Several sites use archiving as a way of showing SE's content without all the fluff, and having slimmed down pages that users can view. I'm thinking about putting together an archive similar to what the VBulletin archive has for a site, but I'm wondering about the affect on SEO. Obviously, you don't want to deny robots to your main site, but then there's the whole duplicate content filter. Content would not be exactly the same, but it would be pretty close - just minimizing all the javascript, extraneous html tags, pictures, and server side scripting to make a cleaner leaner nothing but the REAL content set of pages. Is this a good idea, or one that might cause problems. I've wondered about this in relation to vBulletin's archiving mechanism as well. Any thoughts?
Are you talking about providing what is essentially a "Text Only" version? I'd be careful personally - The VB archive is recognised as such, simply because it's such a popular platform. Doing this on a new platform could cause issues I imagine. (No proof though).
That's exactly what I'm talking about. I think it's a good feature to have, but I'm worried that it will have a negative affect on my site.