Hello!
In this thread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Userpage_drafts_shown_in_search_engines, there was a discussion about indexing of user space by search engines. In a nutshell, user space pages are not subject to content policies so that users can write drafts freely, and having those pages indexed by search engines like Google is viewed as problematic since those pages can seem fairly official.
I seem to recall that it was not the default in the past that user pages were indexed by search engines. I'm trying to figure out if there's some other cause for this that's happened recently, because I'd prefer to avoid piling hacks on and not address the root issue.
Does anyone know of anything that's changed recently that might've changed the way that search engines index user space?
Thanks, Dan
Looks like a bug
Looking closely this meta tag is present in user pages: <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow">
but not present in that particular sub page [1]. I haven't had time to investigate further but please raise a phabricator task.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Nobleeagle/India_as_an_emerging_superpo...
On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 10:32 AM, Dan Garry dgarry@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello!
In this thread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Userpage_drafts_shown_in_search_engines, there was a discussion about indexing of user space by search engines. In a nutshell, user space pages are not subject to content policies so that users can write drafts freely, and having those pages indexed by search engines like Google is viewed as problematic since those pages can seem fairly official.
I seem to recall that it was not the default in the past that user pages were indexed by search engines. I'm trying to figure out if there's some other cause for this that's happened recently, because I'd prefer to avoid piling hacks on and not address the root issue.
Does anyone know of anything that's changed recently that might've changed the way that search engines index user space?
Thanks, Dan
-- Dan Garry Product Manager, Discovery Wikimedia Foundation _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
FWIW I have also seen many cases of userspace drafts being indexed. Perhaps something to do with the fact that they are always subpages?
On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 10:35 AM Jon Robson jdlrobson@gmail.com wrote:
Looks like a bug
Looking closely this meta tag is present in user pages:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow">
but not present in that particular sub page [1]. I haven't had time to investigate further but please raise a phabricator task.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Nobleeagle/India_as_an_emerging_superpo...
On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 10:32 AM, Dan Garry dgarry@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello!
In this thread <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Userpage_dr...
, there was a discussion about indexing of user space by search engines.
In a
nutshell, user space pages are not subject to content policies so that users can write drafts freely, and having those pages indexed by search engines like Google is viewed as problematic since those pages can seem fairly official.
I seem to recall that it was not the default in the past that user pages were indexed by search engines. I'm trying to figure out if there's some other cause for this that's happened recently, because I'd prefer to
avoid
piling hacks on and not address the root issue.
Does anyone know of anything that's changed recently that might've
changed
the way that search engines index user space?
Thanks, Dan
-- Dan Garry Product Manager, Discovery Wikimedia Foundation _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
-- Jon Robson
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Hi
On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 7:35 PM, Jon Robson jdlrobson@gmail.com wrote:
Looking closely this meta tag is present in user pages:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow">
but not present in that particular sub page [1]. I haven't had time to investigate further but please raise a phabricator task.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Nobleeagle/India_as_an_emerging_superpo...
You are not looking into userspace. The user page has been moved into the mainspace a few days ago, and has been a redirect since. [2] The mobile view seems not to indicate the fact you were redirected at all.
-- [[cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec]]
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Nobleeagle/India_as_an_emerg...
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