On 26/09/2007, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
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.
The right to use Wikipaedia as a webhost without getting distracted really doesn't compare to the right to privacy and to not have your name dragged through the dirt.
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.
And no-indexing their user pages may make them feel safer in revealing personal info, which is what all the accountability people want.
Don't have the skills? Erm, if you can write a wiki, you can set up a personal webpage. Just search for free webhosting with Cpanel, which will probably come with Fantastico, which will probably include an automatic wiki installation script, though not necessarily MediaWiki. Alternatively, you can look for a free Wiki hoster.
Seriously, if you need help with this, email me.
Purging all those pages from Google to avoid unsavory stuff showing up is overkill.
There's a lot of unsavory things. Statistics coming... whenever I finish. However, given that most banned users have banned user notices, and pretty much everything in RfAr, RfC, and the ANs get ugly, it shouldn't be hard to guess.
How about adding a __NOINDEX__ MagicWord that puts
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" />
in the HTML header?
1. Good idea, but harder to code. Good idea for a long term solution, but something should be done sooner. 2. Given how impossible it is to get the MediaWiki developers to commit anything, I'm not particularly motivated to code it, unless I am lead to believe it actually would be committed. 3. Given how hard it is to get a courtesy blanking, it would probably also be hard for a banned user to get someone to noindex their userpage, and a lot have probably given up. (Although I guess it could be set from the preferences, so each user would have control over his/her user and talk page, and it would not require editing permission.) But anyway, it should probably be opt-in to Google, not opt-out.
-- Toward Peace, Love & Progress: Erik
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