On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 7:42 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2008/12/5 peter green plugwash@p10link.net:
Doesn't wikipedia screw over the sites it reffers to theese days by using nofollow?
Only if you consider that the mission of Wikimedia is not (as the first party) to serve the readers (second party) with educational content, but to help a third party (SEO optimisers) get in good with a fourth party (Google). I can't see it there in the mission statement, myself.
On the other hand, I don't see where helping to better organize the web, as a secondary consequence of serving our readers, would contradict our mission either.
I can understand the argument of not wanting to deal with spam from SEOs, but I'm not sure that turning on nofollow actually made much difference in the level of linkspam at major wikis like enwiki. If there is evidence to the contrary, I'd like to see it.
-Robert Rohde