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

[Chad]

This already exists to some degree in Mediawiki by default. The
"noindex,nofollow" tags can be assigned per-namespace, so the
Wikipedia: namespace can easily be removed from search indexers
(ones that follow the standard, at least).

As far as assigning it on a per-page basis (ie: for the mainspace if
need be), I would think that either a magic word (like you said Jimbo:
{{NOINDEX}} or somesuch), or an extension (such as the url
blacklists) would be the way to go.

-Chad

On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 11:07 AM, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> 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.
>
>  -----
>
>  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
>
>
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