Rich Holton wrote:
I still don't understand the resistance to making all non-Foundation sites no-follow. The fact that people disagree with the idea, but are providing no rational reason, only encourages the perception that there *is* conflict of interest in the current situation.
I have no real issue if it's done to all non-Wikipedia.org/Wikimedia.org sites. I still disagree with it because I consider it awfully rude to use these sites as references and not provide them with the proper link weight, although we get it in return. Even with it turned on on all Wikipedia/Wikimedia sites, it's still us artificially driving down outbound links and promoting links that are making the Foundation money, re: Answers.com. So Answers.com, which does nothing except act as a secondary replicator of Wikipedia content (and does so in a less than great way, mind you), gets boosted in the rankings, drops down other more useful links that we ourselves use in our article writing, and then we take a cut of the Answers.com profits.
Let me emphasize: perception is important in this issue.
Yes, and the reality is what drives this perception away from "loony spam enablers" to something more vile.
-Jeff