On 08/09/2007, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: It can be harmful, without providing Wikipaedia any benefit, without being 'intentional'. We aren't telepaths, or at least I'm not. I think making the pages available in high-ranking Google results is more than 'transparency', it's shouting out to the world. The block log is publicly searchable, but is not indexed by Google. Other pages (user pages, user talk pages, Arbitration pages, RfC pages, AN pages, etc.) are indexed by Google. I am doing a study, going through the list of banned users and running Google searches on their usernames. Often, negative Wikipaedia pages occupy the first two results. I haven't completed enough yet to provide useful statistics, but it does seem to be a problem. Many people go on and on about how Wikipaedia is an encyclopaedia and not a tabloid. However, the encyclopaedia is contained within the article namespace. Is there any reason for namespaces other than the main (article) namespace and the image namespace to be indexed by Google? The ramifications of indexing the rest go beyond negative pages on banned users, also bringing many members of the Wikipaedia community under far more scrutiny than members of other open source projects, often with negative results. More page blankings would also help. That said, a page with nothing but a period in it can occupy the first Google result for it's title, if the page happens to be on Wikipaedia.