[Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Searchability of non-mainspace pages

[Jimmy Wales]

Charles Matthews wrote:
> Well, maybe we should discuss the downside first. Not having project
> pages on Google would certainly impede my work. You know, some of us
> still develop articles, and so on.

This is a valid point, and I think it needs to be addressed in a couple 
of ways:

1. First, narrowing the scope of the noindex request.

2. Second, finding out what it would take to improve internal search to 
make it more usable for people developing articles and so on.

> Ah, but I do. Isn't it a better solution to blank some AfDs, than to
> say "the mission has to come second"? After all, really negative
> material should be off the site, not just harder to find.

I would support that for some kinds of pages, blanking should be the 
default upon the close of discussion.

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I wonder how hard it would be to have a technical change whereby 
articles could be tagged with a {{noindex}} template which would set the 
meta headers appropriately.  This could be liberally applied to project 
pages that may be magnets for bad behavior.

And then user space could be the only thing removed from google by default.

Thoughts?

--Jimbo