Comments on: Workfriendly Goes Offline

By: BBDrizat

BBDrizat — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:00:12 +0000

I really loved that site

By: Nate Tucker

Nate Tucker — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 14:48:53 +0000

"The site created problems, however, when it allowed search engines to index its modified pages, injecting many thousands of of pages worth of duplicate content into Google."you only need one "of" between "thousands" and "pages"Just an fyi.

By: The Dangers of Proxying - PlagiarismToday

The Dangers of Proxying - PlagiarismToday — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:40:40 +0000

[...] on the Web, copying is not the only way that content can be reused. As Workfriendly and now Tynt have shown, there are other ways to “copy” a [...]

By: MeiMei

MeiMei — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:15:50 +0000

I grant you that the meta tag issue and the extra indexed pages would cause more work and
headache for search engines but truly and honestly i don't see the big deal about workFriendly.

It really seems from the content in your article that the problems could be solved by inventing
some new snippet of code on the search engines part.
- if the search engines have too many indexed pages that are not correct it's the engines fault
- if the search engine is listing original pages with broken links because of the overlay site
it's the engine's fault.

Based on those 2 points I think it's incorrect to force workFriendly to bear the burden of fixing
all these errors. It's not their job to make any search engine's job easier.

I loved it. I'm sad to see it go because I thought it was a great idea and fun.

Perhaps there are better reasons for workFriendly to be taken down but these 2 points
you have given do not seem well reasoned.

If

By: Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Bailey — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:52:12 +0000

I’m actually not sure about that. Back when the issue was “hot”, several people tried just that but the problem was that WF didn’t actually “host” anything on their site, it was just the front page and a script for converting other pages to the new format. The host had repeatedly said that there was nothing they could do. I have the old contact information, I might email them though and see what they have to say on it.

I’m personally thinking that the admin just got frustrated and walked away…

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:12:51 +0000

Yep, definitely, a combined effort, but more than likely that someone served a direct cease & desist on their hosting company.

David Bradley (with an e
Sciencebase.com

By: Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Bailey — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:03:33 +0000

Thank you very much for this. I do not know how much of an impact that my work had on the closure of Workfriendly but I know that, if nothing else, I helped make the Web a more hostile place for the site. Hopefully this one will either stay gone or make the needed modifications to avoid harming the Webmasters that it pulls content from.

Thank you again for the praise!

By: Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Bailey — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:02:00 +0000

Thank you again for the praise!

By: Mayank

Mayank — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 17:34:24 +0000

You know what ?? I’m falling in love with your work… You always impress me with your work and the amount of good you are doing to the blogger community. Hats off to you.

It’s good to know that one of these websites got down and I wish that all these content scrapers get down or should be pulled down

By: Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Bailey — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:39:00 +0000

Testing