Subject: RE: [hackers-il] Hypertext Bombs

From: Omer Musaev <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2003 15:20:20 +0300

Please receive my apologies for the horrible format of my previous post.
What I had ment is...

> From: Shlomi Fish [mailto:[email-masked]]
> On Mon, 31 Mar 2003, Chen Shapira wrote:
>
> > > Do you know of any other prominent hypertext bombs?
> > I think www.livejournal.com could qualify by the same mechanism, a
> community
> > of people, linking to each other's pages. I suppose there are more
> online
> > blog communities that are similar.

The LiveJournal vs. Advogato comparison intrigued me and I had put some
thought into a subject. Feel free to check it out on 
www.livejournal.com/~omerm 

It's not that I'm advertising something, but since I had already posted the
"thoughts" on the livejournal site, I see little sence in reposting it here,
in plain text format. 

--
Omer Mussaev
Software Engineer, EMS team, APM R&D
Mercury Interactive

---

From: Shoshannah Forbes <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2003 01:44:11 +0300

>> > blog communities that are similar.

OM> The LiveJournal vs. Advogato comparison intrigued me and I had put some
OM> thought into a subject. Feel free to check it out on 
OM> www.livejournal.com/~omerm 

Using weblogs as google bombs is not such a new concept.
See-
http://www.microcontentnews.com/articles/googlebombs.htm

Google did attempt to fix some of those problems in the year
since that article was published, but I am not sure how
well.

-- 
Best regards,
 Shoshannah        http://www.tellinglies.org/news

---

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2003 22:25:27 +0300 (IDT)

I accidently surfed into the Google's directory "Bug Tracking" section:

http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Configuration_Management/Bug_Tracking/

to discover that FogBUGZ (Joel Spolsky and company's bug tracker) has the
highest PageRank order. I remember that a short time back, it was listed
at the end with absolutely zero PageRank.

I think the reason is that Joel added a notice to each one of his "Joel on
Software" site pages, that reads:

<<<
My company, Fog Creek Software, has just released <link>FogBUGZ
3.0</link>, the latest
version of our innovative system for managing the software development
process. Check it out now!

And since many of the pages have a high PageRank, it eventually, made
FogBUGZ very high too.

You could say it is a direct (albeit perfectly honest and perhaps
innocent) Google poisoning.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        [email-masked]
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/

There's no point in keeping an idea to yourself since there's a 10 to 1
chance that somebody already has it and will share it before you.

---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2003 00:15:19 +0300

> innocent) Google poisoning.

Why is that "poisoning"? In fact, it's exactly what Google meant to do,
and what people expect of it!

Assuming many people respect that Joel's site and link to it, it is safe
to say this site has a high reputation. When a site with high reputation
links to something, it is pretty safe to assume this is a *good* link,
because, if that site routinely linked to crappy sites, it will loose
its reputation! This is the idea behind Google, it's not some sort of an
unfortunate side-effect.

Similarly, if Microsoft linked to some page, it would be safe it is an
"important" page to find (however much you dislike Microsoft), probably
more important than a page linked from within my own homepage.

P.S. Bugzilla is probably suffering from its own "trademark". I would guess
that bugzilla is more popular than some of the other things that Google
turns up, but many please link to "bugzilla", not bothering to call it a
"bug tracking system" explicitly (thinking that everyone knows what bugzilla
is), which lower's bugzilla's success when searching for "bug tracking"
(at least, that is my guess)

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |       Saturday, Apr 5 2003, 3 Nisan 5763
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |The road to good intentions is paved with
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |hell.

---

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2003 01:53:32 +0300 (IDT)

> its reputation! This is the idea behind Google, it's not some sort of an

The problem is that Spolsky placed links to FogBugz on all of the page of
his site, some of them may be considered as distinct entities by Google,
each with its own page rank. Now, since many such pages are linked to from
many places that refer to them (mailing lists posts, etc.), then as a
whole it creates an undesirable effect of over-page-ranking FogBUGZ.

> more important than a page linked from within my own homepage.

The question is what would happen if Microsoft linked to some page from
every page of their site... I shudder to think about it.

> (at least, that is my guess)

Interesting. Even though according to:

http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Configuration_Management/Bug_Tracking/Free/

and

it still has a higher PageRank than FogBUGZ. At least for now... ;-)

I think that "bugzilla" has practically become a synonym for a bug tracking
system, due to the popularity and importance of the Bugzilla-based ones.
(it is used by Mozilla and related projects, KDE, GNOME/Gtk and many
others). And it's true that it does not seem to be very high on a search
for "bug tracker" or "bug tracking". At least not the deployable product
itself.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        [email-masked]
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/

My opinions may seem crazy, but they all make sense. Insane sense, but
sense nonetheless.