Auge, I disagree. If Google can't find you, you can't provide human visitors with content and you close the forum.

I'm to old for a world, that knows nothing else than Google.

Again, using the attribute rel="nofollow" does not prevent you from being found by Google or whatever other searchbot. It only prevents the bonus of an additional value for the page rank.

Keep in mind, that we are providing a software for creating content by an undefinable group of users (human or not). This is completely different from writing my own content in my site, blog whatever, where I am the only author and the complete content is under my direct control.

We must be aware that the forum software is possibly fed with bad content with only subsequent control by the forum operators, depending on the application scenario. It is therefore a question of weighing up the advantage of page ranking for links in forum postings against the impediment to the effectiveness of possible spam in the absence of a page rank bonus for non-spam.

Everyone will come to a different conclusion when weighing this up. The content of a forum itself would be found with rel="nofollow" because the attribute would be used only for links in the posting content (and for special cases). And also the linked pages would still be found. So I think the influence of the attribute is there (a possible loss of page rank), but not as destructive as many people (not only here) fear (a linked page would still be found by search engines).

Because of this the feature, if implemented and being switchable on and off, could be an option to make spammers' business a bit more difficult. I would be willing to accept the disadvantage. If you weren't, you wouldn't have to switch it on. But that is a completely theoretical discussion.

Tschö, Auge