On 4/30/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
If you read this thread, you'd have seen the link to the bug and you'd have the answer.
I know your role is to be the UK public relations person, but you don't need to be snippy and curt because someone is being critical of the great and mighty WMF. Yes, I saw the link to bugzilla. No, we don't have an answer:
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8753
Bainer: "There is the wgNoFollowLinks setting to add rel="nofollow" to all external links, but no option to do the same for interwiki links. I have a patch to implement this which will shortly be forthcoming."
Brion Vibber: "Untrusted sites should not be in the interwiki table, probably, hmm?"
Rob Church: "It makes no sense to do this."
As has been said, however, this is *NOT* a technical issue. It's a question of "Why are some sites allowed around the nofollow restriction, creating possible conflict of interest?" In other words, why is Wikipedia's stature and resources being allowed to convey financial benefit to Wikia (and others)? If they are allowed, why not all? That's the problem. The nofollow should be for ethical reasons all-or-nothing. I have no problem with either scenario, but theres no reason to not go all the way if you're going to do it.