[...] blog. Some people love John and others have issues with him. Someone even suggested that you should kick John Chow to the curb. I’m not a huge fan of John’s, but he has his place on the [...]

[...] Some people love John and others have issues with him.  Someone even suggested that you should kick John Chow to the curb. I’m not a huge fan of John’s, but he has his place on the net. Andy Beard [...]

Thanks Colleen. I think you’ve reached the blogging Nirvana.

I have a PR 5 blog, and I’ve been using do-follow for my comments for months, on all of my blogs. I can’t even fathom the idea of charging people to turn their comments into do-follow. I’d rather just share the link love all around, enjoy the conversation, and engage my readers. Without nickel and diming them.

Even at first blush John Chow has always annoyed me. He has not sense of humility whatsoever and it bleeds right through on his blog. If he were successful AND humble, I would probably be a huge fan and follower. But, as it stand I really don’t want any of his stick to rub off on me.

[...] recently talked about not caring about innocent commentors. Slowly, bloggers are starting to abuse the money-making principle by letting the quality of the [...]

[...] You blog for money without caring for readers. Period. You write in order to gain sponsors, and you write in order to gain readers who will click on ads. You value and thank sponsors more than your readers. Whether or not you actually ever earn money is a different things, but you do not even focus on what you are offering to your readers. For you, the idea that you can try to make money signifies that you are on a noble path, and that you are a hard working person who wants to earn a living. The idea of making money blinds you with such misconceptions. [...]

Oh and if you feel it is a little too controversial for you to release, I have no such worries

Even better, take a version of the Nofollow Wikipedia plugin written by What Japan Thinks, add an interface for it so you can add and delete domains to the list that should be nofollowed.
I have been meaning to get such a plugin written for ages.

You can also include a few default values, such as Wikipedia, Google (for those that link to search results) and possibly if you are feeling evil… John Chow

Unfortunately, I did have to link to the site so that people would know I wasn’t making it up, but I will try to avoid such things in the future. Perhaps I can write a “don’t follow” plugin that will allow you to insert links into a post, but are added in via JavaScript so that it doesn’t count as a link out.

Unfortunately controversy sells.

From what I have seen in various buzz tracking, his site was declining in incoming links, and this controversy gave his a huge growth in links.

The money for outgoing links or his donations doesn’t matter, it is all about the incoming links.

I have John in my feed reader. Here lately I have wondered why. I liked the articles I first came across and oddly the travel and dining were my favorite. Now I just find myself going there to see if he falls. Funny how we stand around waiting to see someone crash. Oh well, maybe I will get tired of waiting and unsubscribe.

[...] Do you worship the evil? The obvious answer should be NO, right? Unfortunately, that’s not the case in the blogiverse. It blows my mind how 5090 people are still subscribed to JohnChow.com? Especially after his latest announcement on charging his readers $10 to remove “no-follow” links from their comments. [...]

I also don’t think that removing the no follow would bring in crappy comments. It is rather that competition for the top commenters spots, which attracts non-sense and spammy comments on John’s blog. I tried for a week to take a spot there: it is not so much of a hard work. I spent maybe one hour on that, because I did not have to think of what I was posting there: I just had to enter something. After putting some difference between me and the guys on the last places on the list, I did not have to do much, because nobody cared to fight for that spot anyway: they were waiting for the week to end, so the counter would reset.

I must admit that the game is funny. I managed to kick him harder (102.000 meters or something like this)

I just saw his post today about removing the no follow. He does need a good kick in the head, but you know what, let him mess things up. Then maybe his readers will come to their senses and read some good blogs instead of all the paid advertisement crap he gives them.

Yes. Both are playing God and have created alternate universes.

Don’t you think that John Chow and Paris Hilton have some things in common?