No, they shouldn't. It doesn't prevent spamming in any sense of the word. It won't until every last site on the planet which accepts third-party content uses it — and considering the nature of email spam, not even then. rel="nofollow" was invented by Google and doesn't solve anyone's problems other than the Googlebot's. Surprise, surprise. Instead, using the facility unilaterally means you put your legitimate users on a level with Texas hold'em spammers and viagra pitchers.
Further reading:
Makeshifts last the longest.
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No, it doesn't. Your legitimate users log in, and you trust their links. The jitter you've linked to is from bloggers, who care about their own ranking but don't usually offer their visitors a login. Their inbound links (and thus, rankings) typically come from reciprocating comments on other blogs which don't have logins either, which is why they're worried.
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Except that solves nothing at all because it's easy to automate signing up or do it manually. (As a data point, use.perl.org had some spam a while back.)
And not even that matters much, because regardless of PageRank, someone might actually click on one of the posted links, too (which is what I was referring to with my email spam comparison).
The depressing fact to keep in mind is that spammers don't care. They won't check whether you use nofollow. Why should they? It just takes time they could spend spamming someone else. Since they're not trying to be nice in the process anyway, whether you are bothered by spam which gains them nothing is going to have exactly zero effect on their behaviour. You are just one flower on a praerie with millions waiting to be pollinated.
Which is why nofollow doesn't solve the problems of anyone except Google.
Makeshifts last the longest.
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I've considered doing nofollow on PM -- specificly, for links made by anonymonk, and users with only a few XP. (Links made by users would loose their nofollow if the user gained XP.)
Just because it hasn't been implemented yet doesn't mean that nobody is considering it. While comment spam is low on PM, it is decidedly nonzero. As for the naysayers here, I've considered your argument, and think it's bunk. 1) I know Evan, who invented it, and trust him. 2) Even if it doesn't help us much, it doesn't hurt us, and does hurt comment spammers. 3) Email spam and comment spam are very different things, and shouldn't be considered the same. 4) It doesn't hurt legitimate users of the site; legitimate users get accounts and gain level 2 fairly quickly... and even if all external links were marked nofollow, I still don't think that really hurts anyone, with the possible exception of the people being linked to.
Warning: Unless otherwise stated, code is untested. Do not use without understanding. Code is posted in the hopes it is useful, but without warranty. All copyrights are relinquished into the public domain unless otherwise stated. I am not an angel. I am capable of error, and err on a fairly regular basis. If I made a mistake, please let me know (such as by replying to this node).
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