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I wrote a post here and thought I'd copy it here:
In this thread, I asked if there is a way to tie independently hosted blogs into the WordPress global tag lists and received the answer "no." This seems like a desirable feature and thus request it, as I write The Story's Story on WordPress.com and Grant Writing Confidential at an independent host.
Jake-Maybe I'm missing something here, but what possible benefit would WordPress.com derive from promoting your independently hosted blog in their global tags list?
Presumably the same benefit they derive from having Askimet connect via one's API key.
In addition, and perhaps more importantly, their global tag lists would become more useful: like any search engine or information storage service, it becomes more useful as a square of the number of users, like Metcalfe's law.
For the specific case I'm dealing with, GWC is, as far as I can tell, unique on the Internet in dealing with grant writing. Consequently, WordPress would presumably want its users to be able to access more useful information quickly.
I don't think you understand. On blogs hosted on WordPress.com, Automattic makes money by running Adsense. This is a totally non-trivial amount of income. If you understand SEO much, you'll see quickly that the global tag pages are one of the most attractive features of WP.com, drawing people to host their blogs here, and staff are protective of that. They have said in the past they will not consider allowing external sites to hook into the system.
WordPress.com, the hosted blog network, has nothing to gain by opening up the Global Tag Pages except diluting their brand and losing income. Does that clarify?
While that's an interesting theory, it's not entirely true.
The real reason is it would be technically difficult to maintain the high quality of the tag page content if we allowed non-hosted systems to contribute to it, and fighting spam would take a lot of time. We may do it someday, but it's not high on the list right now.
Fair enough. All I have are theories, and I couldn't find the staff responses via search.
Hey, would it be possible to have a tag or something that would bring up only staff posts in the forum? That would be useful for disambiguation purposes.
we can pull up staff posts by individual staffer, by clicking on the linkage next to the user's name.
http://en.forums.wordpress.com/profile.php?id=5 is sir matt ;)
Yes, but first you have to find a thread with the individual staffer. That's the hard part. It would be easier if, say, there were a tag that automatically went on threads with staff replies.
<i>if we allowed non-hosted systems to contribute to it, and fighting spam would take a lot of time. We may do it someday, but it's not high on the list right now.</i>
This makes a lot of sense: I could imagine how you'd write algorithms to fight global tag list spam, presumably with various methods of trust and a Google-style ranking system, but it would still be a difficult battle thanks to the nature of spam arms races. Some tie-in with Technorati might help, as they must have the same problem with splogs.
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jseliger
matt
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