David Gerard wrote: 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 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, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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 18/04/07, Info Control <infodmz(a)gmail.com> wrote: This assumes Google Rank is a good thing for us. I would question this. - 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 18/04/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs(a)earthlink.net> wrote: "We fervently support your campaign to reduce our pagerank to zero. Please stop using Wikipedia. Thanks." - d.

Info Control wrote: 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

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.

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