Hiding off-topic from unregistered users

[No Exit]

A&H does make a damn fine spot for people to reply 'Lol, black people/lefties amirite?' though. Myself potentially included.

It's fun but gets pretty boring when you and 20 other people do it in the same thread, and every other thread in the board.

 

[Grog]

I don't get the hate for A&H, you're free to post whatever views you have on there without getting banned. The only thing you have to fear is getting meanie stickers and if that gets you so worked up, then lol.

 

[Null]

I'd say I recommend everyone do the same but this forum is hidden so.. D:

The interior boards are not hidden.

 

[Gordon Cole]

>"Never say I don't look out for people."
>Posts hack info

 

[Null]

>"Never say I don't look out for people."
>Posts hack info

how dare I archive information freely available from a cursory google search which I would have done to literally anyone else and have done such as when I hosted the ironmarch hack after our hack. how dare I treat people fairly.

 

[Angry Shoes]

I don't get the hate for A&H, you're free to post whatever views you have on there without getting banned. The only thing you have to fear is getting meanie stickers and if that gets you so worked up, then lol.

The problem I have with it isn't 'meanie stickers,' it's that the board is a circlejerk and never leads to any good discussion. Whenever a fresh article gets posted you can pretty much predict all the responses before any new posts are created.

 

[Iwasamwillbe]

I don't get the hate for A&H, you're free to post whatever views you have on there without getting banned. The only thing you have to fear is getting meanie stickers and if that gets you so worked up, then lol.

It's because something something right-wing echo chamber, something something diet /pol/.

The problem I have with it isn't 'meanie stickers,' it's that the board is a circlejerk and never leads to any good discussion. Whenever a fresh article gets posted you can pretty much predict all the responses before any new posts are created.

So why don't you "break up" that circlejerk with your fresh and unprecedented takes? Why don't you just post your own opinions on A&H?

 

[Null]

Why don't you just post your own opinions on A&H?

The political rift is too wide to really bridge with discussion anymore. How does someone with mainstream opinions argue the merits of climate change when the opposing party believes that most research is bought and paid for by Jewish multinational organizations for the purposes of encouraging globalization and international regulation? There's not really any expedient way to have that conversation.

 

[Avid A&H Reader]

Why not just exclude the problematic boards with robots.txt or hide it behind a challenge that search bots don't parse?

 

[Null]

Why not just exclude the problematic boards with robots.txt or hide it behind a challenge that search bots don't parse?

>Some search engines have decided to ignore robots.txt in regards to what pages to index. If it can see a page, it will index it. The only way to really address this is to make all guests not able to see what I don't want them to.

Google Cancels Support for Robots.txt Noindex - Search Engine Journal

Google announced they will no longer support robots.txt noindex directive

www.searchenginejournal.com

 

[Angry Shoes]

So why don't you "break up" that circlejerk with your fresh and unprecedented takes? Why don't you just post your own opinions on A&H?

At this point that's like signing up for Reddit, going to a AnCom subreddit and telling them they're all fags who should get jobs. A&H is no longer a place for discussion, but an echo chamber for people that don't like waiting for capchas on /pol/. I'm glad it exists so I don't have to see people hamfist their political opinions in lolcow threads, but at this point there's no reason to go there for civil discussion. I've tried.
The only reason left to go there is for silly, non political news stories. Those threads are entertaining sometimes.

 

[Avid A&H Reader]

>Some search engines have decided to ignore robots.txt in regards to what pages to index. If it can see a page, it will index it. The only way to really address this is to make all guests not able to see what I don't want them to.

Google Cancels Support for Robots.txt Noindex - Search Engine Journal

Google announced they will no longer support robots.txt noindex directive

www.searchenginejournal.com

Which search engines are ignoring robots.txt? That article is about Google dropping support for the noindex directive, which is irrelevant. If you don't want them to crawl a section of your website, Disallow is the directive to use.

 

[Null]

Which search engines are ignoring robots.txt? That article is about Google dropping support for the noindex directive, which is irrelevant. If you don't want them to crawl a section of your website, Disallow is the directive to use.

Disallow also doesn't work on threads. I can't just do disallow on a specific board and have it propagate to the threads. I'd have to custom write SEO modifications to accomplish that and then I still run the risk of having bots waste quota crawling A&H and seeing duplicated content.

 

[SEO Monkey]

I have created an account to view the off topics. I initially started lurking here to learn the lore of certain lolcows, but some of that milk had run dry. Over time, I began to enjoy reading the off topics, was impressed with the quality of posts made there, and got hooked. When I would encounter people speaking ill of the farms, I used to try and bring their attention to the non-lolcow areas of the forum to show that there was more to this community then one might imagine at first glance. I too wonder what effect this change in format might have. Since I am new here and have registered a user name, I feel entitled to things and expect regular updates regarding the situation.

 

[Avid A&H Reader]

Disallow also doesn't work on threads. I can't just do disallow on a specific board and have it propagate to the threads. I'd have to custom write SEO modifications to accomplish that and then I still run the risk of having bots waste quota crawling A&H and seeing duplicated content.

You're right. I was thinking Xenforo's URL structure was root/subforum/thread. Another option is returning 404s to known bot UAs/IPs for off-topic pages. I don't believe search engines penalize you for this.

 

[Null]

You're right. I was thinking Xenforo's URL structure was root/subforum/thread. Another option is returning 404s to known bot UAs/IPs for off-topic pages. I don't believe search engines penalize you for this.

Google does not publish its IP ranges, so you'd have to go off User Agent. Like I said, it'd be an actual project, and as it stands I just want to stop the hemorrhage before evaluating my options.

 

[JoshPlz]

If A&H is just a /pol/ circlejerk and it's oh so impossible to have discussions there as a left leaning user, should there maybe be a separate lefty A&H?

The outcome might be entertaining.

 

[Iwasamwillbe]

The political rift is too wide to really bridge with discussion anymore. How does someone with mainstream opinions argue the merits of climate change when the opposing party believes that most research is bought and paid for by Jewish multinational organizations for the purposes of encouraging globalization and international regulation? There's not really any expedient way to have that conversation.

At this point that's like signing up for Reddit, going to a AnCom subreddit and telling them they're all fags who should get jobs. A&H is no longer a place for discussion, but an echo chamber for people that don't like waiting for capchas on /pol/. I'm glad it exists so I don't have to see people hamfist their political opinions in lolcow threads, but at this point there's no reason to go there for civil discussion. I've tried.
The only reason left to go there is for silly, non political news stories. Those threads are entertaining sometimes.

I think you two are both severely overplaying the political bent of A&H. I've repeatedly seen left-wingers and liberals do quite well in A&H threads without getting shouted down and screeched at.

And it's not like most of our staff is A&H-friendly either, so unlike Reddit, there isn't any reason to expect moderator bias in favor of A&H. Then again, most of the staff seem to be left-leaning, so the comparison to Reddit might be right in a very different way.

 

[Null]

I think you two are both severely overplaying the political bent of A&H. I've repeatedly seen left-wingers and liberals do quite well in A&H threads without getting shouted down and screeched at.

And it's not like most of our staff is A&H-friendly either, so unlike Reddit, there isn't any reason to expect moderator bias in favor of A&H. Then again, most of the staff seem to be left-leaning, so the comparison to Reddit might be right in a very different way.

I don't think you understand that the site and its staff predates the existence of any political substance on the forum. People didn't use to be clumped together as "right-wing" and "left-wing" until the 2016 election. Before then, there was almost no politics at all. That in and of itself is a huge shift not everyone is happy with and that most people ignore. This attitude of, "well just post more left-leaning politics in the board to even it out" completely glosses over that most people want no political discussion in their funny retard website.

 

[Iwasamwillbe]

I don't think you understand that the site and its staff predates the existence of any political substance on the forum. People didn't use to be clumped together as "right-wing" and "left-wing" until the 2016 election. Before then, there was almost no politics at all. That in and of itself is a huge shift not everyone is happy with and that most people ignore. This attitude of, "well just post more left-leaning politics in the board to even it out" completely glosses over that most people want no political discussion in their funny exceptional individual website.

Well that's the thing, isn't it; the excessive political division and politicization of all things since November 2016 has certainly taken a toll on discourse.

However, I firmly believe that people should be able to simply ignore political content. If you don't like overt politicization, don't go to boards where political discussion is a natural occurrence and factor, like A&H and Deep Thoughts.