[mannschott]

The article's proposed mapping of tags and especially comments to links strikes me as unavoidably clunky in a world where one-way links are the only kind available. Maybe I'd find this golden hammer argument more convincing in the context of a hypertext system where bi-directional links [1] were common and well supported.

[1] https://maggieappleton.com/bidirectionals

[twobitshifter]

Yes the author is relying on backlinks for his model as is mentioned. Pagerank would be much less novel if backlinks were a everyday thing.