On 5/17/06, William Allen Simpson <william.allen.simpson(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Looking at the patch, it seems to me that a better
solution would handle
both NOINDEX *and* NOFOLLOW.
Certainly, most namespaces should be indexed, while "User" and "User
talk"
should probably never be indexed or followed. Meanwhile, "Wikipedia" and
"Wikipedia talk" should probably always be both indexed and followed, as
the problem of spam links is low, but valuable cross-wiki links is high.
The incidence of uncaught spam in everything except main (i.e.
including main talk) is *much* higher than in main. I'm not aware of
anyone that really protests nofollow in those other NSes. User pages
are probably the worst, because no only are people not paying
attention, they feel compelled not to remove spam when they see it...
but the problem is pretty significant in other NSes too.
Noindex will impact the use of google to find interior pages and
shouldn't be done until our own search engine is more functional.
Eventually we *should* turn it on.. if nothing else than to avoid
confusing random outsiders with our sausage making (just as we've done
with the AFD pages).