David Gerard wrote:
Interesting:
http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2007/04/13/wikipedia-seo-dont-spam-contri...
I'd like to know what they were saying off the record afterwards... :-) After all, these are the guys that saw no problem with building vast collections of fake webpages just to make a buck. The reference to the $20K savings is just going to get all the sleazebags to redouble their efforts, alas.
Stan
They seem to be heading the right way although comments like "Incorporate content edits when adding a link. It makes it harder to revert your edit." still concern me.
Mgm
On 18/04/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
They seem to be heading the right way although comments like "Incorporate content edits when adding a link. It makes it harder to revert your edit." still concern me.
Well, it's clear how they think. So be thankful they're warning us ;-)
- d.
On 4/18/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
They seem to be heading the right way although comments like "Incorporate content edits when adding a link. It makes it harder to revert your edit." still concern me.
Yes, still not that much harder :)
Related question: was the nofollow change for all links with search engines permanent?
IC
On 18/04/07, Info Control infodmz@gmail.com wrote:
Related question: was the nofollow change for all links with search engines permanent?
Brion says he will happily put in something finer-grained when someone writes code to that effect.
(whenever this is pointed out to those objecting, there usually follows silence and the occasional tumbleweed - it seems complaining is easier than programming.)
- d.
On 4/18/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Brion says he will happily put in something finer-grained when someone writes code to that effect.
However any such code would be de-facto saying that we are a links directory. If we are not there is no reason to have anything other than nofollow on our links.
On 4/18/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
However any such code would be de-facto saying that we are a links directory. If we are not there is no reason to have anything other than nofollow on our links.
On the non-extremist flip side, Wikipedia's massive Google Rank was built on the backs of people linking to articles from their own sites. Some allowance of this isn't a bad thing or endorsement of anything, it's basic netiquette.
Maybe a second blacklist with nofollow would be a good solution.
On 18/04/07, Info Control infodmz@gmail.com wrote:
On the non-extremist flip side, Wikipedia's massive Google Rank was built on the backs of people linking to articles from their own sites. Some allowance of this isn't a bad thing or endorsement of anything, it's basic netiquette.
This assumes Google Rank is a good thing for us. I would question this.
- d.
On 4/18/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 18/04/07, Info Control infodmz@gmail.com wrote:
On the non-extremist flip side, Wikipedia's massive Google Rank was
built on
the backs of people linking to articles from their own sites. Some
allowance
of this isn't a bad thing or endorsement of anything, it's basic
netiquette.
This assumes Google Rank is a good thing for us. I would question this.
Why would you question it? It's part of the success of Wikipedia, whether people would *like* to concede or admit it. The symbiotic relationship between WP, the search engines, and the interlinking of websites. Without the engine of millions of links into Wikipedia, it wouldn't be as highly ranked in all the search engines... for, well, everything.
Any search at all that you do, if an article exists will return en.wikipedia.org in the top 1-5 results. On all search engines. Is this a bad thing?
Note: not advocating spamming here.
On 18/04/07, Info Control infodmz@gmail.com wrote:
Why would you question it? It's part of the success of Wikipedia, whether people would *like* to concede or admit it. The symbiotic relationship between WP, the search engines, and the interlinking of websites. Without the engine of millions of links into Wikipedia, it wouldn't be as highly ranked in all the search engines... for, well, everything.
The "success" of Wikipedia has been crippling, and going top 10 has greatly hampered the actual writing of an encyclopedia as it gets pulled in all directions by publicity-generated stupidity.
Any search at all that you do, if an article exists will return en.wikipedia.org in the top 1-5 results. On all search engines. Is this a bad thing?
Yes. See above.
- d.
Mind you, anything that makes spammers whine so exquisitely as turning on nofollow did has to be intrinsically good.
- d.
On 4/18/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Mind you, anything that makes spammers whine so exquisitely as turning on nofollow did has to be intrinsically good.
Nothing to the whining we would get if we set all links to text only (The last ditch option should spam ever become completely overwhelming to the point of threatening the existence of wikipedia in a meaningful form).
On 18/04/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/18/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Mind you, anything that makes spammers whine so exquisitely as turning on nofollow did has to be intrinsically good.
Nothing to the whining we would get if we set all links to text only (The last ditch option should spam ever become completely overwhelming to the point of threatening the existence of wikipedia in a meaningful form).
What do you mean, text only?
- d.
On 4/18/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 18/04/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/18/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Mind you, anything that makes spammers whine so exquisitely as turning on nofollow did has to be intrinsically good.
Nothing to the whining we would get if we set all links to text only (The last ditch option should spam ever become completely overwhelming to the point of threatening the existence of wikipedia in a meaningful form).
What do you mean, text only?
- d.
{{cite book |last= |first= |authorlink= |coauthors= |editor= |others= |title= |origdate= |origyear= |origmonth= |url= |format= |accessdate= |accessyear= |accessmonth= |edition= |series= |date= |year= |month= |publisher= |location= |language= |isbn= |oclc= |doi= |id= |pages= |chapter= |chapterurl= |quote= }}
?
-- phoebe
On 18/04/07, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/18/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 18/04/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/18/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Mind you, anything that makes spammers whine so exquisitely as turning on nofollow did has to be intrinsically good.
Nothing to the whining we would get if we set all links to text only (The last ditch option should spam ever become completely overwhelming to the point of threatening the existence of wikipedia in a meaningful form).
What do you mean, text only?
My brain has just kicked in and realised you mean just the text rather than a live link.
{{cite book |last= |first= |authorlink= |coauthors= |editor= |others= |title= |origdate= |origyear= |origmonth= |url= |format= |accessdate= |accessyear= |accessmonth= |edition= |series= |date= |year= |month= |publisher= |location= |language= |isbn= |oclc= |doi= |id= |pages= |chapter= |chapterurl= |quote= }} ?
"As a wiki engine develops, its wikitext syntax inevitably approaches sendmail.cf."
- d.
Info Control wrote:
This assumes Google Rank is a good thing for us. I would question this.
Why would you question it? It's part of the success of Wikipedia, whether people would *like* to concede or admit it.
Yawn. I considered WP successful four years ago, when only the occasional article even made it onto the first page of Google results. Higher Google rank means more spammers and scammers and vandals, and so more unpleasant watchlist work for me. Now if Google had a ranking system that made WP pages invisible to the under-100-IQs of the world, I'd be all success of that sort. 1/2 :-)
Stan
Info Control wrote:
On 4/18/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
However any such code would be de-facto saying that we are a links directory. If we are not there is no reason to have anything other than nofollow on our links.
On the non-extremist flip side, Wikipedia's massive Google Rank was built on the backs of people linking to articles from their own sites. Some allowance of this isn't a bad thing or endorsement of anything, it's basic netiquette.
Massive Google rank is a side-effect of our mission, not a goal and it's not something from which we gain any financial advantage. The whole "netiquette" and "built on the backs of" argument is just a thinly-veiled attempt to justify hijacking WP into yet another way to make a buck, as if the Internet didn't have more than enough of those already. Did you consider that maybe so many people link to WP *because* its mission is to be useful rather than profitable?
Stan
On 18/04/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
Massive Google rank is a side-effect of our mission, not a goal and it's not something from which we gain any financial advantage. The whole "netiquette" and "built on the backs of" argument is just a thinly-veiled attempt to justify hijacking WP into yet another way to make a buck, as if the Internet didn't have more than enough of those already. Did you consider that maybe so many people link to WP *because* its mission is to be useful rather than profitable?
"We fervently support your campaign to reduce our pagerank to zero. Please stop using Wikipedia. Thanks."
- d.
On 4/18/07, Info Control infodmz@gmail.com wrote:
On the non-extremist flip side, Wikipedia's massive Google Rank was built on the backs of people linking to articles from their own sites. Some allowance of this isn't a bad thing or endorsement of anything, it's basic netiquette.
The pagerank is the result of wikipedia being the easiest authoritative link for a wide range of topics. Quick, I have a blog entry mentioning cholesterol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholesterol) I don't even have to check it.
People link to wikipedia it's because it's easy, and a good resource. We don't owe anything to them other than staying commited to our various goals of maintaining a quality encyclopedia.
Judson [[:en:User:Cohesion]]
On 4/18/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 18/04/07, Info Control infodmz@gmail.com wrote:
Related question: was the nofollow change for all links with search
engines
permanent?
Brion says he will happily put in something finer-grained when someone writes code to that effect.
(whenever this is pointed out to those objecting, there usually follows silence and the occasional tumbleweed - it seems complaining is easier than programming.)
It's crazily difficult to program this thing. Those who advocate, say, not nofollow-ing links older than X amount of time, probably don't realise how immensely difficult this would be. You would have to first isolate all external links (no easy task, but fortunately I think we have one standard format for external links), and then go back through all the revisions in the history up to a certain point, and make sure each revision contained this link (not as easy as it sounds). As a programmer, I would not want to take this task on.
Johnleemk
John Lee wrote:
On 4/18/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 18/04/07, Info Control infodmz@gmail.com wrote:
Related question: was the nofollow change for all links with search
engines
permanent?
Brion says he will happily put in something finer-grained when someone writes code to that effect.
(whenever this is pointed out to those objecting, there usually follows silence and the occasional tumbleweed - it seems complaining is easier than programming.)
It's crazily difficult to program this thing. Those who advocate, say, not nofollow-ing links older than X amount of time, probably don't realise how immensely difficult this would be. You would have to first isolate all external links (no easy task, but fortunately I think we have one standard format for external links), and then go back through all the revisions in the history up to a certain point, and make sure each revision contained this link (not as easy as it sounds). As a programmer, I would not want to take this task on.
Johnleemk
On the off chance that someone interested and capable is reading this thread, I think a more efficient method would involve setting up a database table to track each external link for each page, tracking the date/time that the link was added. Each entry would be verified on page save; if a link disappears, it's removed from the table; if a new link appears, it's added to the table.
When a page is rendered, one lookup for each external link would reveal its age. Much more efficient.
Me? I'm probably not capable, and definitely not interested. I'm fine with nofollow on external links.
-Rich
On 4/17/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Interesting:
http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2007/04/13/wikipedia-seo-dont-spam-contri...
- d.
I'm not sure whether to be worried or happy. Probably a little bit of both. ~~~~