Over in Investor Alley a new poster created a thread and provided a link to something describe as "a sort of MLM", leading myself and at least one other poster to wonder if this is a marketing trick. Rarely, spammers create links to a website as fast as they can. In both cases the result is to give "ranking credit" to the website at the other end of the link. As Google puts it:
Nearly 15 years ago, the nofollow attribute was introduced as a means to help fight comment spam. It also quickly became one of Google's recommended methods for flagging advertising-related or sponsored links.
...
rel="nofollow": Use this attribute for cases where you want to link to a page but don't want to imply any type of endorsement, including passing along ranking credit to another page.
https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/09/evolving-nofollow-new-ways-to-identifyI propose that for new forum members (still on probation), their links use
<a> ... rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" </a>
While existing users and those no longer on probation keep using the existing:
<a> rel="noopener noreferrer" </a>
If the website has a spammer or new member posting to "a sort of MLM", adding "nofollow" in the rel section of their post's links means no reputation goes to the target of that link. It reduces the incentive to post links to other websites until someone has exited the probationary period. I don't know if this is possible or not with the existing website, but thought it might be worth suggesting.
