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 4/18/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic(a)gmail.com> wrote: Yes, still not that much harder :)

On 18/04/07, Info Control <infodmz(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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, geni <geniice(a)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. Maybe a second blacklist with nofollow would be a good solution.

On 4/18/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)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. 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.

Mind you, anything that makes spammers whine so exquisitely as turning on nofollow did has to be intrinsically good. - d.

On 18/04/07, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: What do you mean, text only? - d.

On 18/04/07, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: My brain has just kicked in and realised you mean just the text rather than a live link. "As a wiki engine develops, its wikitext syntax inevitably approaches sendmail.cf." - d.

Info Control 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? Stan

On 4/18/07, Info Control <infodmz(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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]]

John Lee wrote: 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