Add exceptions to nofollow on outgoing links depending on admin configuration

[jonaharagon]

Is your proposal related to a problem?

Adding nofollow to every posted link is not always desirable behavior. I think that additional flexibility here could help improve SEO for Lemmy instances.

Describe the solution you'd like

Many forum platforms allow admins to create exceptions to adding nofollow to outgoing links, I would like it if admins had these two options available in the site configuration:

• (Yes/No) Add nofollow to admin posts
• (Yes/No) Add nofollow to community moderator posts

For example, this is how Discourse handles these settings: https://meta.discourse.org/t/available-site-settings-to-configure-nofollow-for-links-posted-by-users/93004

I would also consider it nice to have these configurable options as well:

• the ability to configure a list of hostnames to which nofollow isn't applied
• the ability to remove nofollow from posts which receive a certain number of upvotes

Additional context

Doing this based on user role seems like it would be easier than the proposed interface solution at https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/542#issuecomment-1007976300 for now, and it would also be more desirable for me personally.

[dessalines]

What about a nofollow setting, added to posts, communities, and profiles? Then it could be determined by those posters themselves.

This would take adding a html_nofollow column to the post, community, and person tables.

[jonaharagon]

That would defeat the purpose of nofollow, because the intent is to stop spammers, so spam users and communities can't be given the option to modify that. There's more context about why exceptions for staff users (and potentially highly upvoted posts) makes sense in the Discourse Meta thread I linked.

[dessalines]

Looks like discourse removed nofollow for admin content, then a bunch of ppl wanted it back 🤣

I don't know what the best solution would be, without adding a lot of complication.