There's been some major changes to SEOChat, the forum where I moderate and spend most of my online forum time. The owners, DevShed and Jon Caputo, have decided to enforce strict "nofollow" tags on all outbound links in signatures, causing a mass exodus of many members, including many moderators and banning of many more members who started angry threads on the subject.

I know that many folks are emailing me and asking for my position - I'm going to reserve judgement entirely for now and invite folks from SEOChat who are angry to please air their concerns in the comments below. Hopefully this can be a place where you can safely post without fear of having your comments deleted, but I do ask that you remain civil and logical, despite the high emotions.

UPDATE: I have made a decision about what to do regarding this. I will be leaving SEOChat permanently.

There is a disturbing pattern from the administrative team running the site that I have been warned about by some folks who will remain on as moderators there. I'll be getting tidbits of information from them. I've saved some of my favorite posts from the site and will be re-printing them here at SEOmoz in article format. I'll also be removing all of my links to SEOChat.

I don't feel that adding rel=nofollow is a big deal. What is a big deal is the manner of how this was done - without opinion or input form the community or even a fair explanation and a chance for members to complain and air their issues. I simply disagree with their policies and don't want to contribute so much of my time and energy to an organization that places so little value in the people who create so much value for them - the members.

I plan to encourage many, many members to move to a different forum - www.cre8asiteforums.com, where Kim Krause, Ammon Johns, Bill Slawski and many others have made the forum one of the most open and welcoming on the net. It's also small enough to where an exodus of members from SEOChat will have a big impact on the community and can have their voices heard. I'm a fan of Digitalpoint as well, but it's so big and crowded that single voices are rarely heard.

So... Please continue to leave comments below - I'll see you all at cre8asite.

UPDATE 2: New welcome thread at cre8asite for former SEOChatters.