SEO abuse of Biostar

[Michael Dondrup]

Hi,
I am using this list not make the abusers aware. There were several cases
where Biostars was used to possibly manipulate google rankings, e.g. this one
https://www.biostars.org/p/170255/
the effective result is visible https://www.google.no/search?q=software+adequate+for+the+bacterial+whole+genome+data
here. The questions look like harmless noob questions at first glance, e.g. "Is software XYZ good for analysis ABC". "Any software for X?,
have tried only A,BC" but their effect is dramatic on google results, because Biostars has seamingly such a high impact for
bioinformatics searches. User names alleged were vassialk, elvisober, bioinformaticsbears, ...

To reduce the effect, closing the question as not specific is not enough, I suggest that in addition these questions be deleted and the users be put
in suspension or banned directly. Otherwise the context stays on the site. Maybe there should also be a process to
appeal, just in case we made a mistake.

Michael

[Egon Willighagen]

On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 8:24 AM, 'Michael Dondrup' via biostar-central
<biostar...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
> To reduce the effect, closing the question as not specific is not enough, I suggest that in addition these questions be deleted and the users be put
> in suspension or banned directly. Otherwise the context stays on the site. Maybe there should also be a process to
> appeal, just in case we made a mistake.

It could be an option to single out a page like this in the robots.txt
[0]... ideally, moderators have the power to tag a post via website as
"not to be indexed"?

Egon

0.http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3486458/how-do-i-disallow-specific-page-from-robots-txt


--
E.L. Willighagen
Department of Bioinformatics - BiGCaT
Maastricht University (http://www.bigcat.unimaas.nl/)
Homepage: http://egonw.github.com/
LinkedIn: http://se.linkedin.com/in/egonw
Blog: http://chem-bla-ics.blogspot.com/
PubList: http://www.citeulike.org/user/egonw/tag/papers
ORCID: 0000-0001-7542-0286
ImpactStory: https://impactstory.org/EgonWillighagen

[Michael Dondrup]

On Dec 22, 2015, at 8:48 AM, Egon Willighagen wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 8:24 AM, 'Michael Dondrup' via biostar-central
> <biostar...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>> To reduce the effect, closing the question as not specific is not enough, I suggest that in addition these questions be deleted and the users be put
>> in suspension or banned directly. Otherwise the context stays on the site. Maybe there should also be a process to
>> appeal, just in case we made a mistake.
>
> It could be an option to single out a page like this in the robots.txt
> [0]... ideally, moderators have the power to tag a post via website as
> "not to be indexed"?
>
> Egon
>
> 0.http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3486458/how-do-i-disallow-specific-page-from-robots-txt
>

Yes,
and maybe also in way that automatically applies to closed questions?
And sets all links to 'nofollow'. Would also be good if questions could
be flagged somehow.

Michael

>
> --
> E.L. Willighagen
> Department of Bioinformatics - BiGCaT
> Maastricht University (http://www.bigcat.unimaas.nl/)
> Homepage: http://egonw.github.com/
> LinkedIn: http://se.linkedin.com/in/egonw
> Blog: http://chem-bla-ics.blogspot.com/
> PubList: http://www.citeulike.org/user/egonw/tag/papers
> ORCID: 0000-0001-7542-0286
> ImpactStory: https://impactstory.org/EgonWillighagen
>

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "biostar-central" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to biostar-centr...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Istvan Albert]

We have a high google rank and hence posts on Biostars will show up first. It is likely that some people will try to game the system.

That being said I am always wary of providing my own interpretation beyond of what is actually said. On one hand posting about a commercial software is not against the rules. In addition people may lack in their command of the English language and could end up writing posts that feel artificial or with a hidden agenda. My concern is that moderating user content for other meanings is a proposition that we cannot enforce uniformly.

As always I think transparency is a potentially good solution: informing users that their posts sound suspect, explaining what the right course of action is etc. that way we can educate legitimate users and discourage spammer. 

I also agree that some users can be annoying and once it becomes clear that a person is a nuisance and posting what they do is not an accident I do agree that we should be using stronger moderation tools.

best,

Istvan

--

Istvan Albert
Associate Professor, Bioinformatics
Pennsylvania State University
http://www.personal.psu.edu/iua1/

[Sean Davis]

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know what stackoverflow and other such high-volume sites do?  

Some interesting thoughts here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/1x9erd/why_is_it_that_reddit_almost_never_shows_up_in/

A couple of thoughts that could be tuned to be data-driven

- Use poster reputation for setting nofollow or robots.txt

- Use lack of votes, comments, and answers to reduce (over time) the impact of questions irrelevant to the biostars community

Sean

[Istvan Albert]

Amusingly and tellingly, your post Sean was held up by Google assuming that it was spam. I got a notification that said:

"The following suspicious messages were sent to your group, but are being held in your moderation queue because they are classified as likely spam messages."

I have a hard time figuring out what could have possibly triggered that warning (maybe because it is linking to Reddit? that would be even more amusing). Suffice to say automated spam detection is hard to get right.

I am thinking about a whitelisting feature that would require that the first post of a user has to approved by a few other people before it gets posted. 

best,

Istvan