Joe Szilagyi wrote:
By allowing even a single non-Wikimedia Foundation site to reap any sort of financial benefit, a possible conflict of interest now exists.
Wow, that's a breathtakingly broad thesis. Apparently the Wikimedia Foundation has an ethical obligation to actively prevent remote downstream commercial activity, because it could be a conflict of interest for us if completely independent outside parties somehow benefit.
While we're at it, who needs external links in the first place? Let's just ignore the rest of the internet and be a walled garden, it's the only way we can be sure nobody will benefit.
Or instead, we could look at this dispassionately. I notice that the interwiki map includes World66 and Wikitravel, two travel guide wikis owned by a commercial enterprise called Internet Brands. Thus links to these sites can avoid the nofollow attribute, even though they would be direct competition for World Wikia, the travel guide Wikia launched to some fanfare last year. World66 even carries Google ads just like Wikia. On the basis of the evidence, what reason is there to think that Wikia has taken advantage of its founders' relationship with Wikimedia to get preferential treatment? Maybe somebody will think they can still make that case, but please look at the full picture instead of leaping to conclusions from a single piece of information.
--Michael Snow
On 5/1/07, Michael Snow wikipedia@att.net wrote:
Joe Szilagyi wrote:
By allowing even a single non-Wikimedia Foundation site to reap any sort of financial benefit, a possible conflict of interest now exists.
Wow, that's a breathtakingly broad thesis. Apparently the Wikimedia Foundation has an ethical obligation to actively prevent remote downstream commercial activity, because it could be a conflict of interest for us if completely independent outside parties somehow benefit.
While we're at it, who needs external links in the first place? Let's just ignore the rest of the internet and be a walled garden, it's the only way we can be sure nobody will benefit.
Or instead, we could look at this dispassionately. I notice that the interwiki map includes World66 and Wikitravel, two travel guide wikis owned by a commercial enterprise called Internet Brands. Thus links to these sites can avoid the nofollow attribute, even though they would be direct competition for World Wikia, the travel guide Wikia launched to some fanfare last year. World66 even carries Google ads just like Wikia. On the basis of the evidence, what reason is there to think that Wikia has taken advantage of its founders' relationship with Wikimedia to get preferential treatment? Maybe somebody will think they can still make that case, but please look at the full picture instead of leaping to conclusions from a single piece of information.
Precisely. As I understand it, the reason interwiki links aren't nofollowed is because we can be damn sure that they're not spam, since all these domains have to be preapproved before you can link to them using the interwiki format. If we could have this sort of certainty for normal links, I'm sure we would (or ought to) remove the nofollow attribute.
Having said that, I still don't understand why the MediaWiki patch was rejected. Why is it not sensible to allow MediaWiki installations to nofollow interwiki links? It's a feature someone out there might conceivably want.
Johnleemk
On 5/1/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
Precisely. As I understand it, the reason interwiki links aren't nofollowed is because we can be damn sure that they're not spam, since all these domains have to be preapproved before you can link to them using the interwiki format. If we could have this sort of certainty for normal links, I'm sure we would (or ought to) remove the nofollow attribute.
I still don't understand that line of reasoning. How is it that "we can be damn sure that they're not spam"? Whether or not a link is spam is dependent on where it is linked from and for what reason. You can't point to any domain name and say that a link to it isn't going to be spam, and certainly not when you're pointing to a page with content that can be changed by anyone at any time for any reason.
Anthony
John Lee wrote:
Having said that, I still don't understand why the MediaWiki patch was rejected. Why is it not sensible to allow MediaWiki installations to nofollow interwiki links? It's a feature someone out there might conceivably want.
It's conceivable, but probably fairly unlikely. Interwiki links, by their nature, are incredibly unlikely to be spam (although there are a lot of prefixes in the default table that are, in my opinion, utter crap). Still, the patch is available if a user is genuinely concerned about it.
Blu Aardvark wrote:
John Lee wrote:
Having said that, I still don't understand why the MediaWiki patch was rejected. Why is it not sensible to allow MediaWiki installations to nofollow interwiki links? It's a feature someone out there might conceivably want.
It's conceivable, but probably fairly unlikely. Interwiki links, by their nature, are incredibly unlikely to be spam (although there are a lot of prefixes in the default table that are, in my opinion, utter crap). Still, the patch is available if a user is genuinely concerned about it.
I still don't understand the resistance to making all non-Foundation sites no-follow. The fact that people disagree with the idea, but are providing no rational reason, only encourages the perception that there *is* conflict of interest in the current situation.
Let me emphasize: perception is important in this issue.
-Rich
Rich Holton wrote:
I still don't understand the resistance to making all non-Foundation sites no-follow. The fact that people disagree with the idea, but are providing no rational reason, only encourages the perception that there *is* conflict of interest in the current situation.
I have no real issue if it's done to all non-Wikipedia.org/Wikimedia.org sites. I still disagree with it because I consider it awfully rude to use these sites as references and not provide them with the proper link weight, although we get it in return. Even with it turned on on all Wikipedia/Wikimedia sites, it's still us artificially driving down outbound links and promoting links that are making the Foundation money, re: Answers.com. So Answers.com, which does nothing except act as a secondary replicator of Wikipedia content (and does so in a less than great way, mind you), gets boosted in the rankings, drops down other more useful links that we ourselves use in our article writing, and then we take a cut of the Answers.com profits.
Let me emphasize: perception is important in this issue.
Yes, and the reality is what drives this perception away from "loony spam enablers" to something more vile.
-Jeff
I just don't see it as a conflict of interest.
I see it as a conflict of interest that the founder of a popular online encyclopedia uses his status to push a for-profit endeavor of his. I see it as a conflict of interest that the software behind Wikia was initially developed for Wikipedia (yes, I know MediaWiki != Wikimedia, but one cannot deny their relationship). But I *do not* see the presence of Wikia on the interwiki map to be a huge conflict of interest, except in the sense that Wikia is only "notable" because it was founded by a notable person.
Wikia is among hundreds of prefixes available on the interwiki map, and very few - actually, close to none - have any relationship to Wikipedia or its founder.
Rich Holton wrote:
I still don't understand the resistance to making all non-Foundation sites no-follow. The fact that people disagree with the idea, but are providing no rational reason, only encourages the perception that there *is* conflict of interest in the current situation.
Let me emphasize: perception is important in this issue.
-Rich
Rich Holton wrote:
Blu Aardvark wrote:
John Lee wrote:
Having said that, I still don't understand why the MediaWiki patch was rejected. Why is it not sensible to allow MediaWiki installations to nofollow interwiki links? It's a feature someone out there might conceivably want.
It's conceivable, but probably fairly unlikely. Interwiki links, by their nature, are incredibly unlikely to be spam (although there are a lot of prefixes in the default table that are, in my opinion, utter crap). Still, the patch is available if a user is genuinely concerned about it.
I still don't understand the resistance to making all non-Foundation sites no-follow. The fact that people disagree with the idea, but are providing no rational reason, only encourages the perception that there *is* conflict of interest in the current situation.
Let me emphasize: perception is important in this issue.
-Rich
I fully agree. All non Foundation sites should be no follow.
Anthere
Florence Devouard wrote:
Rich Holton wrote:
Blu Aardvark wrote:
John Lee wrote:
Having said that, I still don't understand why the MediaWiki patch was rejected. Why is it not sensible to allow MediaWiki installations to nofollow interwiki links? It's a feature someone out there might conceivably want.
It's conceivable, but probably fairly unlikely. Interwiki links, by their nature, are incredibly unlikely to be spam (although there are a lot of prefixes in the default table that are, in my opinion, utter crap). Still, the patch is available if a user is genuinely concerned about it.
I still don't understand the resistance to making all non-Foundation sites no-follow. The fact that people disagree with the idea, but are providing no rational reason, only encourages the perception that there *is* conflict of interest in the current situation.
Let me emphasize: perception is important in this issue.
-Rich
I fully agree. All non Foundation sites should be no follow.
Anthere
Or to be more precise. Either all links (external and interwiki) should be nofollow Or none of them should be. Or we can work on white lists together for both types of links.
What is weird right now is that external links do not have the same standards than interwiki.
I support similar standards
ant
On 01/05/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Or to be more precise. Either all links (external and interwiki) should be nofollow Or none of them should be. Or we can work on white lists together for both types of links. What is weird right now is that external links do not have the same standards than interwiki. I support similar standards
If you're henceforth going to put something into place for the express purpose of using the power of nofollow, I'd suggest a determination on the basis of whether the interwiki site is free content. (See WMF objectives.)
- d.
On 5/1/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
If you're henceforth going to put something into place for the express purpose of using the power of nofollow, I'd suggest a determination on the basis of whether the interwiki site is free content. (See WMF objectives.)
Is it a stated objective (link, please) to promote external websites or corporations materially or incidentally? I'm curious for a clarification of what you are saying. Thanks!
On 01/05/07, Joe Szilagyi szilagyi@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/1/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
If you're henceforth going to put something into place for the express purpose of using the power of nofollow, I'd suggest a determination on the basis of whether the interwiki site is free content. (See WMF objectives.)
Is it a stated objective (link, please) to promote external websites or corporations materially or incidentally? I'm curious for a clarification of what you are saying. Thanks!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home
"The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit charitable organization dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to providing the full content of these wiki-based projects to the public free of charge."
This would most definitely be "encouraging the growth, development and distribution" of free content.
When I get press calls with the latest "let's you and him fight" news about Citizendium, I point out that encouraging free content sites in general is actually good for us in every way. It validates the model and it validates free content.
If Google juice from Wikipedia is as all-fired superpowered as linkspammers claim, it would be negligent of us not to use this force for good.
(That, by the way, would mean distinguishing which Wikia sites get nofollow, e.g. most are GFDL, but Uncyclopedia is CC by-nc-sa, so wouldn't get a boost.)
- d.
On 5/1/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
I fully agree. All non Foundation sites should be no follow.
Anthere
Or to be more precise. Either all links (external and interwiki) should be nofollow Or none of them should be. Or we can work on white lists together for both types of links.
What is weird right now is that external links do not have the same standards than interwiki.
I support similar standards
ant
Florence, does this mean that such changes should be enacted as policy/mandate of the WMF?
On 5/1/07, Joe Szilagyi szilagyi@gmail.com wrote:
Florence, does this mean that such changes should be enacted as policy/mandate of the WMF?
Personally, I hope it doesn't come to that. But in any case we need a patch. I believe the old patch added nofollow to *all* IW links. We need a patch that distinguishes between internal IW links (like Wikinews) and external IW links (like Wikia).
I'm not an expert in Mediawiki, but I could probably figure it out if no one else is willing to. Is anyone else up for the task? Should I crosspost this to wikitech?
Anthony
On 5/1/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Should I crosspost this to wikitech?
It certainly wouldn't be a bad idea, no.
On 01/05/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I'm not an expert in Mediawiki, but I could probably figure it out if no one else is willing to. Is anyone else up for the task? Should I crosspost this to wikitech?
The patch was rejected for not being a good idea, not for being bad code. It's clear that technically it's trivial. So probably this discussion should move to foundation-l (the right list for Meta) in a day or two.
- d.
Joe Szilagyi wrote:
On 5/1/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
I fully agree. All non Foundation sites should be no follow.
Anthere
Or to be more precise. Either all links (external and interwiki) should be nofollow Or none of them should be. Or we can work on white lists together for both types of links.
What is weird right now is that external links do not have the same standards than interwiki.
I support similar standards
ant
Florence, does this mean that such changes should be enacted as policy/mandate of the WMF?
Nope. I was speaking in my own name. It is my view and I share it :-)
More seriously, I can ask the board to make a decision on this if this is considered best. Afaik, the only board member who participated in this specific discussion was Jimbo (it was on one of our internal lists). So I do not really know others positions.
It goes without saying that Jimbo and Michael will have to abstain on any decision on the matter, due to the conflict of interest.
Ant
On 02/05/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Nope. I was speaking in my own name. It is my view and I share it :-) More seriously, I can ask the board to make a decision on this if this is considered best. Afaik, the only board member who participated in this specific discussion was Jimbo (it was on one of our internal lists). So I do not really know others positions. It goes without saying that Jimbo and Michael will have to abstain on any decision on the matter, due to the conflict of interest.
Although I'd like them in on the discussion.
Time to run this past foundation-l?
Also would be worth alerting Meta admins in particular, since they're the ones who put stuff on the interwiki map in practice.
- d.
This may be a stupid question,... but I've started, so I'll finish.
Does the proposed change in status of interwiki links also apply to interwiki links between say wikipedia and wikiquote? If it does not, is it technically trivial to implement so that interwiki links within our foundation remain with their status as is.
Another query is whether other sites linking to us via interwiki are doing something similar, and if they are, how will they likely react to our change in policy with regard to them?
(no brickbats please, like I said above I have no idea if this is a relevant query or not, but this is just something that occurred to me)
On 5/2/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/05/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Nope. I was speaking in my own name. It is my view and I share it :-) More seriously, I can ask the board to make a decision on this if this is considered best. Afaik, the only board member who participated in this specific discussion was Jimbo (it was on one of our internal lists). So I do not really know others positions. It goes without saying that Jimbo and Michael will have to abstain on any decision on the matter, due to the conflict of interest.
Although I'd like them in on the discussion.
Time to run this past foundation-l?
Also would be worth alerting Meta admins in particular, since they're the ones who put stuff on the interwiki map in practice.
- d.
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On 5/2/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
I fully agree. All non Foundation sites should be no follow.
I've done another patch which should allow discrimination between local and nonlocal interwiki sites (ie, we can have nofollow on most interwikis but not on links between Wikimedia projects):
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8753
On 5/1/07, Blu Aardvark jeffrey.latham@gmail.com wrote:
It's conceivable, but probably fairly unlikely. Interwiki links, by their nature, are incredibly unlikely to be spam (although there are a lot of prefixes in the default table that are, in my opinion, utter crap). Still, the patch is available if a user is genuinely concerned about it.
Blu, which patch...? The developers rejected Bainer's proposed patch:
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8753
That's the patch I was referring to. Just because the developers rejected it doesn't mean the end user has to. The software is GPL, after all.
Joe Szilagyi wrote:
On 5/1/07, Blu Aardvark jeffrey.latham@gmail.com wrote:
It's conceivable, but probably fairly unlikely. Interwiki links, by their nature, are incredibly unlikely to be spam (although there are a lot of prefixes in the default table that are, in my opinion, utter crap). Still, the patch is available if a user is genuinely concerned about it.
Blu, which patch...? The developers rejected Bainer's proposed patch:
Joe Szilagyi wrote:
On 5/1/07, Blu Aardvark jeffrey.latham@gmail.com wrote:
It's conceivable, but probably fairly unlikely. Interwiki links, by their nature, are incredibly unlikely to be spam (although there are a lot of prefixes in the default table that are, in my opinion, utter crap). Still, the patch is available if a user is genuinely concerned about it.
Blu, which patch...? The developers rejected Bainer's proposed patch:
That was before this discussion, before Anthere gave her opinion on the matter. And it was only two developers, neither of whom appear to have defended their decision since their initial one-line response. It's not the end of the road.
-- Tim Starling
On 01/05/07, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
That was before this discussion, before Anthere gave her opinion on the matter. And it was only two developers, neither of whom appear to have defended their decision since their initial one-line response. It's not the end of the road.
Let's see if Florence can SMASH the WIKIA CONSPIRACY!!!11!!! by having expressed an opinion.
*ahem*
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 01/05/07, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
That was before this discussion, before Anthere gave her opinion on the matter. And it was only two developers, neither of whom appear to have defended their decision since their initial one-line response. It's not the end of the road.
Let's see if Florence can SMASH the WIKIA CONSPIRACY!!!11!!! by having expressed an opinion.
*ahem*
- d.
I doubt it :-) Much too engraved :-)
ant
Michael Snow wrote:
Or instead, we could look at this dispassionately. I notice that the interwiki map includes World66 and Wikitravel, two travel guide wikis owned by a commercial enterprise called Internet Brands. Thus links to these sites can avoid the nofollow attribute, even though they would be direct competition for World Wikia, the travel guide Wikia launched to some fanfare last year. World66 even carries Google ads just like Wikia. On the basis of the evidence, what reason is there to think that Wikia has taken advantage of its founders' relationship with Wikimedia to get preferential treatment? Maybe somebody will think they can still make that case, but please look at the full picture instead of leaping to conclusions from a single piece of information.
Because of the nature of the request to have nofollow turned off for interwiki links, and the denial of the patch to fix the problem. The competing wikis were more of an oversight, I'd assume, than anything else, given the evidence.
-Jeff
On 5/1/07, Michael Snow wikipedia@att.net wrote:
While we're at it, who needs external links in the first place? Let's just ignore the rest of the internet and be a walled garden, it's the only way we can be sure nobody will benefit.
An interesting concept which was actually part of the original plans for Gnupedia. But we digress. Joe Szilagyi seems to be the only one going to such an extreme here.
Or instead, we could look at this dispassionately. I notice that the interwiki map includes World66 and Wikitravel, two travel guide wikis owned by a commercial enterprise called Internet Brands. Thus links to these sites can avoid the nofollow attribute, even though they would be direct competition for World Wikia, the travel guide Wikia launched to some fanfare last year. World66 even carries Google ads just like Wikia. On the basis of the evidence, what reason is there to think that Wikia has taken advantage of its founders' relationship with Wikimedia to get preferential treatment? Maybe somebody will think they can still make that case, but please look at the full picture instead of leaping to conclusions from a single piece of information.
All the evidence points to the conclusion that this preferential treatment was accidental. But it's still there, and it's most likely quite significant. If you think it's perfectly OK for a charity to accidentally give its founder such a windfall, then I really can't say anything against that. My intuition is that it's very wrong, but maybe my intuition is wrong.
Anthony
On 5/1/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
An interesting concept which was actually part of the original plans for Gnupedia. But we digress. Joe Szilagyi seems to be the only one going to such an extreme here.
I'm honestly surprised that more people don't see this. People keep saying things like, we'd inconvenience our readers. There's no COI. Etcetera, and so on. Stephen Bain provided a patch. Adding nofollow wouldn't affect the ability to template link--it would just make them nofollow if done right.
Template link all day, it's a good idea--but just make them as they're external links nofollow. For the current situation to be fair, any and every competing website to any of the ones currently *in* the Interwiki Map would need to be added if they asked for it.
On 5/1/07, Michael Snow wikipedia@att.net wrote:
Wow, that's a breathtakingly broad thesis. Apparently the Wikimedia Foundation has an ethical obligation to actively prevent remote downstream commercial activity, because it could be a conflict of interest for us if completely independent outside parties somehow benefit.
No, it's doesn't. The licensing lets people do whatever they want, and as I said, I could care less *who* makes the money. It's a question of the appearance of conflict. There's no harm in template/interwiki linking. There's a problem with deciding that x people can get nofollow turned off, but y people can't.
It simply needs to be all or nothing so that there is no possible risk of ethical issues or COI. Either nofollow needs to be turned off (not a good idea), everyone who asks for it needs to be granted the priviledge of bypassing it via the Interwiki Map (again, probably not a good idea), or it needs to be uniform on all WMF sites.
On Tue, 1 May 2007, Michael Snow wrote:
By allowing even a single non-Wikimedia Foundation site to reap any sort of financial benefit, a possible conflict of interest now exists.
Wow, that's a breathtakingly broad thesis. Apparently the Wikimedia Foundation has an ethical obligation to actively prevent remote downstream commercial activity, because it could be a conflict of interest for us if completely independent outside parties somehow benefit.
The ethical obligation happens because Wikia being "completely independent" is just a legal technicality, and doesn't mean there's no conflict of interest.