Google De-indexes Talk.Origins, Won't Say Why UPDATED

J. J. Ramsey writes "Talk.Origins is an archive with thousands of pages exposing creationist pseudoscience. Rather mysteriously, Google pulled the plug on its search engine, giving only the vague reason: 'No pages from your site are currently included in Google's index due to violations of the webmaster guidelines.' This was apparently triggered by a recent cracking of the site that added 'hidden links to non-topical sites,' but Google won't say just what the violations were. Talk.Origins webmaster Wesley R. Elsberry believes that this Google policy harms honest webmasters." From the article: "My mission, whether I liked it or not, was to find and fix whatever problem the [Talk.Origins Archive] might have, with no guidance as to what the problem was and nothing at all about where to start looking... I was extremely lucky. The damage to my site was limited and in the first place that I happened to look. Other honest webmasters might not be so lucky. They may have to undertake an arduous process of vetting pages, essentially having to second-guess the mind of the cracker in trying to locate a problem that Google knows the exact location of." Thanks to an alert reader who sent in Matt's blog posting about how Google handles hacked sites.

huh?

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

What's this? [google.com]

Caped Hacker

[derubergeek]

This was quite obviously the work of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

The Truth

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's face it. It's all a vast right wing conspiracy by fundamentalist Christians to remove any website that counters their beliefs... either that or it's simple Google policy and posting this story was a waste of everyone's time and only served to try and stir up debate.

Re:huh?

[misleb]

evolutionism?

Apparently you didn't get the memo. There is an Evil Atheist Conspiracy(tm) to destroy Christendom (and babies and America!). Evolutionism is the primary form of the movement. It is such a deep conspiracy that not even the members of Evolutionism know they are members. In fact, most don't even recognize the term "Evolutionism."

-matthew

Re:probably just bad algorithms

[suv4x4]

While it's natural to sympathise with the victimized website, it doesn't follow that Google is doing something Evil(TM) in this instance

They really trademarked that? Shit, they don't really leave people much choice than being good these days.

Re:Whine, Whine, Whine

[identity0]

Heresy! Google sees all, Google knows all! Google is a man, a spider, and the holy page in one!

Brin 3:14 "And Google so loved the internet, that he sent his only-born son Larry Page to it so that any who believe in him shall not perish but have ever-lasting life in the Googleplex."

So you see, there *is* a person, Larry Page, who is also the spider that indexes everything and is also the page that serves up results. Only through this holy trinity could results as good as Google's result, thus proving Google's divinity. If the almighty Google has delisted this sinner's page, then we should not be looking at it in the first place, yes? To go against the wishes of Google brings hellfire!

Re:ahhh i love it

[Guuge]

Let me put it this way:

An atheist is someone who agrees with Christians that Zeus, Odin, Shiva, and countless other gods don't really exist, but disagrees about the existence of the Christian God.

An agnostic is someone who admits the possibility of any combination of those gods existing, through humility, tolerance, apathy, or any other reason.

The "anti-God" vision of the atheist is just a stereotype. Typical atheists don't have any particular preference for one god over another; they disbelieve in them all equally.

Re:Backups?

[grimJester]

That presupposes the site was intelligently designed. Starting with that kind of assumptions is completely unscientific.

Re:Words are Meaningless - Public Utility

[nacturation]

What you're missing is that Google gave him no clue/hint/guide/comment/help on why he was delisted.

login: root
password: ******

Incorrect login for user "root". You got the first and fourth characters correct, and one other character was correct but in the wrong place. Please try again and/or make use of one of the following clues/hints.

You can also try one of the following non-root accounts:
1. admin (8 character password)
2. backup (6 character password, all lowercase letters)
3. johndoe (5 character password)
4. maryjane (7 character password)

Failing that, if you can't remember any passwords this server is located at 1234 Main Street, Anywhere, USA. The server rack key is located in the desk drawer on the second floor in the manager's office. You can boot with a Knoppix CD (inside the rack) and reset the password after mounting the hard drive.

Often, helpfulness is at odds with security.
 

Well I assume

[goldcd]

the revenue brought into google by having his site indexed, was considerably lower than the cost of having a google employee investigating his problem and givin him a site-audit.
Weird, eh?

Re:You love to whine, don't you?

[BitchKapoor]

Is that what the Bible says? No, it isn't. The Bible says Jesus created a perfect, sinless world. Man sinned, and brought the curse of sin and death on mankind -- man's choice, man's free-will.

This seems contradictory to me. Man is part of the world. How does your definition of perfect and sinless make any sense, if man (as part of the world) is able to introduce sin? That's like saying Windows '95 is stable just because it hasn't crashed yet, even though it could if you run an ill-behaved program. Or a Unix machine that's on the internet with remote logins available for root, with no root password is secure, just because no one's logged in and done anything malicious yet.

But enter what Jesus did, its anything but. Its grace, compassion, and mercy beyond anything ever known.

So he made the world, thought it was secure, then man hacked in, jesus realized he fucked it up the first time, so he released a fix? And you worship this dude as being the best? Oh, plus then there's all those little undocumented patches that the church slipstreamed in over the years. Sounds like the christian influence is what ruined the software industry!

Re:huh?

[bytesex]

evolutionism, homosexualism - they're all new, and evil ! Better stick to the good old isms such as religionism, wifebeatism and alcoholism.

evolution

[dwater]

So, if evolutionary theory is correct, it seems to have favoured a line of cry babies. There's evidence against, if ever there was any.

I suppose he could be a mutant....and his predecessors are all non-cry babies.

They Saw Some Spotted Somes Signs of Design...

[geoffrobinson]

in their website. But if you wait a million years, Google's algorithm could randomly change.

Re:Google emailed this site

[JPriest]

The article has been updated to reflect this but they conveniently left out the link.

It is so unusual for Slashdot to attack a company without getting all the facts in this kind of knee-jerk manner.