see a page, it will index it. The only way to really address this is to make all guests not able to see what I don't want them to.

If you are a guest who wants to view off-topic, for now, make an account. Use a protonmail email and register with Tor if you're paranoid.

I'll be monitoring this siduation closely.

 

[Wendy Carter]

Shoutout to my man @BILLY MAYS.

 

[Spiteful Crow]

Sorry Nool

 

[Forever Sunrise]

I'll be monitoring this siduation closely.

HEY NULL, YOU MADE A SPELLING ERROR. YOU REMEMBER WHEN WE DIDN'T TELL YOU THE LAST TIME YOU MADE A SPELLING ERROR? WE'RE NOW MAKING SURE YOU KNOW YOU MADE A SPELLING ERROR. JUST SO YOU KNOW WE ACTUALLY DO LOVE YOU AND CARE WHEN YOU MAKE MISTAKES FOR THE QUALITY OF THE SITE AND ALL THAT. THEREFORE, YOU MADE A SPELLING ERROR. JUST FYI.

oh god i hope he didnt make that intentionally

 

[Elric of Melnibone]

So whats it like having a search engine call you an unoriginal faggot? In all seriousness though this was an interesting read. Sometimes SEO has very weird pitfalls in it, and attempting to prevent plagiarism seems to be one of those that the average person would never really think about.

 

[HeyItsHarveyMacClout]

So what you're saying is that these cows who want to fuck over the site shouldn't be DDOS'ing us or sending DMCAs, but posting articles to tank our reach?

 

[Cool kitties club]

Good unregistered users do not deserve rights

 

[BILLY MAYS]

If you are a guest who wants to view off-topic

crazy thought, but isn't people generally more interested in "on-topic" discussion (ie. eccentric individuals and communities on the Internet)?

What's the point of inviting people to see "off-topic"?

 

[Iwasamwillbe]

Seems like a temporary thing, especially since A&H had presumably existed long before without such SEO issues.

 

[Null]

What's the point of inviting people to see "off-topic"?

There are people who read both.

Seems like a temporary thing, especially since A&H had presumably existed long before without such SEO issues.

Not at such a size.

 

[Ilackcreativity]

Why hide all off topic why not just A&H?

 

[ScamL Likely]

A&H posters confirmed as the niggers of the site. Say it ain't so

 

[YayLasagna]

Alternatively we could also give A&H the death action of dying.

 

[Null]

Why hide all off topic why not just A&H?

In general, search engines have a quota. They refuse to browse hundreds of thousands of pages a day. By pruning off-topic areas, the bots see only what I really want them focusing on, and promoting that.

 

[Banditotron]

You A&H bastards made me log in for the first time in years. Now how am I gonna resist shitposting?

Edit: Although actually its probably a good call. Wanting to maintain SEO is an understandable concern, and I'd be lying if i said we needed more retarded guests being tempted to make accounts to post in the knock-off /pol/ that is A&H.

 

[Iwasamwillbe]

You A&H bastards made me log in for the first time in years. Now how am I gonna resist shitposting?

Why would you resist shitposting?

 

[A Logging Company]

But if people can't see A&H, how will they be able to effectively blame the Jews for everything wrong in their life?

 

[JongleJingle]

Newfag here, decided to do my part after years of lurking. Gotta say Null, it was a wise choice to lock off-topic from folks that DON'T actually have an account here. Blocks off those asshats that might do the site harm AND forces insecure shitheads like me to grow a pair and join up.

Although I will say my choice was also influenced by being unable to view the salt in A&H. It's fucking addicting, send help please.

 

[BONE_Buddy]

Making me log in to get my fix? How Absolutely dare you sir!!!


All kidding aside, I am sure that you are making the right decision. Hopefully we can get a better fix in the future, but you are explaining well what must be done and why you are doing it. So I support the move for what little that is worth.

 

[Unog]

@Null would it be possible to track how many users create an account to view the off-topic boards due to this? It'd be interesting to know how many people this motivates into finally making an account on the site.