[Foundation-l] Free advertising on Wikipedia

[Anthony DiPierro]

On 5/1/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/1/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I don't much like the idea of effectively punishing thousands of
> > perfectly fine sites because of a few people who pee in the proverbial
> > public pool.
>
> How does turning on nofollow punish anyone?  Nobody is entitled to
> free pagerank just because they've been listed on Wikipedia.
>
> I see no good reason not to turn on nofollow for en.  I also note that
> de has been nofollow for quite a while now.
>
> Kelly

I tend to agree, though I don't think nofollow will have much of an
impact either way.  Maybe it'll slightly decrease the incentive for
vandals to add links, but probably not much.

One definite advantage I did see during the times that nofollow was on
was that there was less fighting over what links to include, what not
to include, and what to include through some kludge where the link
wasn't clickable.  Some people are on a mission to make sure Wikipedia
doesn't link to certain websites which they find socially unacceptable
(diploma mills are one example).  Anything that reduces the temptation
for people to engage in these wars is a good thing.

In the end, nofollow has little impact on the goal of Wikipedia - to
create an encyclopedia.

Anthony