[WikiEN-l] Ban notices, Wikipedia, and search engines.

Erik Moeller erik at wikimedia.org
Wed Sep 26 19:12:25 UTC 2007


On 9/24/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wikipedia isn't judge, jury, and executioner any more than we are a
> personal webhost.  We should probably complexity no-index user and
> user talk... but if we don't we should at least endeavor to keep
> block/ban notices out of the search engines.

I oppose no-indexing them. The point of our "we're no webhost" policy
is that we don't want to get distracted from our mission of writing an
encyclopedia by people posting random stuff. However, we have many
editors in good standing who do not have the skills to put up a
personal webpage and are effectively using their User: page as a "This
is who I am, this is what I do" place on the net. Purging all those
pages from Google to avoid unsavory stuff showing up is overkill.

How about adding a __NOINDEX__ MagicWord that puts

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" />

in the HTML header?

-- 
Toward Peace, Love & Progress:
Erik

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