Hi all, bug 42594
<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42594>proposes
changing the default value of
$wgNoFollowLinks
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgNoFollowLinks>from true to
false. The status quo is that, by default, external URL links
in wiki text will be given the rel="nofollow" attribute as a hint to search
engines that they should not be followed for ranking purposes as they are
user-supplied and thus subject to spamming. If the change is implemented,
you will need to change your LocalSettings.php to switch $wgNoFollowLinks
to true if you want to keep the status quo on your wiki.
The argument for the status quo is that nofollow deters spammers. The
argument for the proposed change it is that it's better for the Internet as
a whole, and arguably for the individual wikis, to have the links followed
for ranking purposes. I'll focus on the arguments in favor of the change
and let others rebut them.
Suppose you run a wiki,
wiki.foowidget.com, devoted to documenting your
software application, FooWidget. If you link to, say, the main
foowidget.comsite or to a vendor that stocks your software, would you
not want to
improve their pagerank, since this benefits you?
The same goes for, e.g., nonprofits that are promoting a cause. If you run
CancerWiki and there are a bunch of links on your site to the American
Cancer Society and other allied causes, would you not want to increase
their pagerank? I think that in the wikisphere, what we commonly see is
wikis devoted to niche interests they are trying to promote or share
information about. The reason they link to certain websites is that a
community consensus has decided that those sites are useful for effectively
promoting, or informing people about, those topics.
If the links are spammy, then the editing community at that wiki should
revert those spam edits. If they do so promptly, then if they have any
effect on pagerank at all, it won't be for long. A well-maintained wiki
will mostly have links to good sites, and the effect of the pagerank boost
those provide will drown out the pagerank boost that goes to the
short-lived spam links.
Also, we have other antispam tools that are way more effective than
nofollow at deterring spam. Sites that mirror a wiki may not apply nofollow
anyway, in which case those links might still increase the spammers'
pagerank, regardless of your nofollow setting. It's hard to reduce the
benefits that accrue to the spammers, except by vigilantly reverting their
edits; it's easier to increase the costs that the spammers incur, by using
CAPTCHAs and the like.
$wgNoFollowLinks was introduced in MediaWiki 1.4.0 as a setting that
defaults to true, so I'm not sure that we really gave the other option much
of a chance. Also, well-designed search engines should have other measures
too for sorting out what's spammy. There should be some sort of algorithm
for identifying wikis that have been overrun by spam, much as the search
engines have ways of figuring out which sites have a bunch of links just
for SEO purposes.
--
Nathan Larson <https://mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Leucosticte>
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