I think that writing phyg instead of cult is actually cultish.
It’s a combination of clique jargon and a attempt to present a distorted image of the community by disonestly manipulating the Google rank. These are the sort of things you’d expect from a cult.
If manipulating Google rank is mark of cultishness, then by fixing the HTML tags on my homepage I have already become a new L Ron Hubbard.
Seriously, most people and organizations care about their images. We live among other people; our social images matter. We can take that as a small evidence for cultism, or as a greater evidence for non-autism.
If manipulating Google rank is mark of cultishness
There may be legitimate reasons for manipulating the Google rank, wich pretty much boil down to helping Google to properly index your content, and there are dishonest reason, which involve trying to fool Google about your content.
An SEO technique is considered white hat if it conforms to the search engines’ guidelines and involves no deception. As the search engine guidelines[27][28][40] are not written as a series of rules or commandments, this is an important distinction to note. White hat SEO is not just about following guidelines, but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see. White hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to the spiders, rather than attempting to trick the algorithm from its intended purpose. White hat SEO is in many ways similar to web development that promotes accessibility,[41] although the two are not identical.
Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. One black hat technique uses text that is hidden, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioned off screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as cloaking.
It seems pretty clear to me that trying to persuade your users to obfuscate keywords when they post on a public forum is a black hat SEO technique. If LessWrong has lots of internal discussion about its alleged cultishness, then this should be represented by search engines. Trying to use tricks to misrepresent yourself is dishonest.
Deception and misrepresentation are typical traits of cults, not legitimate research institutions.
A black-hat style solution would be like this: Make a list of “censored words”. Whenever one of the words appears on the page, replace it by its rot-13 version, and include a script that will replace it back in the user’s browser. So the users will see the original version (unless they have javascript disabled), but Google will see the rot-13 version. (The only problem would be how to handle the article URLs.) This would be deceiving Google about the true content.
A closer analogy to using the word “phyg” would be political correctness. A word is forbidden, and another word is recommended as an official replacement. The former Cultists removed their negative connotations and became proud Phyg-Americans! (Just joking.)
A black-hat style solution would be like this: Make a list of “censored words”. Whenever one of the words appears on the page, replace it by its rot-13 version, and include a script that will replace it back in the user’s browser. So the users will see the original version (unless they have javascript disabled), but Google will see the rot-13 version. (The only problem would be how to handle the article URLs.) This would be deceiving Google about the true content.
Don’t give them ideas.
A closer analogy to using the word “phyg” would be political correctness. A word is forbidden, and another word is recommended as an official replacement.
Phyg is not an euphemism for cult, it’s outright obfuscation, and it’s deliberately done to fool search engines, as Muehlhauser said in this very thread.
I think that writing phyg instead of cult is actually cultish.
It’s a combination of clique jargon and a attempt to present a distorted image of the community by disonestly manipulating the Google rank. These are the sort of things you’d expect from a cult.
Don’t worry too much. Eventually, search engines will learn “phyg” as a synonym for “cult”. The more we talk about it, the faster that will happen.
If manipulating Google rank is mark of cultishness, then by fixing the HTML tags on my homepage I have already become a new L Ron Hubbard.
Seriously, most people and organizations care about their images. We live among other people; our social images matter. We can take that as a small evidence for cultism, or as a greater evidence for non-autism.
There may be legitimate reasons for manipulating the Google rank, wich pretty much boil down to helping Google to properly index your content, and there are dishonest reason, which involve trying to fool Google about your content.
According to Wikipedia:
It seems pretty clear to me that trying to persuade your users to obfuscate keywords when they post on a public forum is a black hat SEO technique. If LessWrong has lots of internal discussion about its alleged cultishness, then this should be represented by search engines. Trying to use tricks to misrepresent yourself is dishonest.
Deception and misrepresentation are typical traits of cults, not legitimate research institutions.
A black-hat style solution would be like this: Make a list of “censored words”. Whenever one of the words appears on the page, replace it by its rot-13 version, and include a script that will replace it back in the user’s browser. So the users will see the original version (unless they have javascript disabled), but Google will see the rot-13 version. (The only problem would be how to handle the article URLs.) This would be deceiving Google about the true content.
A closer analogy to using the word “phyg” would be political correctness. A word is forbidden, and another word is recommended as an official replacement. The former Cultists removed their negative connotations and became proud Phyg-Americans! (Just joking.)
Don’t give them ideas.
Phyg is not an euphemism for cult, it’s outright obfuscation, and it’s deliberately done to fool search engines, as Muehlhauser said in this very thread.