[WikiEN-l] Bans and online/offline reputation (was Re: Follow-up on my Ban from Wikipedia (part 3))

[Armed Blowfish]

On 08/09/2007, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I think making the pages available in high-ranking Google
>> results is more than 'transparency', it's shouting out to
>> the world.
>
> Google's rankings are Google's responsibility. Wikipedia has never
> worried about search engine rankings, we just do what we think best
> and let the search engines do what they think best. Fortunately, those
> generally coincide, so Wikipedia has very high rankings, but we don't
> make any special effort to achieve those rankings. We also don't make
> any special effort to get rid of them.

Wikipaedia can keep the high rankings in the
article and image namespaces and tell
Google not to index the other namespaces.
Wikipaedia's robots.txt files are its
responsibility.  See original message for the
possible benefits of this, not just for banned
users but for everyone.

Discussions leading up to a person's ban are
often fraught with general nastiness, to the
point of serious BLP concerns.  Some banned
users who were known by their real names
have even complained of libel.  (I'm not a
lawyer and can't evaluate that, but anyway.)
These are real people, with feelings, friends,
and jobs, and ought to be treated as such.