Links and Votes

The rel="nofollow" has caused a lot of impassioned debate, particularly regarding using it to link to things you disagree with or disapprove of.

I like this, as I am in favour of people adding more user-created metadata to their pages. It is a defence against a publicity attack — saying something outrageous to get a reaction — and that is why I prefer the Vote Link categories of vote-for, vote-against and vote-abstain to the explicitly search-engine directed nofollow.

Google's PageRank explanation has long said:

PageRank interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote for Page B by Page A. PageRank then assesses a page's importance by the number of votes it receives.

I just think we should be able to link without voting, or link and vote against too.